Hi Chaps,
Has anyone got any early HP red LED calculators, or old HP gear, in the back of those drawers that you want to sell off?
Also any nixie tube gear. Any items working or not.
Just another interest to go along with the old tubes

Thank you
Ray

I've got an HP-16C from 1984, but I'm still fond of it so I won't be letting it go for a while yet.

http://www.hpmuseum.org/3qs/16c3q.jpg.

I wish I kept my HP 41C, I sold it when I thought I finished with it. It was the first in Aust to get "hotted up" , we used to change a couple of components to speed the processing clock up on them. I now have 2 or 3 HP41's. But I should have kept my first, so if your fond of it make sure
You hang on to it
Ray

I still have a Sharp ELSI MATE PC-1201 in service. Not sure of year but perhaps late 70's? It actually has a fluorescent display not LCD.

Amazing what is hiding. Also still have two slide rules from the 60's. No batteries needed.

Marc

My earliest is an NS600 from 1973. It has six LED digits, a fixed decimal point, and no "equals" key; you have to space numbers with a "plus" before pressing the key for the operation you want. For a few weeks it was the wonder of the age and a status symbol at high school. Then suddenly everybody had much better ones with floating decimals and square roots.

I think the NS600 wins as the oldest:

http://www.keesvandersanden.nl/calculators/ns600.php.

Apparently? It took them a while to work out how to work a square root function as it was considered to be an illogical function?

Marc

I just paid the Earth for a HP nixie frequency counter that hasn't arrived yet & can't wait! it's a monster

This thread brings back some memories!
With a long association with HP, I was around when the first calculator arrived, the HP-35. It handled numbers using exponents up to 99 and I recall someone worked out that this easily covered the size of the entire universe measured in angstroms . There was also the difference between HP with Reverse Polish Notation and others including Texas Instruments. Using the formula for resonant frequency, ( I don't know how to express a math formula here!), RPN solved it with fewer key strokes and did not have to store intermediate results in memory.
Happy days!
Harold

Speaking of early calculators, the first one I ever got to use was this Friden model:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/The_Childrens_Museum_of_Indianapolis_-_Friden_model_132_calculator.jpg.

In order to get to use it, you had to make a booking. Plebs such as I got a maximum of 15 minutes per booking, whereas the engineers could use it for up to 30 minutes at a time.

With any new calculator I encountered the first thing I'd execute was a division by zero to see how it was handled.

With any new calculator I encountered the first thing I'd execute was a division by zero to see how it was handled.

I usually do '1+1'. I've always liked the first job being a simple one.

And before anyone asks, yes I have had a calculator get that wrong - a cheap calculator worth about two bob in a show bag about ten years ago. It went in the bin once all the food was eaten.