The 48G was a really good calculator, but only after loading additional software. The HP50g that came much later is better in every respect, except possibly for the smaller "ENTER" key (and people used to 48G will have to change some habits and possibly redefine some keys…).<p>Incidentally, many young people (yes, I know how that sounds) do not know how useful a good engineering calculator can be and do not want to learn how to use one. They are missing out. Yes, there is a steep learning curve, but the rewards are significant if you do any amount of calculation in your hobby or work. No, this is not replaced by typing "python" (or "bc", or anything else, really) at your command prompt.<p>Also incidentally, the development of good engineering calculators pretty much died. HP Prime is largely a school-pleasing toy, HP would down their calculator division a long time ago, and nobody else produces anything good. It's kind of like with gyms: what you get is what the market wants, and since the market doesn't know much, you get gyms full of useless exercise machines, because that's what people think a good gym should have. Similarly with calculators: you get stupid "modern" graphing calculators which are useless for actual work (it takes forever to use them to calculate useful things, and graphing is much better done on a computer), but they look great and sell well.<p>I admire the project, although I would probably have taken a different path (emulation) to get the biggest effect with the smallest possible effort :-)<p>I wish there was a good HP50G emulator for iOS — there used to be one, but it was abandoned (contact me if you want to develop it and would like to get the source code, it was under the GPL and I got it from the author).
I am a fan of the HP Prime<p><a href="https://hpcalcs.com/product/hp-prime-graphing-calculator/" rel="nofollow">https://hpcalcs.com/product/hp-prime-graphing-calculator/</a><p>But I use it in algebraic instead of RPN mode. I’ve got a 49g and a 50-something too.<p>People say it is pricey but I managed to get one discounted that was intended for the Latin American market. So is the thing that software is supposed to run on.
I still have a HP48GX in perfect condition and love it. One of my first programs was to calculate how much „slower“ my time is running when I drive a car or fly in a plane compared to someone standing still on the sidewalk.<p>I still find it much more comfortable having a real calculator… call me old fashioned.
Seems like a really nice effort.<p>Nice they crammed it into the DM42 machines.<p>But for me, the learning curve is steeper than the utility. I have no real need for an actual calculator, I rely on my phone. On there I have iHP48, and I've already gone through much of that learning curve to make it useful (back in the day with an original one).<p>If you already have the DM42, I guess its a mostly compatible upgrade from that, to make stepping into it easier.
The Casio fx-9750GIII though very poorly named is a gem full of functionality from python, to spreadsheet and even a text editor and very low priced for what it does. If HP made a similar product with RPN it would be a game changer.
Could this run on a TI or a NumWorks calculator?<p>RPN: Reverse Polish Notation:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation</a><p>RPL: Reverse Polish LISP: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPL_(programming_language)</a>
The form factor of an HP48 or similar calculator is very attractive. Good tactile buttons in a format slightly laeger than a modern smartphone. I imagine it could work as a very good companion to a smartphone ifbit had modern comoute capacity and memory plus some modern I/O interfaces like USB or Bluetooth.
<a href="https://hp15c.elf.org" rel="nofollow">https://hp15c.elf.org</a> wraps <a href="https://hp15c.com/" rel="nofollow">https://hp15c.com/</a>, calculators make lovely web apps on smart phones, collect them all!
I’ve got an HP50g that I love. I wish I could get my kids a SwissMicros calculator when they go to school but $300 is a little steep for a kid’s calculator.<p>(Heck, considering what TI charges for their crapulators, maybe it’s <i>not</i> such an outrageous price…)
I have it installed on my DM42. Its nice, but I dont like two things:<p>- Where's the apostrophe (equiv. to quote in lisp)? That should be an easily accessible key not buried in a menu.<p>- Why did he swap the log keys?<p>I also wish the HP48's steq interface to plot existed, but whatever.
I think it should be a tribute to Claude-Nicolas Fiechter,
Mika Heiskanen, and Bernard Parisse who came up with Erable. There is Giac/Xcas now that it is its spiritual successor.
Seems great. How does this compare to Free42? <a href="https://thomasokken.com/free42/" rel="nofollow">https://thomasokken.com/free42/</a>
A video explaining the philosophy and technology behind the project.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNOA39HnkcM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNOA39HnkcM</a>
I love SwissMicros. I own a DM42 and DM15L. I strongly reccomend them for everyone young-to-old!<p>Buttons feel crisp and responsive, the postfix input is a dream I can't remember living without; it's also easy to disassemble too!
It's not clear from that page nor the GitHub repo whether they are using decimal floating point underneath? It's one of the nicer things when using a calculator over something like Python.