sailorbenjamin

Someone in the vintage toaster thread mentioned their old HP calculator, which got me thinking about my old HP calculator (which I only use on special occasions). I should dig it out and take a picture. It's got the plug in memory and the card reader. It was dad's from back when he was a rocket scientist.
Tough to get batteries for so my daily driver is a TI-30, with the little led numbers. I'll prop it up against a white garage door and take a picture tomorrow when the sun comes out.
Back home in dad's basement there's also a Timex Sinclair (does anyone remember their TVs?) and a Commodore 64 and an Atari 800. All my college essays are done in Atariwriter. Someday I need to figure out how to get those out of there. Who'da thunk industry giant Atari would get beat out by upstarts like Apple and IBM?
Was it in Vancouver that I ran across the Obsolete Computer Museum?

Popeyecahn

I sold an older HP sci calc (forget which model) for $75! A co-worker gave it to me after he found in a bin of shredding!

The Sinclair and the Commodore could possibly be worth some coin if you have disks and manuals.

The Golden Boy 

My Mom took me Christmas shopping for my Dad- somewhere around 1978 or so- I picked out an LCD calculator for him. It was just an +-x/ calculator- and if I remember right- it was over $100.

I think I finally tossed my fancy pants calculator that I got when I got out of the Army and was embarking on my career as a college student. It was huge, but didn't have the stuff I needed and ended up being so crappy at courses that demanded a calculator like that- I hated it, never used it and it sat and somehow broke.

Zoku620

I had the Sinclair when it was new, I think they were $99. Wasn't very good, we took it back and bought the Texas Instruments TI-99 4A. That was cool

To OP: IBM, aka "Big Blue", was anything but an upstart...

Cougrrcj

My old calculator in college (1976) was a National Semiconductor model 4640 that was in RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) like the HPs, but at about half the price. IIRC, it was around $125 or so.

repechage

In 1977 I purchased a Ti-55 calculator for Physics in High School, it had a lot of functions, including trig and one could even enter a formula with parentheses. It was $85 with California sales tax at the time, I remember things like that, money was my own therefore dear.
The HP calcs were nice but I just did not think in rpm notation and were expensive. Mom could have given me a slide rule. I don't even think I could work one of those today.

wahoonc

I have slide rules, a couple of early TI calculators, an TRS-80, and 8088 as well as some newer stuff. The TRS-80 still boots the last time I checked. I also have a Nintendo 64 somewhere.

Aaron

AZORCH

I've got this mounted on a pretty old bike.

I dunno, I'm a little torn. It's really heavy, but it's got an entire megabyte of memory.

sailorbenjamin

Is that Conan O'Brian?

AZORCH

Conan O'Brian Senior.

mainstreetexile 

This is pretty amazing, I would love to see one of these in person. If you have more stuff like this, I'd be interested in seeing more pictures of your collection.

I read a book recently that mentioned Curta mechanical calculators in its plot:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta

T-Mar

I saw a Curta or something very similar on an episode of Pawn Stars.

Gravity Aided

I believe Sinclair also made a recumbent electro-pedal trike sort of thing that was going to replace the car.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EQetm_qWDg Really nice thought

noglider 

If you're sentimental about this stuff, you can download simulators of Ataris, HP calculators, etc. Generally they are flawless and are of course faster than the originals. There are Atari cartridge clones available for download too.

sailorbenjamin

A couple of years ago I saw a replica of an Atari joystick that plugged straight into your TV and had like 40 of the most popular games in it. It was like twenty bucks or something. Skipped the console entirely. I remember saving my allowance for months to get that new cartridge.

spacemanz

I was really slow getting into 'puters myself. I "could" have gotten into them when I was still 17 or 18, when I tried getting in the service after high school (in '79, back in Ohio), but my bad eyes kept me out. I have an older sister who tried getting me into it, later in the 80s, but it just wasn't my thing then, probably a bit of "sour grapes" there. My brother-in-law had an Atari back then (late 70s), when they were still pretty new, and it was kinda cool, but I pretty much missed all that other stuff with consoles. I was traveling around the country for work, when that was happening. Then finally, I got into IBM clones, around the time Windows 95 was out, and got the bug bad. My first was a 486, then Pentium 133, then 233 MMX, then I jumped on the AMD train fairly early. Now I run a i7 920 @ 3.6GHz on stock voltage, with a pair of GTX 470s, to run Folding@Home . Quite a difference, from that first 486, I'd say. Oh, I almost forgot what I was originally going to post. We have a computer recycling outfit here in Seattle, called RE-PC, and they have a museum section, in the Sodo location. There's some pretty bizarre looking stuff in there.

Gravity Aided

It took getting married to a math major to get into personal computers for me, previous to that, I think I was mostly mainframe. Wife brought the new concepts of cable Tv, personal computers, and internut. Slide rules rule !

dck

I used one of those in my college surveying class along with my Versalog.



Still have the HP-35 that I bought in 1973. It still works.

eschlwc

^ dad had one of those. the folks were into the latest late '70s/early '80s gadgets: trs-80, atari, and the first compaq portable with its little green crt and full keyboard that attached to its suitcase sized case. my first was a 386 around '89. had a 486 by '92. i use my phone now mostly.

Chrome Molly

I recently removed a polar "power monitor" from a bike purchased that rivals some of the punch card stuff shown above.

clubman 

dck

Here's my HP-35. These were revolutionary when they were first introduced. I believe it was the first hand-held electronic calculator. It killed the sliderule.

Michael Angelo 

No batteries required

sailorbenjamin

Dad taught me to use a slide rule last time I was home to visit. Fascinating. He's got a circular slide rule made of several concentric disks. I was with him when he found it in this little shop a couple of years ago. He got all excited cause he'd wanted one in college but I guess they were kinda rare or something.

JCNeumann

I have one of these, and an old HP-41. They both still work, and my daughter actually did her 6th grade geometry an algebra with it! HP and TI used to make things to last - how many devices still work with NO maintenance and NO crashes for 30-40 years?

There is an HP-12 in my briefcase, and it gets pulled out a couple times a week for quick and dirty interest rate calculations.