Like arguing which rifle brand

What are they?

Still have a 41C on the desk that I purchased back around 1980. It's capable of holding 2000 lines of programming and I've not yet taken it to capacity. Excellent products.

jnyork -- Those are cell phone, dummy.

Haa..a lot you know. They're radios dummy!

edit: Oops. Didn't notice the picture tubes on top. They're little bitty televisions.

Sheesh, we're dealing with barbarians here - they're tricorders.

Never used an HP myself, used TI82, 84, 86 & 89....now I use Matlab for all that stuff.

Once you use an HP for a while, it is hard to use anything else. RPN does have its quirks. miles

I thought RPN went away when algebraic notation entry became widespread.

Matlab does everything any of them do and does it quicker and easier. All I use a calculator for now is basic adding/subtracting/multiplication/division...I have a TI30 sitting on my desk, just your basic old scientific calculator

I do not believe they are not communicators either: I have tried on several occasions over the years to use mine to get Mr. Scott to beam me up, due to a lack of intelligent, rational life forms here at work. I have never received a response.

I started using RPN back in the 1970's and some of us old farts are set in their ways. I have an 11C on my desk within arms reach, in case somebody needs to know how high his sight needs to be or maybe balance my checkbook. miles

RPN forever!

I still use an HP48gx daily. And I have a spare in my desk. Once you get used to the RPN, it is very difficult to use algebraic.
When my 48s go down for good, I'll have to retire.

I keep a spare in my gunsafe.

Got it from another surveyor when he finally decided the TDS card was keeping him down.

I programmed hoop stress calculations in the TI-85.

Because you never know when someone will want to know if there barrel is going to blow up...

Was cleaning out my truck a few months ago before trading it in and found my TI-85. Put it in there when I bought the truck in May of 2003. Pulled the corroded battery, put a new one in, and it fired right up. Took it to work and have been using the heck out of it, not to its full potential by any means, but it is nice for basic math, trig, etc. Use it a lot when doing drawings and don't want to flip to a different window on computer to do some math.

There is also a 48gx RPN app for android. But the keys just don't feel the same.
I also have a 49, which can be set for either RPN or algebraic.
Again, the keys just don't feel right.

My TI85 went to my son after 15 years of use by me, pretty good investment in the end. I mostly use a simple TI-35 now for things too simple for the computer.

I do have a high end TI graphing unit purchased for the kid's college math. I'm locked into RPN though, and the TI never makes it to the desk.

Git a room why dontcha????

Cool - I have one for sale on CL. I'd appreciate some insight if I have it priced correctly.

http://longisland.craigslist.org/ele/3857819422.html


Thanks.

Rogue

I am still using a Texas Instruments TI-60 from 1989. Never had to so much as replace the battery!

Bet you'll get it. If I needed a new one, there is no telling what I'd pay.

Just an SX.....

I don't use them so I don't know the implications of the different designations. Am I in the ballpark? Is SX short for SUX?

S series has a slower processor and less on board memory than the G series. The SX, however, is expandable.
Most professionals would opt for the GX.
As such, your price seems on the upper end.

Thanks Mc

Lord, Mc.

We've hit both nerd and snob status in the same thread.

Oh, just an SX?

whaaatttttevvvverrrr....

RPN sucks!

I'll play.

University of Missouri-Rolla in 1993 required incoming freshmen to purchase the 48G. So, got one and still using it to this day.

The stack feature is awesome and the RPN makes sure you'll never have anyone else 'borrowing' your calculator.

About 9 years ago had the first one started acting up. Went to Ebay and got another one just like it.

Worst part about being required to buy one for school? [bleep] trig/algebra instructors would give you questions that the HP couldn't graph and have to do by hand. WFT to that.

Oh Hell.... Here ya go.... I used to haveta use this dang thing every day. Still keep it in my desk drawer and play with it every now an then just to see if I can still remember how to use it. Whipped it out the other day and used it to calculate some stuff and absolutely amazed a young engineering student in my office that was working on a project with me.



I've still got the box it came in.

