Build Your Own Classic HP Calculator Emulator | Hacker News Reader

Build Your Own Classic HP Calculator Emulator

paxer.net

36 pointserickhill15 comments

SwissMicros makes recreations of the classic HP calculators that are arguably superior to the originals, specially the DM15L and the DM-42:

https://www.swissmicros.com/products

I now know what my birthday present to myself is going to be.

That's amusing that SwissMicros branched off the work of Free42, a free (as in beer) reproduction of the HP-42S calculator.

https://github.com/swissmicros/free42

The author created and continues to support a build of Free42 for iOS, completely free. It's one of the most useful apps on my phone. My real 42S stays safe on a shelf.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/free42/id337692629

Yes, their innovation is in hardware, not software.

I also keep my 1986 HP-15C safe and use a DM15L as my everyday calculator (a new meaning for EDC...). In fact I had a NIB HP-15C LE reissue (two, in fact, but one was stolen) and resold it when I got the DM15L (and a second one for redundancy), it's a much better calculator.

I have Free42 for my iPhone and iPad but I tend to use the [official HP HP-15C emulator app](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hp-15c-calculator/id503720774) instead, or PCalc.

> I wonder why there aren’t any RPN calculators anymore.

In Unix, terminal: dc

In Unix, X11: xcalc -rpn

In Emacs: M-x calc

On Android: https://search.f-droid.org/?q=rpn

Also Free42; no idea about Android, but works perfectly on an iPhone. (Which, funnily enough, almost exactly matches HP42’s physical dimensions.)

Droid48 on the play store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ab.x48&hl=...

As my (still functioning!) HP-48 was my first True Calculator Love, I am happy that this app exists.

I'm still bitter someone stole my 48G. But Droid48 does everything it did (and it's always in my pocket!).

HP48 was my first HP calculator too, but over the years I realized I like 42 more. 48 was great back in the day, but nowadays I don’t need to use it for more complicated stuff - and for simpler things 42 is just more convenient.

On my phone, I prefer Emu48, with a 50g skin. It ends up being almost exactly the same scale as the real calculator, so my muscle memory from the 50g transfers over about as well as possible give that it's on a touchscreen instead of a real keyboard. And the extra screen space over the 48 series sometimes comes in handy.

I love your list -- but that you have to spell them out, indicates they're not really that adopted.

Apple’s builtin calculator in macOS has an RPN mode. One click from a menu and it becomes the default after that, IIRC.

Nice, I'm a sucker for things like this!

Why such low resolution photographs though (can't even properly see what the buttons are like), and why use a framework for the images that doesn't even allow to do "view image" to be able to zoom in to it?

old site is old :)

Really? Making it difficult to view images by original URL is more common on modern sites than old ones :)

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