#Speedcrunch programer calculator manual#

The manual provides an appendix to transform from IEEE floating point binary to HP16C binary, it’s only 50 keystrokes away! (oh, the irony). This is a small annoyance if you, for whatever reason, are programming in the calculator itself and jump between integer mode and floating point mode. Also, a number that you just typed in integer mode won’t play nicely with float mode, so you have to either transform it, or re-insert (hint, re-inserting is easier). It’s important to notice that the DM16L is replicating what the HP16C did, and this means the floating point format is anything but IEEE_754. But enough to get me by on a daily basis. There’s also a rather basic floating point mode (very barebones, compared to her sisters of course). But this is a calculator based on hardware from 1982, a different time compared to 2015. So, for me, these capabilities are mostly unused, my calculator stays at 32-bit word size most of the time.

#Speedcrunch programer calculator 64 Bit#

Most I’ve ever worked with these days are 2’s complement in 8 to 64 bit micros. 1'S -> sets 1’s complement (button 1, second function 1’s)Īs you can see, it’s quite esoteric.

But should you ever want to simulate performing operations on a computer with a word-size of 6 bytes using 1’s complement this calculator can handle it 😀 What surprised me the most is the approach the calculator takes with word-sizes and complements.

#Speedcrunch programer calculator software#

With other software calculators it’s a matter of a key combination too, for example, pressing F6. Of course, bc accepts any arbitrary base 😀 but you would rarely find anything outside 2,8,10,16 in computing. Here’s a little shaky GIF showing how it changes between bases.įrom the command line I usually went with bc to do so, to change from binary to octal: I have to say, it’s quite useful when working with register flags and such operations like shifting, masking and all the bit manipulations you expect to use in C… although in my current line of work is mostly useless, it’s good to have around when tampering with small Arduino projects. What does that mean? mainly that it provides integer operations, bit operations, and number representation in different bases, all within a user-provided word size. There are different models of HP/Swiss-micros calculators, but the one I have here is what is called a computer programmer's calculator. You can clearly see what I mean, on the official swiss micros page there is a tab about why buy a calculator?.īut if you are reading this, I’m not going to sell you anything, just talk about a nice piece of hardware!. That being said, a calculator has its advantages, although it’s still a tough sell. So, why a calculator of all things? Well, I have to say for me it was an impulse buy, coupled by the fact that swiss micros is a maker effort from one enthusiast guy that loves his calculators and started creating replicas of them, I felt really enticed to support his endeavour. I don’t even know why I write about it, more than it’s been my companion calculator for those 4 years, always in my backpack and I needed an excuse for a post.Ĭalculators may seem a thing from the past, we mostly carry smartphones with us that have their own calculator ( or emulators of what I’m using), and on your laptop there are various alternatives: the stock OS calculator, dc, bc, speedcrunch (one of my fauvorites), or even start an interactive shell with python, perl etc. This is a very niche post about a piece of hardware made out of love and nostalgia for the old HP calculators. But since then, I got used to what’s called the Reverse Polish Notation, and swiss micros provides just that, RPN calculators. Quite similar to my first foray with vim almost 15 years go (oh well, getting old here). I’ve been using the spartan dc in the command line since I discovered it and battled to understand what was going on. Almost half a decade ago (haha, fancy way to say 4 years) I purchased on a whim a beautiful calculator from swiss micros.