RF Generation Message Board

Found a chap in Germany who is a major collector. He's got some of the guides, think they were published in the USA, but I have not been able to get one myself - anyway, 20 Euros and it was mine. :)

Guides on calculators.... what will they think of next? Guides for obsolete videocards? guides for empty batteries?

Would you pass up an Altair, if you could buy one?

Sinclair Spectrums kinda kickstarted the home computer scene in England.

sinclair, commodore, Texas Instruments, they all made Calculators, before they made games. It's like the pre-dawn of the home computer.

do you have any pictures of your calculator collection? I'd be interested to see what you have.

I don't really have any calculators. I do have an old Unisonic that has a blackjack game in it. and a few games that are really just glorified calculators like the Little Proffessor and Math Marvel.

the bottom picture on the wood background is actually mine.
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Misc/UnisonicJtG.htm

I've got one of these, non-functioning.
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/TI/Dataman.htm

and this:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/TI/MathMarvel.htm

and this too:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/TI/LittleProfessor.htm

All of  those are great! And, it's the common ground, cross-over point.

The very early programmable scientific Texas Instruments, people used to write "games" for them, even though they were never designed to.

NOt a great pic of some of my calculatrors;
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/thx1138/augustgamesroom/DSCF0005.JPG

Top left, behind the Casio keyboard (which I'm gonna get rid of) is a
Sinclair Oxford (blues keys) worth  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£30
Sinclair Cambridge programmable (white) worth £20
At the back next to the boxed Tomy pocket, and Oxford is a Rockwell £5


the one with the inverted blue L shape, is a TEXET 808. They are may favourite, not too rare. Still after a perfect mint in box examole though.

bottom left, you can just make out part of the box of an early Radio Shack  portable desktop computer.

loads more in there,

i've been bidding like mad on eBay, as this link shows;
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewBidItems&sort=3&userid=retro-technology&satitle=&from=R7&nojspr=y&pfid=0&completed=1&all=1&rows=100


very pleased with this one, that arrived yesterday,
http://www.sminuk.com/pics/ebay/chinoncalc01.jpg


and delighted to get the Sinclair "multimeter" (not a calculator) Sinclair is the only make that I collect anything for, from Sinclair Radionics to Sinclair Vehicles.

http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=8166439163

check that out! ^^^ This will sell for over £1,000 I think. I've stopped bidding.

the one bottom center with the red screen looks like a TI. My Dad had (and may still have) one very close to that.

I can keep my eyes peeled for you when I'm out hunting if yoiu like.

yes please. :)   I live in the town where they used to have their British H.Q, in fact the old site, is on my mail round

will do. a new challenge for when I'm out scouring the thrift scene.

So what exactly do you do with the calculators once you have them?  Do they pretty much just look pretty in a display case?  Or do you actually use them and/or play games on the ones that can do that?  Some of those do look pretty cool, but I dunno what I would do with them.

heh, well i collect them, like I collect games. I don't play most of the games in my collection.

Yeah, fair point.  And it's not like I spend all of the coins in my coin collection.

Actually amongst my collection are some very early "PDA's" well, they are really calculators that have BASIC, and an 8k memory. I programme them, sometimes.

Updated pic, been having a sort out today. Making room for a disc drive for my C64, and figured i'd sort the calcs out too;

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v616/THXII38/calcs002.jpg)

ah I see the Little Professor in there.

yeah, mine isn't the red LED one though. This is much later LCD one. I just bought a red LED one on eBay.