On 13/07/2023 19:11, John Z wrote:
This (and slide rules) was how we did engineering math back in the days before the HP and TI scientific calculators.
I still have my TI59 programmable calculator from 1979. This was the poor man's HP65. It didn't have as good a keyboard but was half the price. It had both ROM modules you could install as well magnetic cards for saving programs and data. It came with a standard library in ROM and offered Statistics, Real Estate, Surveying, Navigation, Aviation, Leisure, Securities Analysis, Business Decisions, Math Utilities, Electrical Engineering, Agriculture and an RPN Simulator.
Started writing my 1st software on it which led to a 40 year career in Electronics and deeply embedded software. Much more fun solving astronomy algorithms than doing school homework!
Mine still works apart from the card reader. Cleaning didn't help. Probably the capstan roller is dented from lack of use and possibly the rubber has hardened or gone all gooey. No surprise as it's 44 years old now.
Andy
