Extra vids for Floaties! www.floatplane... Car Channel: / @garbagetime420 Game Channel: / @helloimgaming Drum Channel: / @the.drum.thing . Custom iPods by Elite Obsolete: eoe.works
The HP12C is a Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculator. Instead of taking the calculation function between inputs (2 + 2) it takes the function after the inputs (2 2 +). So to do 2 + 2 you have to type 2 then enter then 2 then +
And the yellow f button enables use of the yellow functions written above some of the buttons, the blue g the lower blue functions. A lot of calculators still use the same functionality. STO(re) and R(e)Ca(L)l still remains too. Could be labeled M, MR, M+ and M- instead, for memory. You can save a value/calculation and recall later, to add to something you calculated independent for example.
reverse polish notation was the main reason, why I bought TI NCAS instead of HP. It was really difficult at university even with NCAS, I didnt need to increase fun factor with RPN :D
Once you get used to RPN, it’s so nice. You don’t have to sweat parentheses because you can just punch in operations in the order they ought to happen in. Fun fact: the HP 12c is still sold to this day, I saw one in a Best Buy yesterday and it looks exactly the same. Back when my da did an accounting degree, this was THE calculator for accounting.
That HP calculator is a finance calculator. I found one laying around my house and used it in my college finance classes. Huge learning curve, but definitely a fun thing to fuck around with
I love how graphing calculators can play games in alot of cases. Also the solar cells are usually fake. If they're real theyre usually decent calculators
I have this glorious old radioshack scientific calculator that’s fully solar-as in, you cover the solar cells, it turns off. It’s way older than I am-it was originally my grandfather’s, and he was a nuclear scientist (of the engineering sort). It carried me through high school, my mother through college, and my grandfather from Germany to America.
When you pulled out that HP 12C, it reminded me of how my dad's used one of those bad boys since 1989 and changed the batteries once in it. He received a 4-week course from his employer on how to use the damn thing too. Anything he does remotely related to money or math, that 12C comes out. Also, AMORT is amortization.
That was my same thought, "hey look it's my dad's calculator!". He's a physicist and that HP beats the hell out of the portable slide rules he first learned to use.
@@bavarianbanshee Are you serious? Amortization is a word all good Americans use. How else are you supposed to know how much your due on your loan? ...says the commenter that googled a word.
My god, my dad also. And he tried to tell me how much more simple it is. For what I remember, you enter one number, ok, a second, ok, then the operation, let's multiply , et voila !
I literally couldn't believe when you showed up the HP calculator. I have the EXACT same model even with the leather cover, and died laughing at you struggling to use it, you looked exactly like me the first time I used lol
I have a newer one that is vertical but otherwise exactly the same. It was so cool seeing someone use one for the first time. I had a class on just using these calculators
@@sand0decker is it the HP 35s by chance because I love that calculator and it’s one of 2 rpn calculators I own the other being the hp prime graphing calculator
Still got my HP28S. The RPN concept is easier to for a beginner to grasp when you have a multi-line display. I still use it, but it was handier before Google added conversion functions.
My dad is a financial advisor and his HP12C comes with him literally everywhere. It can genuinely do some pretty amazing stuff. His old one died after YEARS and he went out and found one of the same model to replace it because of how much he uses that thing
Yes, in the engineering world, the HP 12C is still sought after for its ability to do Reverse Polish Notation. Not many calculators can do it anymore. If dank wanted to do 2+2, he should have typed "2,ENTER,2,+" and then he would have seen 4. You have to enter in your numbers first, followed by the operator that you want to apply to them.
I thought it was funny to see him get annoyed at not being able to use a "simple" calculator. When I got my first financial calc I was confused as he'll too lol
@@brennanlentz2452 I had a cheap pocket calculator for school in the mid 1970s that used that system - took me 5 minutes to figure it out and use it without a problem. Reading the manual helps Danky boy, instead of smashing stuff with a rock.
@@berekhalfhand4775 Bold of you to assume he'd recieve a manual with such a nugget and read it before throwing it away and probably forget about its existence for another 10 years
If you want to turn this channel into some shit like LGR or techmoan, I'm so in for it. Whatever gets you excited, I want to hear about it. Don't ever feel like you can't do something on here just cause it's not "your brand" or whatever.
