Hidden modes (was: re: messages...)
Jurjen NE Bos
Remember the Casio FX-81? The one that did NOT have statistical features,
and a manual entry: "If the display shows ERROR, press <something> to reset
the calculator." This was the statistical mode, but they just changed the
annuciator! A real error just gave an "E" in the display!
A friend of mine used it for years, with some stickers on it with the
"extra" functions.
--
| | "Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what |
| Jurjen N.E. Bos | it might appear to others that what you were or might |
| | have been was not otherwise than what you had been |
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Ian Farquhar
>Remember the Casio FX-81? The one that did NOT have statistical features,
>and a manual entry: "If the display shows ERROR, press <something> to reset
>the calculator." This was the statistical mode, but they just changed the
We've just bought this "wonderful" whiteboard, which is capable
of scanning what you have drawn on the surface and producing a hard
copy. Well, on the instructions near the print button it has something
like this written:
"If the printout starts to show superfluous dots or lines, turn the
power off then on again."
Sounds like a bug that nobody has got around to fixing, methinks!
--
Ian Farquhar Phone : 61 2 805-9403
Office of Computing Services Fax : 61 2 805-7433
Macquarie University NSW 2109 Also : 61 2 805-7205
Australia EMail : ifar...@suna.mqcc.mq.oz.au
Rik Harris
>Remember the Casio FX-81? The one that did NOT have statistical features,
>and a manual entry: "If the display shows ERROR, press <something> to reset
>the calculator." This was the statistical mode, but they just changed the
>annuciator! A real error just gave an "E" in the display!
>A friend of mine used it for years, with some stickers on it with the
>"extra" functions.
one of the other casio's had a big brother that was programmable. (had
a P appended to the model number). All you had to do with your non-
programmable version, was to drill a few holes in the case where the extra
buttons were on the 'p' model, and you could access the full features of
the programmable model!
--
Rik Harris - edp...@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au | Build a system that
Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, | even a fool can use,
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, Australia | and only a fool will
(say that with your mouth full!) | want to use it.
Louis Howell
sometimes get the effect of certain keys by pushing two other keys
simultaneously. I don't remember most of the actual combinations,
but pressing 8 and 5 together to get a square root seems to ring a
bell. I think there was also a pattern that went something like
"any key in the right column" and "any other key in the same row as
that one" to yield "the key at the top of the column the second key
is in". This would get you the OFF key (second from right in top row)
but not the ON key (top right corner).
Other TI calculators around that time would do similar tricks, but
I don't remember any combinations that would yield functions that
didn't already have keys associated with them.
My first calculator, a Casio four-function deal, didn't have scientific
notation but did have an overflow display. If the result of a
calculation was more than 6 digits, it would display the first 6
in the display, then by holding down a "shift key" you could see the
next 6. Numbers with more than 6 digits left of the decimal could
not be used as input for further calculations, so there was no way
to overflow the combined 12-digit display. (Once you got a number
more than 6 digits long the only key that had any effect was the clear
key.) There was no special indicator or message for an error, and
indeed the only operation that was not well defined was dividing by
zero. Crazy thing was, if you divided a number by zero the calculator
went into the locked-up overflow mode, and if you held down the shift
key you could see the thing counting like crazy down in the least
significant digits of the display, just like a stopwatch. The count
would start at the number you divided by zero, without the decimal point.
--
Louis Howell
"A few sums!" retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. "A major
navigational change, like the one needed to break us away from the comet
and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred thousand separate
calculations. Even the computer needs several minutes for the job."
Don Stokes
> Remember the Casio FX-81? The one that did NOT have statistical features,
> and a manual entry: "If the display shows ERROR, press <something> to reset
> the calculator." This was the statistical mode, but they just changed the
> annuciator! A real error just gave an "E" in the display!
> A friend of mine used it for years, with some stickers on it with the
> "extra" functions.
I had (in fact still have, somewhere under the rubble) the next model up,
the FX-82, which did have the statistical functions.
