The Other McCain

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Geekzer Bait Taken

Posted on | August 19, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

To answer Daily Pundit,

The old HP-48 is depicted here, along with a scrap of RPL I wrote against it in the dim, dark past. The old 48GX may not be as old as what Daily Pundit mentioned, but it’s just a great piece of hardware. As recently as 5 years ago, I still used it as an alarm clock.

Wouldn’t light off, though. I may need some fresher AAAs.

Category: Bill Quick

Comments

9 Responses to “Geekzer Bait Taken”

  1. Dandapani
    August 19th, 2012 @ 9:10 am

    I have an old HP 200LX hand held DOS computer that is used weekly to balance my check book. I have a Lotus 123 spreadsheet I wrote long back for that purpose.

  2. JeffS
    August 19th, 2012 @ 9:36 am

    I have:

    1. An HP41CV, complete with military engineering module (the last is courtesy of the Engineer School when it was still at Fort Belvoir).

    2. A Tandy TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer. Used primarily as a demonstration of older technology; I like to point out that it was then state of the art with an amazing two kilo-bytes of RAM.

    3. A 10″ Versalog slide ruler, purchased from the college book store during a close out sale in 1979 for $5.

  3. William T Quick
    August 19th, 2012 @ 10:58 am

    It seems to have vanished over the years, but probably at the bottom of a drawer or box somewhere, I still have the slide rule my dad gave me when I went off to boarding school back in 1961 – and he’d had it for a good while before he gave it to me. It didn’t have any RAM…

  4. Ray Eckhart
    August 19th, 2012 @ 12:07 pm

    Ha! Gotcha all beat. Somewhere in a box in the attic with the stuff from my grandmother, is a “Broome Bridge” – invented by her brother, Frank Broome – an “electronic slide rule”.

  5. Quartermaster
    August 19th, 2012 @ 1:33 pm

    I used my 48 as a data collector for my land surveying operation. I had a cable that went to the all electronic instrument and kept me from having to type anything into the computer. It were nice.

    I still an Arista slide rule with the original paste board case stamped that it was made in the Western Zone of Germany. That was before they and Nestler started making leather cases. They were still recovering from WW2.

    These days, I use TrueBASIC and an HP85 for my computation needs.

  6. Charles G Hill
    August 19th, 2012 @ 4:25 pm

    I’ve still got my old slide rule — the little one, not the big bruiser metal rule I got for drafting class that had scales I never did comprehend worth a flip. (Which is one reason why I am not an engineer.)

  7. rd
    August 19th, 2012 @ 8:34 pm

    I am still using my HP 41CV from college. It is older than most of the engineers I work with. My HP-11C and HP-41CV refuse to die.
    I remember the Texas Instruments TI-30s in high school. I wore out about three of them in my senior year, the 5 button would stop working. I think by the end of their manufacturing run they put TI-30 calculators in cereal boxes.
    The only difference with the HP is I needed to learn RPN. Now I have trouble using a normal calculator.

  8. JeffS
    August 19th, 2012 @ 9:13 pm

    I had TI’s in college as well — I forget the early models; the last one was a TI59. I switched to HP after college, and haven’t regretted it.

  9. K-Bob
    August 20th, 2012 @ 2:36 am

    I don’t know which HP scientific calculator came first, but I do remember touring a Union Carbide plant’s nuclear sciences department in 1973, and though you could conceptually carry the thing in a pocket, they had it prominently “cradled” in a central location so anyone could use it (anyone with a PhD, that is). They cost a ton, and you could almost hear the angelic choir singing as you approached it.

    Did I say cradled? Swaddled might be more like it.