Legit, I'm right there with you. I wasn't a huge audio nut before, and while I'm definitely closer to being one now, I'm still pretty much a pleb. I just love hearing him yell at nuggets and crack jokes in his lovely voice. He's got an awesome personality, and his excitement is contagious, so I'd pop in to watch regardless of the topic 😌👌
That HP is honestly a fantastic calculator. They still make and sell the HP12C, and I got one as a gift when I went to college for business management. It's fantastic for people working with money, interest rates, net present value, etc.
was required to get one for one of my classes for my finance degree. steep learning curve but ended up using it for assignments, exams, everything. pretty neat but I remember it being expensive as hell. I think I paid $50 or $60 for mine lol
My parents had one of those when I was a kid and I remember never being able to make it work. I do know he was on the right track when doing 5+5+ and got it to spit out 10.
My dad uses that HP 12C every day. It's a finance calculator. Not really done for simple stuff as much as it is for more complex financial calculations. It's the only calculator he uses, and is apparently universally loved by the finance industry, and he owns like 4 of them.
3:00 My dad has one of those! That's an RPN calculator. Basically you type in numbers, and then do an operation for it. So if you want to do 3+2, you hit 3, then enter, then 2, then plus. That sounds odd but it's so that you can do systems of equations a bit easier.
Reverse Polish notations is a total game changer when you consider it has a register that stores your previous value. Consider the equation ((1+2)*4)/4. You do your own parenthesis in a sense with RPN. You'd so 1 [Enter] 2 [+] for the first parenthesis. That result is then in the register, so to do the next operation, you'd do 4 [*] to get the numerator. Then you'd hit 4 [/], and you'd have your answer. It's very efficient once you understand it. I have used a second hand HP 15C for almost 10 years because once you go to RPN, you never go back. (For anyone wanting a modern RPN calulator, check out SwissMicros. They make modern remakes of these old HPs. Not being paid to say this, just a RPN fanboy.)
LGR x Dankpods is the collab i never knew i needed! Ngl lgr is one of my go-to binge channels so i now really would just love to have you two working together on some really manky nuggs lol granted it’d be a very long shipping process
I love both channels. We need LTT and Louis Rossmann onboard with Wade also. By the way, have you guys tried out TI-BASIC on your graphing calculators? I wrote a blackbody radiation curve program on my TI-84 CE last month, along with a few other physics programs. Pretty fascinating stuff, if you like technology, math and science.
In 8:14 the stuff is german so lemme translate it for you: -Glaskolben mit Neonfüllung Glasstube with Neon-filling -Kathoden Cathodes -Anoden Anodes Hope you understand it :)
Those tri-color Bic pens were literally game changing for me as a kid. I grilled my parents for months, begging them to explain how such a obviously magical device worked. We had to take apart one of them so I'd finally shut up. Lol, but then they accidentally broke it, so I kept pestering them until they got me another one. Half a year spent antagonizing my parents. XD
Didn't expect some ancient calculators to be this entertaining! In fact, I own one myself, handheld (!) calculator made in austria in 1922. It's a super dense, all brass steampunky (all mechanical, no AAs) nugget. It's called Comptator
Amazing! I found this video of a guy using it ("The Rapid Computer" channel name is " Jaap Scherphuis"), apparently it was an American product copied and improved in Germany.
@@FastSloth87 yes, that's pretty much what it looks like! Altough the Comptator seems slightly more refined to me, and my unit is still completely functional. I had no idea it was kind of a knock off :D I didn't remember for sure where it was made so I double checked, and the company was austrian. In fact, it's literally called Rechenmaschinen Werk AUSTRIA. Looks like they had some parts made in germany as well though. I'm also surprised that this was quite an old design at that point. The manual (which I also have!) says 1922 though. EDIT: Looks like it was made by several companies across europe, copying stuff didn't bother them much back then lol
@@michaelmechex Comptometers were very popular back then, there was even formations on how to use it as quickly as possible, mechanicaly it's fairly simple but even when the cash register style of calculators began to take over the market, businesses still used them astheh were still faster. Do keep it well oiled tho, I've seen too many of these beauts jammed up
I lovin this diversity of content, like he’s still doing the same thing, laughing at nuggets appreciating the good ones! Keep going my Australian brother
I saw someone do a teardown of one of those Burroughs machines a while back and yeah, as you guessed, they're generally pretty tough to fix. Based on the handle not working, its likely one of the gears inside has been knocked askew and jammed everything up, probably due to it being dropped in transit at some point. As an aside, since they still sell the HP12C, the manual is on their website. Like one of the other comments says, it uses RPN and I believe to clear it, you hold '-' as you turn it on, then let go.
