Slashdot Mirror
HP Calculator Department Closing
Beans writes "Today is a sad day for the engineering calculator world. HP calculator department is closing. www.calc.org has the scoop. Leaving employees just announced it on comp.sys.hp48. You can check google groups for the original posts."
no need to press enter afther 'This', and you need just 2 '+'.
cheers
Anyone remember the time when Erwin was stuck in an old HP Calculator?
Michael C. Hollinger
There are some HP48 emulators for UNIX/Linux on http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/pc/emulators/ X48 is available for most UNICES and there are ROM files, too (HP allowed the 48's ROM files to be downloaded sometime in 2000)
You are a decent guy and I hope, whatever calculator you choose, that it serves you well.
There is a lot of history related to HP calculators. HP introduced the scientific calculator to the world with the HP-35. That was 1972 and it came with rechargeable batteries rather than the crappy little 9 volt battery clip. The HP-41 was standard equipment on the space shuttle. They have really revolutionized the industry and it's indeed a sad day to see them close down the shop.
The link mentioned in the topic is trashed. I searched the newsgroup and checked hpcalc.org and they make it sound like ACO is closing, but the calculators will still be made. HP's website still has the calculator section, with no mention of shutting it down. Man... Want to get the full scoop before I break the bad news to my father. He's sworn by HP calcs for 25 years. Can anyone clarify what is actually happening?
There are all sorts of hacks you can do to a TI graphic calc, including the installation of backlights, remote controls, overlocking, memory expansions, and homemade link cables. I don't think we need complain about the lack of hackable calcs, even though HP is gone.
I'm the stranger...posting to
My history with HP...
I've been using my 11c since around 1987 (I actually got a second one in 1989, but it croaked about two years ago). It's been my favorite calculator since I got it. I've owned lots of calculators, including a casio 8700g, a TI-89, and my current HP48-gx. They're all fine, but I use my 11c more than anything else (I can do almost everything faster with it). Without any text entry/dispaly, it can do most everything I require on a daily basis; it can be programmed (203 steps, 4-level subroutine depth) to do more complex tasks, has more storage than I normally need (21 locations). It doesn't look fancy (no LCD matrix), so it could fool any of my math teachers into thinking it was an 'ordinary' calculator (now remember this was '87, and it had already been out for 6 years). It is by far and away the most useful single (i.e. never replaced) piece of electronics that I use on a daily basis. HP you have served me well, and will be missed (from the calculator business). I don't know what I will do when this HP-11 dies. Maybe I should keep a lookout on ebay.
A great resource on older HP calculators can be found at: http://www.hpmuseum.org
Common TI misconception. RPN also eliminates the need for parens.
Try (5 + 3) * (6 + 1).
TI: 5 + 3 = * ( 6 + 1 ) =
HP: 5 E 3 + 6 E 1 + *
Assuming my TI keystrokes are correct (I haven't
used one for 20 years), that's two less keystrokes
for this simple example.
I run hpcalc.org and would like to clarify this article.
HP is not ceasing the production of calculators. Instead, HP has shut down the department that develops new calculators.
This is nothing unusual. In the mid-1990's, HP already effectively shut down calculator development for several years.
The manufacture of calculators is completely separate from the development, and production will continue.
Roms are free for about a year now. check www.hpcalc.org
thanks loads eric!
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Hi. I'm Jean-Yves Avenard, working for HP (not for much longer) The closure of ACO has nothing to do with calculators. In fact, HP stopped the development of new calculators two years ago and started to work on low-end PDA. It's the economic downturn that's forcing HP to restructure itself and there were two divisions working on PDA (APCD in Singapore and the Jornada) I would have other comments, but I've just signed a paper saying that I can't say anything bad about HP, and there's lot to tell :)
Cheers
Jean-Yves
Another problem -- in grade school we used scientific calculators, high school, graphing calculators ...
... I hope its different somewhere else :) I've often wondered -- when there would be an emergency engineering situation where neither calculators nor books are avaliable (a situation that coresponds to testing).
Then you get to college and their so afraid people will cheat (by storing notes in their calculators) -- its no calculators for most classes -- and when they're absoultley necessary -- a shitty scientific is allowed
This is how it is at UCR atleast
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
It is very unfortunate that this story linked directly to www.calc.org. They have been having server troubles for a few weeks now, and getting slashdotted doesn't help. At the moment, www.calc.org is the only (TI) calculator website with a decent archive. www.ticalc.org (by far the largest archive) took it's archives offline because of some 'bad content' which stems from the CD that they made in conjunction with texas instruments.
