I recall 3.141592654 if I don't have the PI Key on a calculator I'm using.
You recall better than I. In school, we learned 3.14 and I have never got beyond remembering those three digits! ;)
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * It's the Bucket woman! She'll sing at me!!!
I enjoy Mathematics, I just had to buy a Scientific Calculator when a store price was $30.00 USD .
The first calculator cost me $79.00, it was a Four Banger with a Konstant Key and NO Memory.
The one I got for 30 Bucks came with a Book.
IIRC the book was called Math on Keys. Written by Texas Instruments for their TI-30 calculator.
The first calculator cost me $79.00, it was a Four Banger with a Constant Key and NO Memory.
I wonder now how their computing power compares to that of a cell phone or a PC.
Mike Powell wrote to ED VANCE <=-
When I was younger I remember some folks having those fancy TI calculators, and I also remember the "manual" was a pretty large one...
in my memory, it was at least as thick as the calculator. ;)
Mortar M. wrote to Ed Vance <=-
The first calculator cost me $79.00, it was a Four Banger with a Constant Key and NO Memory.
What's a "four banger"?
My first was a Sharp EL-5100. I forget the price, but I think it was around the same as yours. Loved that thing. It had the unique feature
of being able to (mostly) type out algebraic expressions like you would
on paper.
I wonder now how their computing power compares to that of a cell phone or PC.
Seriously? Be like comparing a two-year old with Einstein.
When I was younger I remember some folks having those fancy TI calculators, and I also remember the "manual" was a pretty large one... in my memory, it was at least as thick as the calculator. ;)
They could do some pretty neat things with them. Later, I remember they
got a little more high tech and could even display graphs. This would have been back in the 1980s. I wonder now how their computing power compares to that of a cell phone or a PC.
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind!
When I was younger I remember some folks having those fancy TI calculators, and I also remember the "manual" was a pretty large one... in my memory, it was at least as thick as the calculator. ;)
They could do some pretty neat things with them. Later, I remember they
got a little more high tech and could even display graphs. This would have been back in the 1980s. I wonder now how their computing power compares to that of a cell phone or a PC.
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * What is mind? No matter! What is matter? Never mind!
One of those teachers who make an impression on you was a calculus
teacher I had in college. He had an interesting approach to come at
problems from a different perspective to help you understand them.
In the movie "Ender's Game", when Ender says "The Enemy's Gate is
Always Down" and the perspective changes, I thought of his class.
We were encouraged to buy programmable calculators - the stepwise kind
where you could automate steps into the calculator as a procedure, then
enter a series of X and Y values and it would step through them - a
precursor to graphing calculators, as you'd have to plot them
yourselves.
The rich kids in the class brought HP 41C calculators. Oh, how I wanted
one of those! I had to settle for a cheap Casio programmable with 30 or
so program steps, total.
My professor's opinion was that computers would soon do all of the
grunt work that mathmeticians did by hand now. With computers, you'd be
freed to do the creative work and let the computers grind out the
results.
It struck a chord with me.
A year before, I flunked a senior year high school math class and
was required to take another course. The only one available mid-year
was Computer Problem Solving, which inspired me to work with computers.
If I hadn't flunked that class, I would have completely missed the
experience of the teacher who reinforced the value of computers as
tools of computation and might not have been as inspired.
Despite years of experience, I still enjoy doing computations and
turning the calculator upside down to spell 80081E5. I suppose your
inner child never *really* grows up.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
Artithmetic only? Add, Subtract, Multiply, divide?
I ordered a calculator after collecting box tops from some breakfast
cereal in the late '70s. Then, slim wallet calculators became the rage
- right about the time, albeit brief, that nylon/velcro wallets were
"cool".
It wasn't many years later before the first calculator watches came
out, my parents had a friend who worked at Hewlett Packard and had one
of their calculator watches - the LED model with a stylus.
My black rubber Casio calculator watch had to wait until much later.
I still have a drawer full of calculators - a couple of HP business
models including a vintage HP 12c, a couple of HP scientifics, another
of the CASIO Programmable calculator I used in the early '80s (bought
off eBay last year and still on the original battery!) and a couple of
scientific calculators. I keep a solar Casio scientific at my desk,
mostly because I hate having to look for a calculator app on my
desktop, and clicking buttons with a mouse feels *wrong*.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
Ed Vance wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-
The first calc. shown to me was a HP-30 ( 35?) given to an employee of
a electronics company.
He showed me what all it could do and My Jaw Dropped.
Despite years of experience, I still enjoy doing computations and
turning the calculator upside down to spell 80081E5. I suppose your
inner child never *really* grows up.
I have only used regular 4 bangers or scientific calcs.
There is a program on my desktop called TI81.EXE
I play with some to see what a Graphic Calc. can do but haven't ran it in years.
Can't recall where I found it (probably on TI website)
OR on CCO????
My parents gave all the neices and nephews a CASIO calculator one christmas. A neice showed me hers AND IT HAD A SQUARE ROOT KEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My 79 buck 4 banger didn't do square roots so I went to the mall and bought on
of those.
