HP-16C

[hollyking]

I've wanted an HP-16C for a very long time. I should have used some of my lawn mowing money to buy one when I first discovered them, but I didn't. Then HP quit making them and no one has made a calculator like it again. Sure, all of the features exist on other calculators but they're buried deep in menus. The HP-16C has the hexadecimal numbers, shift, rotate, logical operations and many other functions I use during my day on they keys.

Sure, I can find them on eBay and other auction sites, but I've never had good luck there. But what about building a clone? I can certainly write the software and I feel confident working out most of the electronics. The display, keyboard and case are the biggest hurdles but they aren't insurmountable.

Hmmm... Before I get too deep perhaps I should find someone I can bounce ideas around to make sure I'm not about to jump off the deep end.

Comments

[dianthus.livejournal.com]

I wonder if I still have my old one somewhere. I never did much with it.
ETA: I think mine was an 11C, actually.

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

The 1XC line was very similar. They all used the same case and keyboard with different functions depending on the intended user base. Heck, the 12C (the financial version) is still in production.

[neuro42.livejournal.com]

There are already a suffusion of HP-16 emulators out htem, some of which run on things like PocketPC.

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

I haven't looked, are PocketPC's still easily available? I could write one for my TI-92+ in C even if I wanted to install the compiler. ;)

Part of the intrigue for me is building the whole device.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Have you thought of coding an emulator that runs one some touch-screen device?

[hollyking.livejournal.com]

Yes, as a first step. I still want to build the whole thing because I think it would be awesome to use a calculator I built myself.