Erm... someone asked me about BCI-6 refilling

[Artur5]

I bet that most of these would still be in working condition today if their printheads hadn't failed.

 

[The Hat]

today if their printheads hadn't failed.

I’ve still got one.. But I gave my spare print head to @Redbrickman for his 9000.. Feck.. !

 

[websnail]

ZX Spectrum 48K... *wistful faraway look... promptly erased*

Good grief but typing out the bug ridden code from computer magazines was such a bind and then the ruddy tape stretched and you lost ALL that work... but only after an hour of 10-15 minute attempts to get it to record only to get an error...

... and my son complained about a "slow" 5 second load up time for a game!! Young people today... I tell ye'

 

[Artur5]

HP41c anybody ?
I still keep that box, ( just for the priceless archaeological value ).

 

[PeterBJ]

I remember these calculators were different from other calculators. They used a special system named "Reverse Polish Notation".

To do a simple addition on an ordinary calculator you would enter "2 + 2 =" to get the result but IIRC on the HP you would have to enter "2 enter 2 +"

 

[Artur5]

Jan Lukasiewicz created the original Polish notation in 1920.. Other scientists recreated it into the Reverse Polish notation a few decades later. I don't know why Hewlett Packard used the RPN in their calculators, but indeed you had to change your "chip" if you came from a conventional notation ,as used by TI, Casio and others.

That HP41c wasn’t my first programmable calculator. Before I had a HP25. Fifty years ago already !. Suddenly I feel quite depressed.

See below a ”program” for the HP25. You had a maximum of 49 steps or lines for the whole program. With this huge amount of memory, the programs were entered tipping them in the keyboard. No need for nasty devices such as tape recorders or, God forbid, floppy disks ..

 

[PeterBJ]

Wasn't there a programmable HP calculator that stored programs on small magnetic strips?

 

[Artur5]

Yes, the HP41c, HP67, HP97and maybe others, There was also an optical reader. You could enter programs or functions reading from printed strips of bar codes. I had one for my HP41c, but didn't use it much. As I hadn't the dedicated (and very expensive) HP printer ,I couldn't print my own programs so I had to purchase ready made codes. Not very useful or practical.