Hi everyone!
A few weeks ago, someone had posted an article regarding RPN on the 17BII and 19BII calculators.
The issue was; it didn't have a 4-level stack, it had a variable one.
Try this;
1 ENTER
2
If you rolled through the stack, you'd expect to see
1
0
0
2
Yet in the 17BII you see
1
2
1
2
I was looking through my 17BII manual and I was surprised to see this documented. Here's what it said (pg. 257, Appendix E "RPN: The Stack")
"Variable Stack Size. Clearing the stack by pressing CLEAR DATA reduces the stack to one register (X) with a zero in it. As you enter numbers, the stack builds up again. The roll down and roll up functions roll through as many registers as currently exist (one, two, three or four)."
So there we have it! Although this begs the question; why did they design it that way?
This is just one more reason why there should have been distinct algebraic and RPN versions of the business calculators. I flipped mine into RPN mode the day I purchased it and I have never looked back! :)
B.