OMG such memories seeing you playing with that HP 12C. My father used to have one (I'm sure he still using it) but I never understand how it worked. He sweared that it was a waaaaayyy better design than normal calculators. I trully enjoyed this video, thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Fun fact, the model of SX-70 you've got there uses a goddamn _SONAR_ to autofocus. Mine still works perfectly to this day, they're such amazing machines. If you really want to see some magic though, take a look at the Polaroid Land cameras that came before it, like the 100-400 series. The film develops in your armpit. I'm not joking.
I have my grandpa's old Square Shooter. Where you have the hang the camera upside down to get the film to develop. And his old SX-70, with his name and date scratched into the leather.
Amort! Amort! I was in business school from 2019 to 2021 and we had to use finance calculators just like that (a cheaper plastic version, but effectively the same thing). Why not just use Excel, like you would in real life, you ask? Because you can't have your computer with you during an exam. Yeah. That sure went into a drawer the day after the final exam, never to emerge again.
No joke, I have all these people to thank for my discovery of these hobbies and many, many irresponsible late night purchases ever since: LGR: Vintage PC gaming (beyond emulators) 8-bit guy: Kit computers (the ones you solder yourself) Techmoan: Nixie tubes Now Dankpod: ipod modding and headphones Thanks to Dank, I can no longer tolerate those no-name chinese bluetooth earbuds.
Duuuude that HP12C brings me back. So HP calcs used this wonky input logic called RPN, where you basically use the enter button to add numbers to a "stack" of memory, and then press operators to pull numbers from the stack, perform the operation, and push the result back onto the stack. So to do 1+1, you'd do (1)(enter)(1)(+). It seems backwards at first but once you get used to it, it becomes super useful when working with complex equations because it effectively eliminates the need for parentheses. My dad had a 16C back in the day, which was the programmer variant, but it used the same input logic. He taught me to use it as a wee child and from there I used almost exclusively RPN calcs. I got a WP34s (basically a fan made hp scientific calculator) that got me through university, especially statistics and physics.
That's a good point, about not needing parentheses. There's actually a bijection between strings of operators and numbers in RPN, and binary trees of operators and digits, which is a proof that you can represent any expression with RPN without parentheses. I actually design really niche programming languages known as "golfing languages" as a hobby, that try to do tasks with the shortest code possible, and RPN really comes in handy there for that reason (though it's usually just called stack-based or postfix notation for that).
y'know texas instruments made a new calculater with state-of-the-art features such as: color solving equations and... a trackpad. truly ahead of its time.
@@ChrisNotDuncan Reposting from an earlier reply of mine. The HP Prime fully supports Textbook input (and is the default) as well as RPN and absolutely DESTROYS anything TI has ever put out. It even does (basic) 3D modeling. The Prime actually gets shit done. The TI lines are overpriced as fuck.
Those old HP calculators are in reverse polish notation. you put in your number, hit enter, input your second number, and then hit the calculation you wish to do. i.e. 2, enter, 2, + produces 4
I recognize the 12C, my dad used to have one. Based on his profession, and the Amort button (short for amortization) I would be pushed to believe the 12C is a mortgage calculator.
that calculator uses RCL method which means that you place operands into your buffer then press the operator. basically if you wanted to do 2+3, you would press 2 then enter then 3 then plus: first number, enter, second number, operator(+,-,*,/,sin,cos,^,%...) the xy button switches the first number in buffer and the current one displaying. look up how to use an hp35s and it will be more clear as it shows the buffer row
the HP is an RPN format calculator. a lot of programmers like them. you have to enter the arguments, then specify the operation. to do 2+2, press 2, enter, the 2, then press the plus button.
And if someone is wondering why it worked: The friction rubbed a bit of corrosion away, so the contacts were somewhat restored and it sprang to life :)
Awesome. Love seeing manky old tech doing manky old tech things, especially when it involves Nixie tubes. Those Friden calculators in particular have a real following.
The Zeny did get that (unintentionally large) equation right! It was 49160.79! Well, I'm not surprised, it is doing it's literal purpose. Also I loved that technique of twisting the batteries around to sort of, scrape the corrosion off? Wow.
For the Zeny, I'd recommend soaking the battery contacts in hydrogen peroxide to further get rid of corrosion. Also, pretty sure the display is an early LED, not vacuum tube based. But the Friden with the nixie tubes.... that's absolutely beautiful, seeing the refresh of the tubes as you type in the digits.... Great video!
@@0xbenedikt Could be, I was thinking it was LED since I recently saw a video about these 70's HP LED banks that used small magnifying glasses over the 7 segment displays because they couldn't make the LEDs very big.
