Thanks in large part to you folks on this forum, I was able to get enough research together to create a blog post about Programmer’s Calculators, it’s mostly about the (very short) history of the product segment, with a little bit at the end about HP-16c clones (hardware and software) that you can get today.
I hope you folks appreciate the blog!
Nice blog post!
For old-school dedicated calculators, the HP-16C “Computer Scientist” does seem to have been the pinnacle, but it was expensive at the time and is rare now. (I had one, as an engineer, in my first job, but when I left the calculator stayed.)
As noted, Swiss Micros make, or have made, large and small modern replicas, and also their newer offerings the R47 and the DM42n can both do a superset of the 16C (and 15C) functions, but with quite a high price point (justifiable, in my view, for these small volumes.)
Below, some videos - not meaning to hijack your blog link, but possibly these videos, and perhaps the channels they are from, will be of interest.
I found a video comparison of programmer’s calculators:
And a couple on the 16C:
There’s a workalike kit PX16C which might interest some:
The 15C Collector’s Edition has a 16C mode as a kind of easter egg:
oh I just meant “the pinnacle” of programmer’s calculators specifically. I agree that it falls short of other calculators as a general purpose device (just look at… the rest of the voyager series, and that much is obvious).
Also thanks for the links! I appreciate having more info, both for me right now, and anyone else who comes upon the forum post. I don’t mind the “hijacking” at all!
The R47 must be one of the most interesting products on sale today, well in the calculator arena anyway, as you can’t find it on the manufacturers product page. I suspect it sells quite well, though.
The R47 is not fully a first-party SwissMicros product. You can find its product page here: SwissMicros Model R47 RPN Calculator
It is a collaboration project with a fully open source third-party firmware project for the DM42, a first-party SwissMicros calculator:
This firmware was originally written for a DM42 with a keyboard overlay (and the third party firmware developers still sell the overlay). In the meantime, some things (unknown to me) transpired, and SwissMicros agreed to make some calculators that come with the appropriate keyboard legend from the manufacturer.