Can't remember the Modle Number, couldn't find it in this room, it is probably
downstairs.
The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D
...I hate having to look for a calculator app on my desktop, and clicking
buttons with a mouse feels *wrong*.
I once asked a maths teacher when his skills had ever come in handy "in real life". He told me that he once had to work out how much corrugated roofing would be needed to cover an outside storage area and so, rather than just measuring the floor and adding a bit, he did some proper triangle geometry.
"Did it work?"
"It came out the same as if I'd just measured the floor and added a bit"
LOL, so it came out better for him that it probably would have for me, especially if I had tried "proper geometry!" :D
Mike Powell wrote to ED VANCE <=-
I have only had 4 bangers, too. Well, I take that back. On my desk
right now is a Casio fx-82B that I have had for years. It will also do some geometric functions, but I don't think I have ever used it for anything but addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I
have long since forgotten what most of "those other buttons" are for.
Mike Powell wrote to ED VANCE <=-
The fx-82B I mentioned in a previous post has one of those, and it apparently doubles as a squaring key. I probably have used that square root key some, but not in a long time.
The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D
Bob Worm wrote to Mike Powell <=-
I once asked a maths teacher when his skills had ever come in handy "in real life". He told me that he once had to work out how much corrugated roofing would be needed to cover an outside storage area and so, rather than just measuring the floor and adding a bit, he did some proper triangle geometry.
You just gave me a flashback to when I put some fencing up in our garden. I smugly added in one more post than panels because I'd been taught in school that people often mistakenly think you need the same number of posts as panels then end up a post short.
The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D
When it came to putting the fence up I still found myself one post short because, like a dingbat, I failed to factor in that the fence has a gap in it to access some steps. So instead of n+1 posts I really needed n+2...Di
When I called up the fencing supplier to order another post mount she said
you forget to add one?'... 'No, but... yes'.
Most of what I use the calculator on my desk for it converting decimal
to hex and vice versa. Fidonet technology, when passing files back and
forth, uses the hex representation of the decimal network and node
number for file names, and figuring out which file goes to who can be
tricky.
Although, Synchronet's echocfg utility, where you define nodes, now
displays the net/node number in hex. Handy!
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, on the peninsula, near the
garage where Hewlett-Packard was founded. The local Macy's department
store, less than a mile from that garage, had a display with an
assortment of Hewlett-Packard calculators. Very odd, I never saw any
other Macy's selling them. Must have been an early customer.
Did you notice when Carly Fiorina was CEO of Hewlett-Packard and they
acquired Compaq, the Hewlett and Packard families were against the
deal? After that, everything was branded HP. Petty revenge?
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
I have only had 4 bangers, too. Well, I take that back. On my desk right now is a Casio fx-82B that I have had for years. It will also do some geometric functions, but I don't think I have ever used it for anything but addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I have long since forgotten what most of "those other buttons" are for. ;)
That is possible. ;)
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * Sir! Jem'ha'dar warship approachin-- ^{+Kx NO CARRIER
The fx-82B I mentioned in a previous post has one of those, and it
apparently doubles as a squaring key. I probably have used that square
root key some, but not in a long time.
The other keys... log, sin, cos, and tan... I know what those mean but have no idea why I'd ever need them. :D
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * Forget 0 to 60. It's 95 to 55 that counts!
Most of what I use the calculator on my desk for it converting decimal
to hex and vice versa. Fidonet technology, when passing files back and
forth, uses the hex representation of the decimal network and node
number for file names, and figuring out which file goes to who can be
tricky.
Although, Synchronet's echocfg utility, where you define nodes, now
displays the net/node number in hex. Handy!
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
I have only had 4 bangers, too. Well, I take that back. On my desk right now is a Casio fx-82B that I have had for years. It will also do some geometric functions, but I don't think I have ever used it for anything but addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I have long since forgotten what most of "those other buttons" are for. ;)
Is the Casio book still around to show how to use those features?
Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-
That has always frustrated me because we dealt with hex at work all the time, and the hex values I see on an FTN do *not* equal what we used at work. Granted, ours were *usually* EBCDIC but even the ASCII values
are not "right."
Ed Vance wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-
The first HP product I saw was ib the Radio Room on the USS Midway.
A HP Oscilloscope, it had lots of "Bells&Whistles" built into it.
That has always frustrated me because we dealt with hex at work all the time, and the hex values I see on an FTN do *not* equal what we used at work. Granted, ours were *usually* EBCDIC but even the ASCII values
are not "right."
"I know what binary is. Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal
times tables when I was 14 writing machine code, okay? Ask me what 9
times F is. It's fleventy-five. I don't need you telling me what binary
is"
Erlich Bachman, from "Silicon Valley"
I suspect it could be somewhere, but I would likely never find it on
purpose. ;)
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * He's dead Jim. Grab his tricorder. I'll get his wallet.
