A harking for the past?

[drogon]

Just a little interesting aside…

Many years ago (c1980) at university, Myself and a friend were reprimanded by a maths teacher for using a programmable calculator to “solve” a problem. I think it was some sort of iteration - Newton/Taylor, etc. Anyway the maths class was part of a computing course, so the argument was “why not?” and I recall the lecturer eventually conceded…

That calculator was a Casio fx502p - and I used it all through uni. and
beyond, but sadly is suffered a little accident some time back (like 20+
years ago) and screen cracked and the keyboard was unreliable…

(It was the inspiration for my Apricot language too which I must re-visit
at some point)

I’ve looked on/off for one on ebay for some time but they surprisingly go
for a little more than I was willing to pay - more popular that maybe I imagined…

Anyway one came up recently at a price I was willing to offer and I
snapped it up…

And it’s practically new - the plastic film is still present on the
keyboard overlay.

And I’ve been using it too - I used it last week when I was experimenting with the temperature sensor on the Raspbery Pico (RP2350) MCU - I coded up the formulae into it to double check my calculations in assembler for it and a few other minor things.

Today I’m working on optimising my assembly language sine routines and - Program 2 now has a Taylor-Maclaurin series programmed into it…

Maybe the older things were as good as the newer things…

Right now, on my desk, I have 3 calculators I can reach for - the shiny
“new” fx502p, the trusty old Imperial 99T that I used at school and my old slide-rule. All the same devices I used at school and uni. (Technically only the slide rule is original though)

Maybe that says something more about me though, who knows…

Anyone else still actively using/embracing retro things today? As part of daily life (even if it is to support a retro hobby)

-Gordon

[rwiker]

I, too, have a fondness for calculators. In my case, mainly HP calculators, going back to the HP-11C I bought back in 1982. I don’t use them often, but when I do, I find them much more enjoyable to work with than calculator apps on my phone.

I also have, and enjoy, fountain pens… there’s something special about something made a hundred years ago that still works as well as it did back then, and better than their modern counterparts.

[drogon]

@rwiker

I, too, have a fondness for calculators. In my case, mainly HP calculators, going back to the HP-11C I bought back in 1982. I don’t use them often, but when I do, I find them much more enjoyable to work with than calculator apps on my phone.

Ah, then there’s the infix vs postfix “holy war”. Almost (or even more so) than the old 6502 vs Z80 holy wars of times past (6502 won )

And in the infix camp, there is further divide with the “1+23=9" (Older Imperial) or "1+23=7” (newer Casio) camp…

@rwiker

also have, and enjoy, fountain pens… there’s something special about something made a hundred years ago that still works as well as it did back then, and better than their modern counterparts.

Being left-handed, I always found them challenging to use, so stopped trying. My wife on the other hand is a real pen nerd. To the point that why yes, she did manage to get her Bichon Frisé covered in Baystate Blue…

-Gordon

[EdS]

@drogon

And I’ve been using it too

That’s the winner, for me - having the things handy is good, but actually picking them up is better!

I think perhaps it’s a bit more compelling to own something just like one you had back in the day, compared to something you didn’t, but then again there might be something you always wanted and never got. For many people, the HP-16C will be in that category.

For myself, i recently bought a Casio graphing calculator - not one I had any particular memory of, or had, but quite nice condition, and of course programmable. Most second-hand calculators I see are scientific but not programmable.

[Paganini]

Well… I play the violin for a living, so I suppose it’s no surprise that I often think old things are as good as or better than new things. I write with fountain pens, shave with a rockwell safety razor and a badger-fur shaving brush, and even my non-retro computers are pretty old. (I’m writing this post on my 2012 Macbook Pro, which, sadly, I’m going to have finally replace with something newer before too long… not because there’s anything all that wrong with it, but because my banks, in their infinite wisdom, have mandated that I not be allowed to log into my online banking portals unless I have a more recent browser version than the most recent one the most up-to-date version of MacOS that will run on this machine will support. (the same thing happened with my old Samsung Galaxy S8 cell phone last year… I loved that phone!)

Underneath it all, I think I just really dislike a culture of disposable things. My car is not really retro (it’s from 2010) but it has 286,000 miles on it, and I’m going to be sad/mad if I can’t keep it going past 300,000!