Its a typical 1975-1980's calculator, it's rockin' a VFD for sure. If the display would have been LEDs, the color would have been red since red LEDs were the most efficient at the time (they pretty much still are)
This guy has so much energy bring back to life the zeny just as much as I did watching the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians when they brought back lucky from the dead
ahhhh yes my favorite calculator review channel, I always forget it's Thursday and always get a nice little surprise when you upload, good ta see ya man
Dank, you are the reason I spent two months finding myself the perfect set of headphones (for me). I keep coming back because watching you have fun is pure joy and it makes my Friday.
very late to the party here but my dad was a management accountant and used that exact HP for his entire career. Still has it on his desk at home and uses it daily. Others have said, but reverse polish notation is the key. Once you get your head around it, it's bloody brilliant!
I was rewatching an old James Bond film (You only live twice), and in one of the scenes they were using a massive fully mechanical calculator, and I was like "wow that's a beauty". Then twenty minutes later you upload this video. I was shocked to say the least.
I’m fifty now and when I was a kid in school the calculator was a fantastic tool to have especially a good TI Advanced calculator. I gave my daughter a high end TI calculator and she thumbed her nose at it because she has access to computers and the internet but damn that calculator is crazy powerful even allowing you to enter bracketed equations. I never used the most advanced features but was impressed with the few features I did use in college..
"You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time" My final math exam in school actually tested my skills with the TI NSpire. And now in uni, I'm only allowed to use "dumb" calculators which unlike the NSpire can't solve basically every problem in a single step.
dankpods rubbing the pkcells reminds me of the time when i was like 10, my father would hide the good TV remote, i would use an old one thats being held together with rubber bands and every single time it doesnt work (which happens rather frequently) i would spin the 2 AA battery in it and it would work again.
Nop. The HP is designed to use less steps for making a calculation than the Zeny. For example, for 2 + 2 the HP uses three steps (2,2,+) and the Zeny four (2,+,2,=)
As soon as he said " i was looking for something that had something special" in the back of my mind i thought "man a calculator with nixie tube numbers would be sick" and boy i jumped out of my chair when i saw those glass tubes.
My dad used to be a field service technician for Burroughs and those mechanical adding machines were still in used well into the 1970s. My Dad serviced them in banks alongside early computers of the sort that used to need a room to themselves. There's still a box of spare keys and springs for those bad boys in my Dad's garage somewhere. Being entirely mechanical most of the problems with it could be solved by cleaning, lubrication or finding the one spring that had gone ping and replacing it apparently.
I still use the HP12C for my MBA! It's a beautiful machine that, IMO, works better as an in-the-moment thinking tool than excel. Used in tandem with excel, the sky is the limit with financial computations. They haven't really updated the design because there's no need to! It's timeless design. I hope to see it in the MoMA one day!
The HP 12C is actually still being produced and along with the TI BA II Plus one the only two calculators that are allowed during the official CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exam.The TI BA II Plus is definitely the easier one to work with of the two.
The HP calculator -- You "enter" your numbers onto the stack first. Selecting any operator (+, -, etc.) immediately collapses the top two entries into one, using that operation. That's about all there is to it.
I've just got to say thank you!!! For months now my remote for my TV hasn't been working,I've gone through everything I could think of .... Untill I watched your video and you got that nugget working , I did the same thinking what's the worst that could happen and ..... IT WORKED!!!
Need something to calm down a bit went to bed late and suddenly had my heart rate jump through the roof, while trying to sleep.. Love your videos man keep it up!
The HP 12C is a reverse Polish notation calculator. So, you enter the numbers first and then the operation. So, (5+5)*2 would be entered as 5 enter 5 + 2 *. The great thing about reverse Polish notation is that you don’t need parentheses to alter the order of operations. I’ve been wanting to get a calculator like that of late
My dad had IT texis instruments from the 80s were you place chip for different functions. So during homework me and dad would race who could calculate the fastest. I had the modern version of his calculate but didn't need to swap chip but had to go through menues etc for math formula functions inputs.
You know, at some point I was expecting to see an Mp3/calculator. With all that we've been shown in the past, it wouldn't have been that out of the blue.
The HP is like an “adding machine” instead of the normal style of calculator you are used to. Lots of businesses still use machines for counting money and such and it can be very annoying at first if you’ve never used one.
from what i noticed, its like first its one digit so _ _ _ = _ then first digit 2 _ _ = _ then second digit 2 _ 3 = _ then symbol and it gives result 2 + 3 = 5 idk if thats right or nah
@@aqaridot yes basically! It’s called RPN, and it’s how computers natively think. Calculators that interpret the “normal” way of writing formulae have to do a bunch of extra work reordering things before actually doing the calculation. (Hence the large desktop unit being able to do it but the tiny vintage battery powered unit opting not to.)
