"Programmers" Calculator (was Re: ZX81 denigrated!)

[Dr. Ido]

At 09:13 AM 11/28/04 -0500, you wrote:
>At 01:31 AM 11/28/04 +0000, you wrote:
>>In message <m1CYDPc-000JEDC at p850ug1>
>>          ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
>>
>>> In any case, my programmable calculators have real mass storage 
>>> (including 3.5" floppies), 80 column video, decent printers, useful I/O, 
>>> and so on. I use HP41s with IL and most of the peripherals...
>>
>>Heh. I've been toying with the idea of buying one of the TI programmable
>>graphics calculators (probably a TI-84). Anyone got one? Can they be made to
>>do RPN, hex->bin conversion, bitwise operations, etc.?
>>Failing that, anyone care to suggest a nice, (fairly) low-cost programmers'
>>calculator? I know at least one person is going to say "HP 16C", but I
>>haven't seen any around my neck of the woods for a while, and the ones I've
>>seen on Ebay seem to go for insane amounts.
>
>   TI made a "programmers" calculator at one time. LED display IIRC. I
>doubt they still make it but you should be able to find one on E-bay and
>TIs usually go cheap.

They made an LCD version as well, I have one somewhere (not that I'm likely
to find it anytime soon).  From memory it's a variant of the TI-55mk2.

If you want something cheaper still from memory the casio fx-100d has hex,
octal, binary and some logic functions.  There shouldn't be any trouble
finding one.  At least around here they were the standard "high school"
calculator before the graphic calcs came along.