"I know what binary is. Jesus Christ! I memorized the hexadecimal
times tables when I was 14 writing machine code, okay? Ask me what 9
times F is. It's fleventy-five. I don't need you telling me what binary
is"
Erlich Bachman, from "Silicon Valley"
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
I wonder if it's still there... I went to the Midway museum back in the
2010s, very impressive. We got to go up into the island on a tour.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org | tomorrow's retro tech (1:218/700)
Rereading your post made me recall that I could not find the SuperSnapshot 5 Cartridge for the Commodore 64 PC fora few years then one day I opened the lid
of the cabinet to the right side of the C=64 looking for something else andsaw
the cartridge laying on a shelf (left side) just 6 inches awayfrom the right side of the C=64 (the Cartridge Slot is at the back of the rightside).
Only a few inches away from where it needs to be plugged in (DUH!).
OOPS, GOOFED AGAIN tapping the wrong icon.
Ed,
30 lashes with a wet ethernet cable (just kidding) <G>.
Daryl
... Water is essential to life -- without it, you can't make coffee.
=== MultiMail/Win v0.52
--- SBBSecho 3.29-Win32
* Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS -- Little Rock, Arkansas (1:19/33)
So I guess it got dropped and landed there at some point? ;) I hate it
when that happens.
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
So I guess it got dropped and landed there at some point? ;) I hate it
when that happens.
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
So I guess it got dropped and landed there at some point? ;) I hate it
when that happens.
Mike
* SLMR 2.1a * Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
So I guess it got dropped and landed there at some point? ;) I hate it when that happens.
I put the cartridge in the cabinet and forgot about doing that when I wanted t
turn the C=64 system on.
No worries. I wonder how quickly the web interface refreshes after a new post. That could be dependent on whether or not the browser being used
tries to load a new copy or a chached one, too.
mike
* SLMR 2.1a * So many books; So little time.
No worries. I wonder how quickly the web interface refreshes after a new post. That could be dependent on whether or not the browser being used
tries to load a new copy or a chached one, too.
mike
* SLMR 2.1a * So many books; So little time.
No worries. I wonder how quickly the web interface refreshes after a new post. That could be dependent on whether or not the browser being used tries to load a new copy or a chached one, too.
mike
Life was much easier on the desktop using MultiMail , FTP and QWK.
30 lashes with a wet ethernet cable (just kidding) <G>.
You got a long arm if you get to hit me with the CAT-5 CABLE.
Ed,
For you, I'd use the Wouff Hong (hi hi).
I took part in that as a new participant at the ARRL 2007 Great
Lakes Division in Cleveland, Ohio. The main requirements are that
one is a licensed amateur radio operator, and a paid up ARRL Member
(regular or life). There's nothing dirty or vulgar...one does a lot
of laughing, and participants get a very nice certificate afterwards.
At the ARRL 2014 Delta Division Convention in Bentonville, Arkansas,
I played 2 of the cast members. With my theatre arts knowledge from
high school and college 50 years ago, the characterizations got me an ovation. Before the ceremony, I told the "new participants" that "This
will be one of your most cherished experiences in amateur radio. Trust me"...to which, one of them smarted off with "Thank you, Barack Obama".
It brought the house down in laughter (hi hi).
If I can make the 2026 Delta Division Convention in Shreveport, I'll
take part in it again...but I may volunteer to be the "Novice", so I
can get a fresh certificate with my original callsign, now as a vanity.
I'm also trying to save up for the 2026 HandiHams Radio Camp in Bloomington, Minnesota. If I can get a scholarship (which will lower
my cost for it), I'm going to go. I discovered it'd be far cheaper
flying Southwest Airlines from Little Rock to Minneapolis, than taking Amtrak...as I'd have to spend the night in Chicago.
I plan to contact Lucinda Moody, AB8WF, mid to late next week, for
more info.
73,
Daryl, N5VLZ
... I CQ. Therefore, I HAM -- DE N5VLZ
=== MultiMail/Win v0.52
--- SBBSecho 3.29-Win32
* Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS -- Little Rock, Arkansas (1:19/33)
Daryl, I am a member, I attended the midnight meeting in
California in the early 1960's.
My membership might have expired since I am no longer a ARRL
member . Once a LID always a LID.
The RCC Certificate I earned as a Novice in 1958 may not be
valid now either? 73 de Ed W9ODR k
Your writing about Congress being paid a lot had me think of
our President. If the thought came to his mind he would
probably adjust their payment scale. Ed
Ed,
Those who complain that they can't survive on over $300,000 a
year, don't have a clue.
They should also be paid ONLY when they are in session, and NOT
when they are on recess, or if the government is shut down...which
appears likely next week.
He's donating his salary to a designated charity...but they
would not be caught dead doing likewise.
Daryl
... H.A.M. - Have Another Meal, Haven't Any Money, Haven't Any Memory
=== MultiMail/Win v0.52
--- SBBSecho 3.29-Win32
* Origin: The Thunderbolt BBS - Little Rock, Arkansas (1:19/33)
| Sysop: | Coz |
|---|---|
| Location: | Anoka, MN |
| Users: | 2 |
| Nodes: | 4 (0 / 4) |
| Uptime: | 65:00:43 |
| Calls: | 359 |
| Files: | 6,267 |
| Messages: | 235,524 |