TI 58 / 59 Master Library Survival Guide booklet

[Gene Wright]

Good material here. Should have been in the owners manual for these calculators, but required a TI user to write it up.

Master Library Survival Guide

[Namir]

Thanks Gene!! Cool document!

[Peter Murphy (Livermore)]

Beginning a document with a "Forward" is not auspicious. Ending with a "Backward" would take some the sting out of it, however.

[Garth Wilson]

I bought the book (actually a pile of paper stapled at the upper-left corner) when it was in print. It has a little bit on synthetic programming at the end.

[Gene Wright]

Can you scan any pages that are not in my PDF?

Fred Fish was kind enough to allow this to be copied and distributed. Just did not want the TI historical material to disappear!

[Garth Wilson]

Do you know if you are specifically missing any parts? With a quick look, it looks like you have everything I do, except that for some reason unknown to me, ML-24 & 25 come before ML-01 in mine. The little bit of synthetic stuff is at the end in Appendix B, pages B-1 and B-2.

[Martin Pinckney]

Interesting, Gene, but about 25 years too late for me!

[Gene Wright]

Nah, it isn't too late!

Improvements to documentation in the past *should* provide guidance for good documentation today.

The PPC rom manual is an excellent example. The survival guide here was another example of improving upon what the manufacturer provided. :-)

[Jesse Dodd]

Gene

Thanks for the blast from the past. I remember loading the Master Library programs into memory and then laboriously single stepping through the programs and writing the steps on paper for study. Good times.

[Mike Morrow]

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I remember loading the Master Library programs into memory and then laboriously single stepping through the programs and writing the steps on paper for study.

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You could have been helped with the purchased the PC-100A print cradle. That option was one of the great advantages that the TI-59 system had over the competing HP-67. For every one for which it was possible, I printed out all the programs on the several memory modules I owned, taped the strips to paper, then xeroxed the paper to create the file copy.

I bought a TI-59 after having earlier in 1977 purchased my first HP, the HP-67. The TI-59 with the memory modules, greater speed, greater RAM, and PC-100 option was, IMHO, far more advanced in technology than the HP-67, even if its algebraic entry system was much more awkward. Programs written for the HP-67 were usually about 60 percent the number of steps required by the TI-59. My main problem with the TI-59 is that I couldn't find one that was reliable. I went through five of them between 1977 and 1980. I decided thus to use the HP-67 for all my critical programs that I used as an engineering officer on a nuclear submarine. The HP-67 suffered only one failure after three years of use.

[Garth Wilson]

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I bought a TI-59 after having earlier in 1977 purchased my first HP, the HP-67. The TI-59 with the memory modules, greater speed,

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You're kidding-- the 67 was even slower than the TI-59??

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greater RAM, and PC-100 option was, IMHO, far more advanced in technology than the HP-67, even if its algebraic entry system was much more awkward. Programs written for the HP-67 were usually about 60 percent the number of steps required by the TI-59

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but the 59 had more than enough memory to make up for it.

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My main problem with the TI-59 is that I couldn't find one that was reliable. I went through five of them between 1977 and 1980. I decided thus to use the HP-67 for all my critical programs that I used as an engineering officer on a nuclear submarine. The HP-67 suffered only one failure after three years of use.

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Interesting. I had two 59's and a 58c and the only trouble was the minor keyboard problems.

[Martin Pinckney]

I loved my 59. Might still be using it but for the keyboard reliability issues. I did get many years out of it, though. When it did fail, I was already using the PC for most number crunching, so I bought a TI-36 Solar. That failed after only a year or two. All the others in the company were using 11c's at the time, and I really liked the build quality. (Well, there was one guy who also had a 59, but its keyboard went bad, too).

I didn't like RPN, so when I found out about the Pioneer series, I bought a 20s. Still have it, still works fine, 20 years later. That was only the beginning of my HP interest.

[Eddie W. Shore]

I also had troubles with the TI-36 (particularly TI-36X Solar) in their early runs. The solar screen was so weak a pen easily punctured it.

[Eddie W. Shore]

Thanks, Gene. Another reason I wish I was born earlier than 1977 so I could have understood all these classic machines when they were in production. LOL