< What's the oldest piece of technology you still use regularly?

~detritus

I wouldn't say I use it regularly, in fact, I would like to use it more! It's an HP-48GX calculator, an old, programmable, hackable RPN scientific calculator. It's just beautiful, and the documentation you can find on it's system and even it's processor and assembly language is quite abundant. I got mine in a pawn shop when I went through this phase of collecting cheap computer devices. It came with a thick manual on it's very many mathematical capabilities, from linear algebra, solving integrals, and even plotting functions.

I've always wanted to use it to do celestial calculations, I found myself a bunch of books (pdfs ofc) full of such celestial calculations, but I haven't put myself to the task of actually doing them on the calculator, or starting to actually program it.

I am worried because recently, for some reason, the display got burned. It's a superficial burn on the outer layer, but I don't know whether that can be polished off or if I'll have to find some kind of replacement, and how.

The thing has a slot for a sort of catridge that can be fin it to add memory (everything happens in it's own kind of not-so-volatile RAM) and load external programs, of which there's a variety online; I've found them on sale on the internet, used, but they are a bit expensive. It also has a serial port with a very specific plug. There are diagrams online mapping the pins so one can connect it to a serial port on a computer, and there is software (in DOS!) to communicate with it as well as assemblers for it's architecture.

It's a gem, and I should not let it sit there unused.

~bartender, another beer, please.

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