Still alive and updated:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-102731...ol;inTheNewsNow

RPN for the "Now-generation"

(Another nuMe 'hysterical' post?)

I like to say that there are just two makers of good calculators: Hewlett and Packard.

I still use on a daily base a HP28C dating back to 1988:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp28c.htm


And guess which calc has been added to minibox:


and which ones I use on my systems?:
http://free42.sourceforge.net/
http://www.tordivel.no/xcalc/



Happy to know that though through "unconventional means" RPN is still going strong.



jaclaz

Very nice...

Your HP28C = Reverse Polish Lisp (with Forth!)
http://www.hpmuseum.org/rpl.htm

I would venture that the "#" preceding your binary number input, would have executed the Forth phrase of: '16 base !'
http://www.forth.com/starting-forth/sf8/sf8.html

And the "Program" example, in your upper left photo, of: <<DUP + SWAP>> looks like pure Forth code also.
http://www.forth.com/starting-forth/sf2/sf2.html

This was (and still is) mine, the "grandfather" of your RPL machine. Still working, with the original batteries:
HP16C, 1982:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp16.htm







Too bad HP didn't have C++ available to them, back then...

Before the 28C, I had an 11C, very similar to the 16.

My 11C resulted "missing in action" after a Caterpillar 963 accidentally ran over it.

Notwithstanding the very low specific pressure on ground delivered by it's tracks, the pour little calculator did not survive (as it had managed to in at least a couple similar accidents before).

R.I.P.

jaclaz

Man, you guys are older than dirt.

You can bet on it!
actually in my day.... we invented dirt!

But, from what you wrote:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?sho...1702&st=122
I guess you arrived just in time to be covered by the fallout of our early experiments with our new discovery and gunpowder (not an actual milestone in the history of science )





jaclaz

I've been using HP calculators from way back, say HP35. My first one was something different, like the HP15. Currently i use the 35S.

I wrote an RPN calculator in BASICA on the tandy 100. It was pretty neat. You could chang base on the fly (it had 20 digits, and allowed 'base by' style notation (eg 73 by 12's would give 73 in 2 columns, by 12s and units) You could set the number for logrithms (eg use logs base 1.61803398875), or set angle (eg 28 degrees = circle, so trig used 28th of a circle.

Interestingly, pi was placed as a read-only register (so you could do 2 RCL* pi, without fiddling the stack.) The whole thing was done in an array, with two extra registers for movements (A, L, X, Y, Z, T, K, memories)

All answers from functions return to A. The value-good flag then decided if A were converted and L<X<A move was done. A look at stacklift would check if Y<Z<T was also done. K was used for many things internally, but when you accessed it via a recall or View x, it gives pi. Normally, functions drew their arguments from P(2), P(3), and placed their result in P(0). In practice, register arithmetic was implemented by specifying the subject and object, the answer is moved to the location of the subject, One of these is usually p(2).

A new function Kon was discussed which would work in the manner of rcl() but use constants. eg RCL*lb gives 0.45359237 etc.

Ahhh,
And now we have Windows 7 at our heels, who doesn't know what "OCTAL" really means:

Viz:

Click to view attachment

Check the lower display:

31 __________ 15 ________ 0 is Hex, not Octal...