[scruss]

@drogon

Ah, then there’s the infix vs postfix “holy war”.

It wasn’t so much of a holy war: it was that HP users didn’t want people “borrowing” their calculators. My dad’s argument was that people would pick up an HP, try it, find it didn’t work, then put it back down and go in search of a Casio, Sharp or TI to perma-borrow somewhere else. For that reason, I still have my dad’s HP-11C. I also have numerous HP48s that I picked up cheaply: lovely calculators.

That’s not to say that other brands don’t do clever things. I have a mid-range non-programmable Casio fx-115MS that has the perfect handling of SI prefixes. Casio make many variants of the fx-115, and only the (discontinued) MS variant does this magic trick.

@drogon

Almost (or even more so) than the old 6502 vs Z80 holy wars of times past (6502 won )

That’s an odd definition of “won”:

• Number of current 64-bit computers with an instruction set derived from the Intel 8080, just like the Z80: billions
• Number of current 64-bit computers with an instruction set derived from the 6502: … uh, maybe you can count them on all the 16-bit registers that the 6502 has …

Anyway, as long as there are high-school mathematics examinations in North America, the Z80 (admittedly in ASIC form) will still be churned out by the million to fit in overpriced TI graphics calculators. TI’s vendor lock-in is quite alarming.

As for old-fashioned kit, I’ll still use a fountain pen if I can remember to refill it. Mostly, though, I’ll use a woodcase pencil. But not just any pencil: it’s a Mitsubishi Nano Dia 2B for me. These leave a soft black line, yet wear like an HB or harder pencil. I don’t know how they do it. Mitsubishi aren’t telling.

I’ll also still use my grandfather’s Riefler drawing instrument set from 1929 when I’m drawing geometric patterns. Most computer graphics programs approximate circles with four cubic curves, and that inaccuracy plays havoc with traditional rule and compass construction.

While 99.99% of my photography is on my phone, I will still sometimes bring out my all-mechanical Pentax MX camera with 40 mm f/2.8 pancake lens, load it up with Ilford HP5, and develop the results in Rodinal. That’s a workflow that’s almost a century old.

[EdS]

I suppose the opening gambit in this thread is finding a thing which you used to have (or want), it being affordable, buying it, and getting a good nostalgia buzz from it.

Perhaps a similar idea is finding the desirable thing hidden away in a box or cupboard, and bringing it back into circulation.

One example I can bring to mind is getting an HP-25 (about seven years back) although it has to be said, I’ve used it very little indeed, in part because the keyboard isn’t quite reliable. Some TLC refurbishment needed.

[amenjet]

I also had an FX502P and learnt to program on it as home computers were very expensive back then. I also bought some off ebay and have them around. till my favourite machine I think. Do you still have yours? I have so many that I may have parts to fix your original. The LCD is connected with zebra strips and so can be fairly easily replaced. The keyboard problem is maybe the on/off switch contacts not making contact due to bending or dirt. That causes the AC key to not work. Anything else could be a cracked PCB.

As well as using these machines I like to modify them and create gadgets that extend their capabilities. For the FX502P I made a PCB that plugs into the cassette port and can save and load programs to and from SD card and allows a modern thermal printer to be attached. You can drive an I2C bus as well, and also a small OLED display for drawing graphs etc. There’s videos about it on YouTube.

----------- do not read beyond this point unless willing to buy old calculators ----------

I’m not sure I should mention this, but after the %01/502, Casio created the very similar 601/602 which has alphanumerics, and then they made the FX603P, which is a beefed up version of the two previous machines. Sold only in Japan, they can be found at reasonable prices on Japanese auction sites, quite often in states that indicate heavy usage, sometimes in very nice state. It’s quite a machine, it even has PEEK and POKE commands… And RS232. And an expanded IO port.

Unfortunately the 601/2/3 use heat seal connectors so the displays aren’t very repairable.