I had a TI SR-50 that I bought in 1974 for around $175. Big money back then. Had to drive all the way from Sheffield, Alabama to Memphis, Tennessee to buy it. Some essobee stole it off my desk back in the 80's.

Yeah, I loved those graphing calculators when they came out. Made my life so much easier for certain design jobs.

+1

I simply can't use anything else.

Have a 15C at home from my college days and a 35s here at work.

i was wondering when someone would whoop out the sliderule.

My old physics prof had an asbestos one, I'm sure.

Otherwise, it would have burst into flames, as fast as he was workin' it.

I can't believe how many folks here know RPN.....

My faith in humanity is restored.

Anyone have an 11C for sale I'd be interested. My LCD is done in mine and can't read half.

Was a required purchase for engineering school back in 88'

I have both HP and TI, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.....

I was down with ya till I read your sig.

EVERYONE, and I mean everyone, needs a 30-06.....

bought me one of these back in the early 80's. boroke the LCD about 6 yrs ago in a fit when i slammed it across my desk. found fixthatcalc.com and got it all fixed up!

Don't know anything about the above, but I did learn how to push an older model of these!

LOL!! Yeah! I had a couple of profs that were that fast with it too. I've got about a half a drawer full of 'em at home. The really nice bamboo ones are sure slicker than that aluminum Pickett, but they don't hold their settings as well and get damaged in the field more easily. I wish I had my grandfather's old Dietzgen slide rule. It was a work of art, along with his complete Dietzgen drafting set. They were from the 30's.

I used to use both of those, I even moved up to an HP33S briefly.

Now I just use this:



I can perform several statistical calculations, unit conversions, and program basic conversions from millibars to PSI/ inches of mercury, etc.

Yep... That'll do 99.9% of everything I have to do nowadays. And something on my 'puter will do the rest.

I have two 15C calculators, one from school and one from work. Always had a PC at work and never needed graphing capability on my calculator. I worked at HP for the last 33 years and could have any of their calculators, I tried several others but stuck with the 15C. Once you learn to run it with two thumbs there is no going back to jabbing with an index finger.

My slide rule was made of bamboo. It was a hand me down from my dad who had used it at Georgia Tech in the late 30's. That thing was smooth. I got pretty fast with it in school, but I never saw it smoking like some talked about.

I was at Georgia Tech when the Professors had the battle between the calculators and slide rules. Calculators won. All of a sudden the Profs were saying that you couldn't pass their course unless you used a calculator that had at least a working stack in it. My HP-21 set me back $135.00 that I didn't have to spare at the time. I still carried the slide rule when taking an exam because I didn't completely trust the batteries in the calculators. I only had to use it once and it was worth its weight in gold when the calculator died on me in a physics final.

Yep was tapping on my Hp 11C at work today from about 1983. RPN rules, embrace the stack!

LEFT!!!

TI89 here, use it every day. Could never get used to the damn RPN...

got the exact same one in my desk at work but i'm not an engineer.

I have/use a HP 15c I found on a job site many years ago.

I also still have my Dad's slide rule I used for HS physics.

Kids now adays use Ti 86; Ti 87?

You can operate these things with two thumbs? The things I learn here . . .

I haven't even graduated to that method on my iPhone (yet). My kids tease me about that. Gotta work on my skillz.

Once you go RPN, you never go back. Through college used a Ti-92, which was huge and very powerful. Once I was hired at my engineering firm, I was challenged to a calculator duel with one of the older engineers here, who was using an older HP. I got obliterated, and soon invested in an HP.

I used a HP48 for a while, but got really tired of out-punching it (having to wait for the calculations in the stack to catch up), so I bought a HP35s. I almost feel naked without it.

I started with the 11C, that darn 15C was outrageously high. The 41 series was a dream machine. Then the 48 came out, I thought God himself must have blessed mankind for some reason. The 3 48GX's I hoard will hopefully get me to the eventual dirt nap stage.

RPN- Reverse Polish Notation, I know it sounds like an enthic slur, but it's the way to go, believe me.

One problem with RPN, once you "learn it" your mind thinks mathematics in that order and you appear to be an idiot when handed a $5 TI POS, or try to use your calculator on your phone.

