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End of a era
Posted by Hama75 on June 8, 2020 at 7:40 pmWell, after 40 some years, my trusty HP48GX gave up the ghost. Yes, I know I could get it repaired and/or rebuilt somewhere, but I think I??ll just give it a proper burial.
I??ll be using the app to keep the ??memory? ??? alive.john-putnam replied 3 years, 10 months ago 20 Members · 36 Replies- 36 Replies
Didn’t the 48 come out in 1990?
On a related note.
I bought my first (personal) 41C in 79 or 80 (and it seemed like quite an investment at the time). I just turned it on, and it appears to be alive and well, although I haven’t really used it in years.
I currently have;
HP-41C (retired)
HP-41CV (semi retired, has a sometimes sticky [R/S] button)
HP-41CX (three of them, 1 used EVERY day, 1 used occasionally, & 1 new in the box).
Went they go…I go!
BTW, I did have an HP-42S for a while, but gave it away, I never bought a HP-48 of any version, although I’m sure that it was a good machine. I remember when the original HP-35 came out (1972) and we all thought that we had died and gone to heaven. Then the HP-45 came out, and we were SURE! In any case, as much as I loved the Curta (and to some extent the small Monroe L-160 as I recall), the HPs in the early 70s changed my world!
Loyal
What used to be a steel trap of a mind is now a rusted sieve so I would have to go back to the books to remember.
As an engineering student at Oregon State, we were required to purchase a HP41 our first term. Basically every engineering 101 class (be it CE, ME, EE or what ever) had a substantial portion dedicated to programming our little friends. As I recall it was almost $300 at the book store. It probably had something to do with the fact they were all designed and manufactured down the street for campus.
I still have my 41CX along with a card reader and a box full of packs. Apparently when the HP rolled out the 48 they dropped off a semi or two full of various pack in the middle of the Quad outside of the Memorial Union on campus with a sign stating that they were a gift to the students and faculty of OSU. I was gone by then but my former roommate scarfed up a pile of them for me. They are sitting next to my desk waiting for me to sell them on Ebay (not the 41CX).
Also, there is a company (swissmicro) that is making 41s if you are in the market.
- Posted by: @jim-framePosted by: @loyal
HP-41CV (semi retired, has a sometimes sticky [R/S] button)
I wonder how many folks even remember what R/S stands for. (I did a lot of programming for the 41, so it came back to me immediately.)
Jim,
I still use a 41 program that I wrote back in about 1981-82 nearly every day, although PC (OB45) programs that I wrote in the 80s and 90s do most of the heavy lifting these days.
I’m headed down to the saloon in a few minutes to discuss a couple of paragraphs in the 1894 and 1902 GLO Manuals with a young (55ish) PLS, some things simply stay the same decade after decade.
I’m still looking for original 1855 and 1890 Manuals, I have digital copies, but it’s not the same as having the BOOK in your hand.
😉
Class of 2005 here, so this is the “state of the art” beast that we were forced to buy at some point. I left the course with a bit of paper in my hand and never used the HP again.
It was a feisty little bastard. I remember writing an equation for the equation solver that, when used, would crash the device rather than solve the equation. However, when you turned the device on again the answer was waiting for you on the screen. And it was correct!
“I can’t do this right now. I need to have a bit of a snooze first.”
No way Josè, based on the record so far, I’d have to live to 110+ to need a new calculator. That ain’t happening!
😆
@loyal OK, 30 years ???, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_48_series
- Posted by: @loyal
Didn’t the 48 come out in 1990?
I bought my first 48Gx in 1993. They were a new thing then. The 48Sx’s had been around for a few years prior to that. I still have a 48 on my desk but the last time I did any meaningful cogo with it was about 10 years ago. It hasn’t been my daily driver since 1997. Writing the PS test with it in ’98 was pretty much the last hurrah for me using it for cogo (it was legal to do so then). Data Collector, CAD, or StarNet since then.
The HP48GX and SMI are my daily goto data recorder and I have 4 working models with cards and at least one extra calculator to keep me going.
I don’t actually need anything more sophisticated to do boundary surveys.
I have an HP50g with D’Zign Transportation Pac V2 and Allegro CX with Bluetooth loaded with Carlson SurvCE V4.? that get very little use.
EBay has some reliable sources if you really want to replace what you lost.
Besides the 41CX on my desk, I have a 50g that I keep in my bag. I really wish I still had my 48GX but years ago a field crew borrowed it, along with my Astro Card, to do some solar observation. They somehow lost the dam thing. I can not tell you the time I spent retracing the area the last had it. I still miss it although the 50 is a good substitute.
R/S = Radial Stakeout?? 😉
I have both a 41cv and d48gx that still function. My R/S key is a little sticky also on the 41.
For decades I swore that when my 41CX died I would retire. (SWMBO at the time called it my mistress, and nicknamed it Helen Patricia). Well, here it sits looking at me (just used it to calc a fee for a proposal). I have acquired several more in the decades since, and am getting really worried. I’m getting closer to retirement every day (I hope), and here it sits after 40+ years, working perfectly. I’ve used a 48 and have a 35S, but neither begins to compare with the 41’s. I presume that I will be leaving here before any of the 41’s die – just have to be sure the kids send one along when I go, as I don’t think I can live or die without one!
R/S = Run/Stop
I never did like the HP48, I still have my HP-41CX and use it all of the time. Back in the days before PC’s I wrote a lot of programs for the HP-41, and still remember many of the commands, although the memory is starting to fade a bit.
I played around with a HP48 a few times, but didn’t find ANY reason to get one. The HP41CX did (and does) everything I want from a “calculator.”
:d
I had a tape drive, printer, a 300 baud modem, and an HP-IL card in my desktop. I used the HP-41 as an early data collector. We ran a 130 mile second order level line that was bluebooked using the HP-41 as the data collector, and stored the data as binary. The crew uploaded it each day using the modem, and I then converted it in the office and formatted it for submittal to NGS. That was before digital levels. I printed out all of my programs using the printer, but now the old thermal paper is pretty much unreadable.
My boss at the time (1972) tried an HP35 but sent it back. As he stated: “they sure screwed up by not putting an equals key on that thing”. He then bought a Casio desktop FX1 that had sine, cosine and tangent keys – at least we could do away with the book of tables! It seems like we used that book to look up values to like 9 decimal places! RPL wasn’t his thing but I, a youngster at the time, was amazed by it. I bought an HP35 a few months after that. Later an HP25 that was programmable, then on to several HP41 units, of which I’m down to only one new one left. And right now a there’s a 48GX on my office desk and at home, an HP50g I received from John Evers … its loaded with all the survey functionally (except data collection) that he put into a data collector program he was developing 15 years ago.
HP calculators for surveying…those were the days!
Nice try Dave…
It stands for “Roll Safe!”
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