Check out the FP50 printer for the 603. There’s only 2 that I know of, but it’s a lovely add-on that you will probably never find. I’ve been looking for years…

[NoLand]

@scruss

Number of current 64-bit computers with an instruction set derived from the Intel 8080, just like the Z80: billions

I guess, the Datapoint 2200 won.
And all those years since 1969, mainstream CPUs have been based based on what was originally a sequential memory paradigm! (Who says, IT is moving fast?)
(I do find it quite fascinating that neither of those 8-bit MPUs were originally meant to be a computer CPU: the 8008 came from a terminal processor with an Intel shift register for memory and the 6800 and 6502, while actually designed to interface with RAM, were really meant as program-once-run-many-times microcontroller type chips. So any of those surviving, even thriving at tasks they weren’t meant for is probably a win.)

Regarding the topic, I still have my Sharp EL-512 (it does regressive statistics, hex, and even boolean logic) from Uni and used it since quite a bit. Lately, I hadn’t much use for a calculator, though – and even struggled to find, just now.

(Not mine, image source: fliesenwiese.de.)

[EdS]

Ah, a calculator with formula memory - a kind of programming, but without loops or branches. Have you made much use of that? I think one of my Sharps has something like this.

[NoLand]

I actually used this for statistics in social research, mostly for tests, but also for a small survey.

(Pearson correlation: no problem, T-test, chi-squared: can all be done, that is, as long as your n stays in certain limits, because there’s only that much memory for your input data arrays… I think, it’s in the mid-30s data pairs range, but I haven’t looked into this for decades. So, more like a rumor than a factual statement.)

For me, this was peek calculator. These things weren’t expensive, actually still pretty small, and way ahead of the Ti-30s and the like, we used to have in school. This was quite the marvel, then.

Later, it became my tool of choice for calculations that might have been involved in those table-layout websites, and maybe some hex color values. (It’s much easier to use a separate tool than switching to some fancy calculator app. And if it doesn’t use much desk space, so for the better.)

[EdS]

Ah, speaking of memory and arrays, the fx-7000GA has something remarkable: 26 storage locations labelled alphabetically, and then any of those can be used with indexed addressing (I think), so A(2) is the same place as C, or E(-2). This is more useful than it might seem, as Z(9) for example might be available. Although it will be the same as Y(10) so beware pointer aliasing.

[NoLand]

Speaking of using calculators not so much anymore, this one is the calculator I really want to use – and have not much use for: the Canon Palmtronic LC from 1976. As the name suggests, it features a quite clear LCD display (dark on yellow) and the haptic feel is – not to say fantastic, but extraordinary. I want to use these springy metal keys! It also looks rather nice in person. According to this website, it runs on a rather large 42-pin chip from Hitachi.

http://www.datamath.org/Related/Canon/LC-1.htm

The internals can be seen here (a Palmtronic LC-2): http://mycalcdb.free.fr/main.php?l=0&id=253

(Disclaimer: I obtained this as a vintage item. So slightly off-topic. But I really wanted to use this and still want to. I have it at arms-length in my living room, just in case…)

[Adam_Billyard]

We were give these calculators at Canon Research Europe in the late 80s and I continued to use it right up to 2020 when it died..

Sounds dumb, but I was so shocked when I compared the time for calculating 68! on TI calculator vs a Z80 computer. The former was multiple seconds, the latter pretty much instant!

[artag]

I have a 502P as well and also own the cassette / music player adapter. I’m impressed that you managed to reuse the casstte port. How does it communicate with the original and your adapter ? Did you have to emulate the cassette port adapter or were yoiu able to control the ityerface directly ?

Later, when I wanted a hex calculator, I bought one of the wide-format calculators with alphanumerics. It might have been the Casio 603 but I think it was possibly a cheaper Sharp. The project wasn’t a great success : using programs to do a few hex functions withoutr assignable keys was clumsy, so I gave up and bought an HP16C.

I quickly became an HP convert especially fond of the landscape format ‘Voyager’ series and now have far more of them than I can possibly use, The more recent ones from HP Australia and the still later outsourced models have lost their appeal though. The rubber keys just aren’t the same ..

[amenjet]

I used the cassette adapter protocol to allow files.to.be saved and.loaded.tonand.from.the SD card. A small.orocessor.sits on the cassette port and talks the protocol. As well as saving and loading programs, I used the INV SAVE INV EXE sequence to send values to the processor. These can be used to do various things like draw graphics on a small oled screen. I also added a thermal.orinter.and.orograms.can be listed on that.
If you search for:
casio fx502p sd card
In YouTube, you will.fimd a few videos about the gadget.