Mike

typical engineer.smart as a whip,but cant take a focused picture.

I use my TI-85 everyday.........never could get use to the reverse notation input of an HP.

RPN? And speak like Yoda you do. The only advantage I ever saw for RPN was that it was easy to parse on a minimalist processor with very little stack space. Sort of offloading the parser to your brain.

I've still got the pocket calculator that I bought when I entered the apprentice program.

Damn. Tough crowd.

It's the cell phone's fault.

I'm much better with a polaroid

And an original case of carpal tunnel.

I use plain old pencil & paper , as you can see it works just fine ;




Now , what y'all gonna do when your fancy machines get zapped with one of them EMPs ??


Mike

Count our fingers and toes. And get naked if we need to carry any digits.

I don't want to know how your going to square root.

(no relation to Larry Root)

I'm not smart enough to be an engineer so I build stuff instead.
I use these calculators,
Jobber 6

Beats the daylights out of a Smoley Book of Slopes and Bevels.

Matlab is the devil. Give me my Ti 89 please

I have a TI 35 that I bought in 1977. It's still working great with the original battery.

Here's something that you might enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXW0bx_Ooq4

KC

Redneck Professional Engineering Exam

1. Calculate the smallest limb diameter on a persimmon tree that will support a 10 pound possum.

2. Which of the following cars will rust out the quickest when
placed on blocks in your front yard?

A) �66 Ford Fairlane
B)�69 Chevrolet Chevelle
C) �64 Pontiac GTO

3. If your uncle builds a still that operates at a capacity of 20 gallons of shine per hour, how many car radiators are necessary tocondense the product?

4. A pulpwood cutter has a chain saw that operates at 2700 rpm. The density of the pine trees in a plot to be harvested is 470 per acre. The plot is 2.3 acres in size. The average tree diameter is 14 inches. How many Budweiser Tall-Boys will it take to cut the trees?

5. If every old refrigerator in the state vented a charge of R-12 simultaneously, what would be the decrease in the ozone layer?

6. A front porch is constructed of 2x8 pine on 24-inch centers with a field rock foundation. The span is 8 feet and the porch length is 16 feet. The porch floor is 1 inch rough sawn pine. When the porch collapses, how many hound dogs will be killed?

7. A man owns a Arkansas house and 3.7 acres of land in a hollow with an average slope of 15%. The man has 5 children. Can each of the children place a mobile home on the man�s land?

8. A 2-ton pulpwood truck is overloaded and proceeding down a steep grade on a secondary road at 45 mph. The brakes fail. Given the average traffic loading of secondary roads, how many people will swerve to avoid the truck before it crashes at the bottom of the mountain?

For extra credit, how many of the vehicles that swerved will have mufflers and un-cracked windshields?

9. A Coal Mine operates a NFPA Class 1, Division 2 Hazardous Area. The mine employs 120 miners per shift. A gas warning is issued at the beginning of 3rd shift. How many cartons of unfiltered Camels will be smoked during the shift?

10. How many generations will it take before cattle develop two legs shorter than the others because of grazing along a mountainside?

I've been pretty partial to my TI-30 since I had to learn to use it for my FE exam a couple of years ago, used a TI-89 through most of college, through the brunt of most projects or homework was done with MatLab or something similar.

If it's anything more than simple algebra, I always go for the computer when possible.

I can barely use a calculator if it isn't reverse notation.

Geeeeesus Christ,

Nerds actually hunt and shoot? I'm not sure I can post up and participate here any more.........

No pocket protector here.....

I use mine for some complex rafter calculations with curved roofs and such; and its done up numbers on some pretty interesting parabolic curved stairs.

Mine has taken a bit more than HP designed it for buried in sawdust and dropped in the mud of a job site on occasion. LOL

This takes me back a few years. I wore out the keyboards on two TI's and then got a 15C for Christmas - early eighties IIRC. Got me through university, still got it, still works fine, and thanks to RPN no one borrows it.

I used to take full advantage of the programmable routines you could enter in to it.

One of the better calculators ever made.