The ti community could use some help right about now...
Greg www.geocities.com/gdietsche/
and yes... Gravity still works! (and some times that can be problematic)
According to hpcalc.org, it's the *Australian* HP calculator group that's closing. Is that the entirety of HP's calculator development operation?
IIRC, the HP-41 was developed at a facility in Oregon. Did they move the whole group to Australia?
Anyone from HP available to comment, please?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's time that Carly step down. Being a former HP employee I can tell you from first hand experience that she is the reason that HP is on the verge of bankruptcy. While I worked there the stock price was around $35 a share. Friday the stock closed at $16.92. She leads the company, this decision is hers and it's a bad one. Now maybe investors will wake up and smell the coffee and get this great company back to where it belongs. When a company sheds it's core products, that got it to where it is, in favor of flashy mergers and media hype tis a sad day. Having personally net David Packard and Bill Hewlett I can say that both of them are spinning in their graves halfway to China by now.
I still have my HP-41CV. I've had it since HP first released it. This little baby was THE calculator in its time. I went so far as to do assembly language programming on it (required special hardware). My 41 still sits on my desk for whenever I need to do some quick math.
Recently, I needed to buy a calculator for my daughter. The school specified a certain TI model. So I bought her a Hewlett-Packard calculator. I refuse to let the school dictate what companies I will do business with. Besides, TI calculators are junk.
-- Will program for bandwidth
With RPN you will never have to use bracketed notation. The stack can very easily take care of all of that. You simply work across the rows of fractions and functions, nomatter how complex of bracketed it might be to write down. This is the beauty of RPN.
It just happen that it maps across to hardware and a stack much easier than any other system and that's why HP orignally went with RPN.
48GX - IR and a card slots (to add memory, or buy cards with things such as chemistry, etc.)
48G+ - Same as GX, but cheaper but no card slot. Best bet for just about anybody since it's only $83.
Check out this online reseller. It's the cheapest I've found when I briefly looked around. It's where I bought my HPGX 4 years ago for $213. It's amazing how prices have gone down.
There is a comparison page on geekazoid about various Palm calculators, RPN and otherwise.
It should be a good indication of the excellent design and utilty of the HP calculators that it has been so imitated... Of course, some of that has to do with the sturdy hardware- it is quite remarkable what can be done to an HP calc and still have it work perfectly...
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Hey, It's all about the stack...p n.html
  RPN stands for Reverse Polish Notation. The short history:
  In the 1920's Polish mathematician (and philosopher) Jan Lukasiewicz developed "Polish Notation" where the operators preceded the arguments. This was in the interest of simplifying symbolic algebra. Later in the 1960's HP found this to be an efficient method of performing calculations and implemented it, but instead had the operators entered after the arguments - hence REVERSE Polish Notation. This allowed intermediate calculation results to be kept on the stack and evaluated later WITHOUT ROUNDOFF ERROR that resulted from copying down the displayed results and entering them later. So not only was this more efficient, it also became a more accurate methodology! Due to the technological limitations of the time, it also allowed full algebraic calculations to be performed.
  You can read a lil more at the following sites: http://www.calculator.org/rpn.html http://www.hpmuseum.org/rpn.htm http://www-stone.ch.cam.ac.uk/documentation/rrf/r
  Best of luck going back to school. May you never stop learning!
You can breathe easy... HP calculators aren't going away, just their development team. Production of the existing line is apparently going to carry on for some time.
I have to recommend the 32S II. I have that and the 48GX (both RPN calculators.) The 48GX is big, with every bell and whistle you would ever want in a calculator, and is priced to match - over $170 at Fry's. It usually sits on my desk, being too bulky to carry around.
The 32SII is about $50, and is simply a marvel. It's small enough to fit in my pocket, and is programmable! I carry it everywhere. The only quibble I have with it is the four element stack (there are some tricks you can use with short stacks, but I'm not enough of an RPN wizard to employ them.)
If you want to get a HP calculator, by all means get an RPN one. It's a very efficient system, even if it takes some getting used to (GNU Calc is a great HP calculator emulator, you might want to check it out first.)
HP is going to hell in a handbasket. They have sold or spun off all of the divisions that made HP's reputation in the first place.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I still own my HP 41CV with card reader which my father bought me in the states back in 1980+something. I still use it and it only has used up 3 battery packs so far. Nice engineering there.
For anyone interested in the history of HP calcs visit this page: http://www.hpmuseum.org