For most people, calculators are cheap and simple devices used for little more than addition and the odd multiplication job. However, when you get into scientific and graphical calculators, the feature sets get a lot more interesting. For example, [Ready? Z80] has this excellent explainer on how HP’s older calculators handle infrared communications. The video […]
We are always amused that we can run emulations or virtual copies of yesterday’s computers on our modern computers. In fact, there is so much power at your command now that you can run, say, a DOS emulator on a Windows virtual machine under Linux, even though the resulting DOS prompt would probably still perform […]
Unlike Texas Instruments, whose graphing calculators have famously not made technological improvements in decades despite keeping the same price tag, HP has made a few more modern graphing calculators in the last few years. One of which is the HP Prime which boasts hardware from the mid-2010s including an ARM processor, a color screen, and […]
Scientific calculators are an amazing invention that take pocket calculators from being merely basic arithmetic machines to being pocket computers that can handle everything from statistics to algebra. That said, there are a few layers of scientific calculators, starting with those aimed at students. This is where Casio is very popular, especially because it uses […]
Disposable batteries seem so 1990s. Sure, it’s nice to be able to spend a couple of bucks at the drugstore and get a flashlight or TV remote back in the game, but when the device is a daily driver, rechargeable batteries sure seem to make more financial sense. Unfortunately, what makes sense to the end […]
[Menadue] had a vintage Compucorp 326 calculator with an aging problem. Specifically, the flex cable that connects the button pad had turned corroded over time. However, thanks to the modern PCB industrial complex, replacing the obscure part was relatively straightforward! The basic idea was simple enough: measure the original flex cable, and recreate it with […]
Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and essentially everything had non-electric analogs, and perhaps surprisingly, there were mechanical computers as well. Electronics-based computers are […]
Machine learning and neural nets can be pretty handy, and people continue to push the envelope of what they can do both in high end server farms as well as slower systems. At the extreme end of the spectrum is [ExploratoryStudios]’s Hermes Optimus Neural Net for a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. This neural net is […]
You might wonder why you’d repair a calculator when you can pick up a new one for a buck. [Tech Tangents] though has some old Sony calculators that used Nixie tubes, including one from the 1960s. Two of his recent finds of Sony SOBAX calculators need repair, and we think you’ll agree that restoring these […]
Tearing down hardware from different parts of the world can be revealing, showing unique parts, techniques, and tricks employed by engineers living in a very different world from our own. To that end, [msylvain59] has been kind enough to give us a look inside the Elektronika MK-26—a calculator built in the former Soviet Union. There’s […]