First past the then-new (and expensive) four function, with seven segment cold cathode gas display yet, was a TI programmable 59, the one with little magnetic strips that get dragged through the side to store and load programs and ROM modules. And the printing cradle. All still work except the printer skips a dot column, been meaning to fix it for years now. But what gets used is a pretty basic TI solar powered scientific, no batteries. Anything else is on Excel, Scilab (a sort of free open source Matlab), or a routine written in a scripting language like Python.

I hated Matlab too...until I learned to use it.

Eveybody knows that you have to send the wife or kids out every once in a while to turn them cows around and make them graze in the other direction to keep the legs the same length. miles

Still using my HP 48GX nearly every day at work.

My old boss had the HP with the RPN.
He liked it because normal people never bothered to borrow it...

dave

That is easy stuff

1. Depends on how many persimmons the possum has et.

2. Cars on blocks will remain in pristine condition for a zillion years , until the instant you try to move them at which time they will disintegrate.

3. Ford or Chevy ?

4. 127 1/2 beers per acre

5. The ozone layer is a myth , don't even try that schit.

6. All of 'em except for one that is clinging to life & you will have to shoot.

7. If you stack them

8. The ones that are driving drunk will swerve & escape harm , if there are any sober drivers (doubtful) they will collide with the log truck & meet instant death.

Extra Credit - The same number that have tires with belts showing.

9. All they got & they will send out for more.

10. Mountain cattle are BORN with 2 short legs dummy.


Mike

nighthawk,

How do you like Scilab?

I don't really use Matlab enough to justify paying their annual "maintenance fee" any more, and I am looking for alternatives (and open source is nice too!).

Perhaps I should apologize for trying to derail the thread, but with a title like inane thread of the day perhaps I should not worry.

John

I once had the honor of managing a sister department in an organization that had arguably the greatest collection of analog and DSP engineers to ever grace a design department. Almost to a man, they were dedicated RPN folks.

I was corrupted - I know what a TI 30, 55, and 99 are/were. I made the switch to Sharp calculators some time in the late 80's and have no complaints.

My favorite was a Sharp 525, any scientific calc I needed to do, and strong on conversions between numbering systems. It is 1/3 again the size of most calculators and I gained a reputation for having "The Big Keys". That calculator went with me everywhere for years. I took a lot of good-natured ribbing over the years that I owned it.

I left that job in late 1994. Fast forward more than a decade and the company I then worked for bought out what was left of the company that I had left in 1994. Part of the package was continued employment for those who had toughed it out.
I can not begin to express the feelings I had when on the first day a group of those old-timers (past direct reports of mine) walked up and presented me with my old calculator. I had left it behind but they had kept it in use in our old lab. Big Keys was back!!!
I have never really figured out if those were tears of joy in seeing old Big Keys once again or if it was because I was touched that those guys remembered me and my attachment to that calculator.

Big Keys is near my elbow as I type - those larger than normal keys are really starting to come in handy.

If an Arkansas couple get married, then move to California and later get divorced, are they still brother and sister?

Reverse the direction and you'd be asking about brother and brother.

When I was in college (MSU 56) they actually didn't have calculators you could buy (not someone on a restricted budget that is). The Dietzen,Pickett 'Log Log Duplex Decitrig' ruled and every good engineering student had one swinging from the belt in their neat leather case. Used a 6" Pickett in my pocket for years. Fast forward some years and I bought my wife a TI BA-11 which was an 'Executive Business Analyst', This was well before the advent of PC's. She was a stock broker and used it daily. I still use it daily. Now everyone has a PC or does everything on their smartphone. Just think what happens when the power goes out and the batteries die. Business actually stops. I suppose that's what's called progress or advancement.

Started with an HP-45 then a HP-33 then a HP-11 then a HP-32S and have the HP-48GX app on my iPad.

I am confused. Why would an Arkansas couple move to California? miles

Gay marriage.

I started school with an HP-67 that had the integral card reader with the little plastic strips I stored code on. My brother gave it to me when he graduated. Seems it ran near $700 new back then. This in 1980. I moved on the the 41CV a couple of years later and still "run it" using the Enter, +, -, / and x keys regularly.

