I was an undergrad when the HP-34C and the rest of the Spice series were released. I had purchased a 29C about a year earlier, which I was very impressed with, and somehow I thought the spice series calcs looked cheaper than previous HP's. I distinctly remember passing over the new functionality because I thought the build quality had gone to pot at HP. (Strange to think of that now, knowing what HP passes for calculators these days!)
Anyway, I recently obtained one of these from a surplus house, dirty and in unknown operational condition. Happily, it cleaned up pretty well and works perfectly with a rebuilt battery. I've been playing around with it, and I think this must be a really under-rated calculator, at least by me. The solver and integrate functions work very well - not as fast as the most modern calculators, but quite acceptable. It has a ton of nice features, including a factorial function which works with non-integer numbers, so it can be used to compute the gamma function. My 41C can't do that!
It's a lot of fun in a small package, and I wonder if there are other fans of this fine little calculator out there. I perceive that it doesn't get a lot of attention, but I am enjoying mine... and by the way, the build quality seems just great!
best regards,
Don