Sir Clive Sinclair...(and other stuff)

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Sir Clive Sinclair, the inventor and entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing home computers to the masses, has died at the age of 81.

The ZX81 was the beast of a machine that got me into computers.
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Oh no! RIP Mr Sinclair.

My father maintained a Z80 for ages that I used to play some wonderful old games on. Like an extra-hard Pac-Man clone (called "Ghost") that would eat you if it could. And Ladder. I miss that one. Brutally hard.
The end of an era.......

My first calculator was the Sinclair Scientific. It used RPN for input! - but was much better than using a slide-rule or log tables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific
His ZX Spectrum brought affordable computing to the masses, and the first that I ever bought for myself. I learnt programming on it. It brings back very fond memories of a time of discovery.

RIP Sir Clive.
... also inventor of the C5.

He did interesting things with very little.
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My first calculator was the Sinclair Scientific. It used RPN for input! - but was much better than using a slide-rule or log tables.

I remember my old HP 35...I probably still have it lying around somewhere. I should dig it out and see if it still works. A friend of mine had a Sinclair– he used to brag about how it was so much better than my HP. I asked him if he could do fractal hyperencabulation equations on it, and you could almost hear the fuses blowing in his brain.

No, this is not a signal to start an argument about whether Reverse Polish or Algebraic notation is better.

RPN is better, in case anyone was wondering.
With RPN input you have to to the mental conversion first. Kept you sharp! But at the time the SS was cheapish and so sort of affordable. My math teachers pooh-poohed using one and I was banned from using it in internal school exams - only logs and slide-ruler allowed. O' levels and A' levels then didn't allow calculators and you were warned that if you used the allowed slide rule your answer still had to be accurate to the required precision! Physics A' level was the first to allow calculators in 1978 (non programmable).

When we did Reverse Polish as part of A' level Computer Science (expression evaluation) I remember the teacher being amazed that not only I knew about it but was very proficient.
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I was banned from using it in internal school exams - only logs and slide-ruler allowed.

I haven't used a slide rule in ages...doubt I could still compute anything on it. Yesterday, I was digging around for my old HP 35, and I finally found it buried in the attic, along with my old Yashica rangefinder and some camera stuff. It still works after 20 years (!!!), and my son took it to school to show his algebra teacher.

Out of curiosity, I wonder if I could use an Algebraic mode calculator, after using RPN for so long. Have you tried?
its hard. I usually end up trying to do it using the memory button & RPN style.
it keeps one result that you can go forward with, and one in memory, between the 2 I can manage most of what I would be trying to do on one.
the () button is a mystery to me, and the = button is just a pointless extra step, so they drive me nuts when forced to use one.
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Ah yes, the = button. I tried using a Texas Instruments calculator once, and simply could not figure the damn thing out. My co-workers pretty much all use TI's, and they go nuts when I show them my HP 32S II.

"That thing is 50 years old!" (Actually, it's only 41)
"You can't even program it to do anything!" (Yes I can)
"Algebraic notation is so much better!" (No, it's not)
"TI calculators are so much better!" (See previous answer)

There's one guy who uses an HP, but he's kind of a wacko. He has a 40-year-old desktop with a monochrome monitor that he has to "boot up" every time he uses it, it uses floppy disks, has nothing resembling a GUI, and he built it himself back in the 80's. He can barely connect to the internet with it– I don't even know how he accomplishes that. Maybe a modem? Do those still work?

(No, it's not me lol)
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It can connect to the Internet? What service does it use on it? BBS? IRC? I can't imagine it's able to do much else.
Mine is the HP 11C. I have 2 of those, and a 15 that I never liked, and a gx or something 3d graphing one from their last years, will do symbolic math to some extent.

the 11c is around 1980 as well.
the program I wrote is 11c ish, the critical math parts without the programming or unit conversions etc.
My favourite calculator was the TI Programmable 59. It stored programs onto magnetic 'strips' which were fed into a side slot and read/written. I still have it - but unfortunately it doesn't work as the battery's now no good. Ahh... At one point I wrote a 'game' which was published in a new computing magazine (Computing Today) about 1979 as the program used at the time 'novel' use of instructions/memory to reduce the size of the program so that it could fit. I also had the thermal printer that fitted onto the calculator - but that has long gone. You could print data from a program and program listings. Ah the old days.......

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Casio fx-115s V.P.A.M.

I still have several scattered around the house and they still work.
Well my current calculator is a Casio fx-85GT plus
I have a Casio fx-83GT plus...that like to play hide and seek, so I end up using either the Windows calculator or Excel.
I had a magnetic strip one too, but it plugged in, not battery, the old time red display. I don't recall the model. It may still be in a box somewhere... haven't seen it in 20 years or so. I remember the red-screen plug in type also would interfere with am radio, so you could make all kinds of sounds with it as each key seemed to have a distinct tone.
Sir Clive Sinclair...I guess he really knew his onions.
helios wrote:
What service does it use on it? BBS? IRC? I can't imagine it's able to do much else.

I honestly don't know. I should probably ask him, but he's always on his PDA at lunch and we work on separate floors.

Yes, I said PDA. It's an Apple Newton, I think. Very old. I don't know how it still works.

Grey Wolf wrote:
so I end up using either the Windows calculator or Excel.

Shame on you ;) Buy an HP calculator, they don't play tricks.

Of course, I probably shouldn't be saying anything– I can hardly even use Excel.
People underestimate Excel, but other than it's clunky syntax it's actually quite capable. I often use it when I need to process some text where the amount of data is large enough that I don't want to do it by hand but not so large that writing a program specifically for it is worth it.
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