New Calculator Newsletter Up on hp.com

[Norman Dziedzic]

http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cache/580500-0-0-225-121.html

[Paul Dale]

There is a mistake in the 34S's PI value in the Calculating PI article (sorry Richard).

PI SIN in radians mode gives: 2.384626433832795 E -16.
Adding these 16 digits to the 16 from PI gives 32 correct digits, not the 28 mentioned. Use SHOW to see them all. In fact the 33rd digit is correct too since it is a zero. To get 28 correct, I suspect a 12 digit value of PI was entered.

The 34S has 450 decimal places of 2 * PI internally for the modulo reduction step for trig operations in radians. For degrees and grads, the modulo reduction is done before conversion to radians.

I don't know of a way to extract these however.

- Pauli

[Ángel Martin]

Link isn't working for me...

[Dominic Richens]

I think the presence of the work "cache" in the URL is the problem. Here is a link that I hope is permanent

http://h20331.www2.hp.com/hpsub/downloads/HP_Calculator_eNL_09_September_2011.pdf

[x34]

HP-12C article by Gene Wright and Richard J. Nelson says (in the notes): "Early HP-12Cs used 3 Lithium or Silver button cells." But in the same article they say that it used Alkaline or Silver. I wonder if Lithium cells were widely available in 1981. I think that it should say Alkaline instead of Lithium in the notes' picture boxes.

[Katie Wasserman]

Then as now, there was/is no such thing as 1.5 volt lithium button cells (equivalent to the 357 silver oxide). It definitely should say "alkaline".

[Gene Wright]

Well I am certainly guilty of typos from time to time but 98% of that article is Richards and he kindly added my name for the programs shown. :-)

Those are not the best 12c games but the author of the best ones was adamant a few years ago that they only appear in Datafile, which (sadly) limits their distribution quite a bit. Oh well.

[Dieter]

The original 12C used three button cells known as LR44, SR44, A76, V76PX, S76, 357, AG13, V13GA, LR1154 and many others. These cells are approx. 11,6 mm (d) x 5,4 mm (h). They are available as alkaline, silver oxide and mercury oxide cells (now banned in most countries of the western world). There are also zink-air cells, but these don't make much sense here. All these button cells have a common nominal voltage of 1,35...1,55 Volts.

On the other hand, lithium button cells usually are LiMnO₂ cells with a nominal voltage of 3 Volts or even slightly more. Therefore they are usually not available in the same size as other batteries with half that voltage. I never heard of a A76-sized 3 V lithium cell.

So it's alkaline and (preferably) silver oxide cells that are used in the 12C.

Dieter