On the bottom of the calculator's case is a sticker identifying the
model etc. If you remove the sticker (no mean feat) or scratched the
sticker to reveal the contours of the case underneath, you find, moulded
into the case...
Casio fx-81
Same went for the sticker along the top of the case. he plastic was
also a different colour.
Don Stokes, ZL2TNM / / Home: d...@zl2tnm.gp.govt.nz
Systems Programmer /GP/ Government Printing Office Work: d...@gp.govt.nz
__________________/ /__Wellington, New Zealand_____or:_PSI%(5301)47000028::DON
Jan-Mark
d...@zl2tnm.gp.govt.nz (Don Stokes) writes:
> jur...@cwi.nl (Jurjen NE Bos) writes:
>
> > Remember the Casio FX-81? The one that did NOT have statistical features,
> > and a manual entry: "If the display shows ERROR, press <something> to reset
> > the calculator." This was the statistical mode, but they just changed the
> > annuciator! A real error just gave an "E" in the display!
> > A friend of mine used it for years, with some stickers on it with the
> > "extra" functions.
>
> I had (in fact still have, somewhere under the rubble) the next model up,
> the FX-82, which did have the statistical functions.
The FX-81 was in fact a FX-80. The FX-80 had statistical
features with a (little) bug. Casio changed the SD on the
display to ERROR and the 80 to 81. But the bug was still
there. The FX-82 is the corrected FX-80.
I do have a operational FX-80 on my desk and I remember flipping
the (Polaroid) top layer of the display. This way my FX-80 was
the only one with a black display and white digits. This trick
also worked with the FX-100. The FX-100 is infect a FX-82, but
with 10 digits vs. 8 on the display. The FX-82 also has 10
digits, but one can only *see* 8.
I liked the white on black display, because every one in our
school (about 1800) had a FX-80, due to the sales due to the
bug in the statistical mode ;-).
It was in those times we invented the upside down reading of
numbers (like 50153018 = bloeslos). A nice feature of the
FX-80 was the conversion from hour fractions to hour, minute,
second. This enabled me to make 501.8 = b.los (meaning blush)
and when turned into hour,minute,second read 501~48~0 =
"o.bh.los" (meaning Ouch Bra Lose). Well some of the girls
didn't like it......... But the rest of this story should be in
alt.sex.almost.
--
(:> jms
(_)
========""======
Craig Scott Lennox
My first calculator, a Casio four-function deal, didn't have scientific
notation but did have an overflow display. If the result of a
calculation was more than 6 digits, it would display the first 6
in the display, then by holding down a "shift key" you could see the
next 6....
I had one of those calculators too! The one with the silly little
zero that was half as high as the other numbers. And it represented
negative numbers as, (for example) 34- instead of -34. And if you got
a 12-digit negative number (e.g. 999999 x -999999), it wouldn't show
the last digit at all, because that's where the minus sign would be.
If you kept turning the power off and one repeatedly, you could
eventually get it into another stopwatch mode which counted forward
instead of backward.
--
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|"Oh boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a REALLY BIG ram disk!" |
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| License and thus do not belong to Stratus Computer. |
Roeber, Frederick
>...
> The FX-81 was in fact a FX-80. The FX-80 had statistical
> features with a (little) bug. Casio changed the SD on the
> display to ERROR and the 80 to 81. But the bug was still
> there. The FX-82 is the corrected FX-80.
A bug?? Oh, no -- what is it? I've been using the statistical features
I stumbled onto on my FX-81 for years (incl. all my college physics labs).
Hmm. Maybe in the future I'll believe it when a computer says `error'.
BTW, this same FX-81 had rectangular <--> polar coords. hidden in, too.
I didn't use them much as such, but the quadratic addition came in *real*
handy when calculating propagation of errors.
-- Frederick Roeber.
| e-mail: roe...@caltech.edu | r-mail: CERN/SL, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland |
| telephone: +41 22 767 5373 | numbered Swiss bank account: C7-112.082 |
| "Believe in me, I'm with the High Command." |