I wouldn't apologize, nor worry.







bump.

Jim,

I still have my HP 15C on my desk at work!

Don't worry about it "running off" cause no one else knows how to use it!

I came late to this and was wondering how many posts it would take until somebody brought up those damned things.

What a nerd!

Yep, took me awhile to succumb to the dark side . . . mainly cause I was too poor in college to afford one. But one I was out and tried one, that was all she wrote - can't hardly use a "normal" one now.

Now that we got to see all the cool( ) calculators, you guys ALL haveta post pics of yer pocket nerdpacks!!

Don't have any. Retired, don't even wear a watch. miles

What is a 48G and manual worth?
I have one I might sell. I might even still have the box.

Ok...I'll play, also will show my age..

I used Ti SR50, but, for our first calculus and physics tests, we had to use a sliderule.

We had to learn how to use a sliderule before we were allowed to use a scientific calc.

But don't knock the sliderule, it put a man on the moon...


Tony

PS...I know use the TechCalc app. on my RAZR Max for a scientific calc

College algebra/trig has become little more than a calculator driving course in a lot of universities.

Yupper....


I actually got pretty good with the sliderule....and always kept it with me in case my sr50 died in the middle of a test.

Tony

Mathman,

If you've ever seen any footage from mission control during the Apollo 13 mission, you'll see the sliderulers flying at warp speed.

When I first started working for IBM in '77, most of the engineers I worked with had just come from Huntsville off of the Apollo pgm.

That is when my engineering training Really Started.....

Tony

That says a lot if you read it right.

Yeah, wait till someone does steal it-like they did mine!! When you try to replace it with another, you find out they are now collectors items and the price is double or triple what you paid originally. Arrrrgggghhhhh, mine was an 11C an I know the idiot that stole it probably couldn't add 2+ 2 on it and that is my only satisfaction.

I have no idea how to use this stuff or what you all are talking about,for some reason it is very interesting .

I wish that I would have let my grandpap teach me how to use a slide rule when I was young. I am just beginning to realize how smart that man was!

I just use a Hickok slide rule. No batteries to fail & any engineering number carried out to the third decimal point is believed. Its worked for me for over 50 years.

HP33s for this surveyor. I have two sitting on my desk for some reason.

Ti89 for me. Started with ti's in high school with the Ti80. Had a ti92 in college until somebody stole it. Friend gave me a hp48gx. I hate RPN, and I tried.

Had to buy other various calculators for pe exams, but use the 89 exclusively at work.

Keeping the 48 just because, I read I can hook it up to our old wild total station as a data collector, haven't figured out how to do it yet

You need an environmental case (various brands), a data collector cable (common item) and the cards for either SMI or TDS to slide in the slots.

I had a 48cx (I think) at work that we used to do sun shots with. It was a pretty powerful tool back in the day. It had a time module that we had to coordinate with the atomic clock in Colorado before each sun shot. miles

Momma always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.

But momma, that's where the fun is....

I use this one at work, checking cuts and fills and such. LOL

Thanks, RWE, you just made me realize what a calculator nerd/whore I am... 15c, 33, 35, 50. I still mourn for my 48GX that my psycho ex-fianc� dropped an Econ textbook on and shattered the screen.

I also have 15c and 48GX emulators on my iPad and iPhone.

Man, I gotta get a life...

Oh, yeah, I have a couple of those nasty TI calcusooners (you're using it to get done sooner, not later) somewhere...

My bad. It was a 41cx. The 48 was at a different time. miles

Was the 48G the one with the red display or the one with no ability to take the cards in the back?

My first 48 was the SX and I'm thinking that was the red display one but took cards. The 48GX was the last model they came out with and it will take the cards in the back and they are still somewhat valuable amongst the Surveying crowd since they where the machinery that ran the TDS series of surveying software with the overlay.

I sold a 48GX with a TDS Survey Pro card and a storage card I can't remember the size, on Ebay for $400 about two months ago.

If you have the non card taking 48, not much.

Mike