19 Oct
2011
19 Oct
'11
1:31 p.m.
I'm about to get something to replace my old TI85 I had from high school.
Lots of you here rave about the HP's offerings. Indeed, I wanted to get,
but couldn't afford an HP48g when they were new. I don't have much need
for graphing now, but I do need scientific calculation. The HP35s seems
good for that. Or should I just jump in and get the HP50g?
I'd get the 50g.
I assume you want an RPN machine, that's the most common reason for
wantign an HP clacualtor (the other reason -- fnatasitc build quality --
doesn't really apply any more :-().
The original HP handheld models used a 4-level RPN stack. It's a stack of
real numbers only. 4 levels is snough for most calculations, but, perhaps
becuase I don;'t use such machines all that mcuh I find I have to keep
thinking 'do I have enoguh space on the stack' when I am using one.
The 28/48/49/50 series use RPL. Now some claim that RPL is not RPN. IMHO
they are wrong. RPL is actually a very pure RPN language. The stack can
be as big as you like (limited only by memory). and it's a stack of any
objects. Not just real numbers, but also complex numbers, algebraic
expressions, strings, vectors, matricies, even programs.
I use complex numbers a lot (for AC circuit analysis) and find that the
RPL machines make it easy. I used a 15C at the last HPCC meeting and
found it very clumsy by comparison -- and that's about the best
4-level-stack machien for complex number support.
The other issue is I/O . The 48/49 series have RS232 serial ports, albeit
on an odd conenctor. The 50G has a USB interface and a serial port (I
think at 3.3V levels). You can tranfer things to/from a larger computer.
This to me is essential, both to keep backups of my programs and to be
able to distribute them easiy. I would not want a machine with a
significant amout of memory that i could not back up in this way.
SO perhaps I should tell you what I use :
16C : On my electronics bench, because the bit operations are better
than those of any other machine
12C : YEs, it's financial, but it's also common and relatively
inexpensive -- a '4 banger' for simple calculations
48GX and 49G : For jsut about everything... As I said, the complex number
support is very useful to me.
71B : As a controller/tester for HPIL and HPIB stuff. OK, it programs in
BASIC (but I have the Forth/Assember ROM in it) but it's easy to use
tosend/receive strigns to instruments when I'm working on them
41CX : No real use other than it's a nice calculator with interesting
peripherals. It does get usef for running some of the programs that were
written for it, for general programming and for soem of the interesting
hacks you can do on it.
I have many others that get used from time to time when I feel like it.
-tony