The Nixie Tubes sold me. I'm not kidding I have "Nixie Tubes" in my RUclips browser at this very second because I was looking them up and geeking out about them. I was not expecting a guest appearance, this is great.
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
So today DankPods did a calculator thing, and I just did an MP3 player thing?
What is life anymore.
Oh hi lgr
I love you Clint
Just checked your channel and your most recent video is still the Canon mouseculator. Is the MP3 vid going to be up soon?
@@deanchur Yep, tomorrow morning will be quite the nugget 👍
We now need Tech Tangents to do a drum set
The HP12C is a Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculator. Instead of taking the calculation function between inputs (2 + 2) it takes the function after the inputs (2 2 +).
So to do 2 + 2 you have to type 2 then enter then 2 then +
And the yellow f button enables use of the yellow functions written above some of the buttons, the blue g the lower blue functions. A lot of calculators still use the same functionality.
STO(re) and R(e)Ca(L)l still remains too. Could be labeled M, MR, M+ and M- instead, for memory. You can save a value/calculation and recall later, to add to something you calculated independent for example.
reverse polish notation was the main reason, why I bought TI NCAS instead of HP. It was really difficult at university even with NCAS, I didnt need to increase fun factor with RPN :D
Came here to say what he did ^. You can still buy calculators that accept RPN and RPL (Reverse polish lisp).
Once you get used to RPN, it’s so nice. You don’t have to sweat parentheses because you can just punch in operations in the order they ought to happen in. Fun fact: the HP 12c is still sold to this day, I saw one in a Best Buy yesterday and it looks exactly the same. Back when my da did an accounting degree, this was THE calculator for accounting.
i use popos btw
That HP calculator is a finance calculator. I found one laying around my house and used it in my college finance classes. Huge learning curve, but definitely a fun thing to fuck around with
@SCRWD 《HD》 it's english if you are asking.
@SCRWD 《HD》 Cry harder.
@SCRWD 《HD》 You smell like Bart Simpson.
@SCRWD 《HD》 amort
@SCRWD 《HD》 amort
"I'm not a maths guy, I studied jazz" resonates hard
Jazz folk need to be able to count past 4 though, unlike us normal musicians lol
I’m a maths guy but I want to study jazz as well :p
@@thesillyhatday hey be nice to us normal musicians
we also count to 6 sometimes
go get a real job, you hippie!
"I amorted too hard" that resonates harder
I love how graphing calculators can play games in alot of cases. Also the solar cells are usually fake. If they're real theyre usually decent calculators
So you're telling me my 99c solar-powered Kmart calculator.. isn't solar powered? 😔
The TIs often have a rudimentary version of basic on them, so you can make your own games on it :)
I have this glorious old radioshack scientific calculator that’s fully solar-as in, you cover the solar cells, it turns off. It’s way older than I am-it was originally my grandfather’s, and he was a nuclear scientist (of the engineering sort). It carried me through high school, my mother through college, and my grandfather from Germany to America.
@@ENCHANTMEN_ or python with the nspires
Linus overclocked and watercooled a proffesional calculator a few years back
When in doubt, just "A M O R T"
sounds a lot like "abort" which would make sense
@@jamestorrens645AMORT AMORT
When you pulled out that HP 12C, it reminded me of how my dad's used one of those bad boys since 1989 and changed the batteries once in it. He received a 4-week course from his employer on how to use the damn thing too. Anything he does remotely related to money or math, that 12C comes out. Also, AMORT is amortization.
That was my same thought, "hey look it's my dad's calculator!". He's a physicist and that HP beats the hell out of the portable slide rules he first learned to use.
You say "amortization" like I'm supposed to know what that means
@@bavarianbanshee Are you serious? Amortization is a word all good Americans use. How else are you supposed to know how much your due on your loan?
...says the commenter that googled a word.
My dad's calculator looks very similar to that one, but it can do one think I betcha yours can't~
You can program it in BASIC~!
My god, my dad also. And he tried to tell me how much more simple it is. For what I remember, you enter one number, ok, a second, ok, then the operation, let's multiply , et voila !
Fun fact, Texas Instruments also makes targeting pods, missiles, and bombs for the military
So that's where the Texas part of the name comes in
That's not very fun :/
cool
And hella good DACs as well on their Burr-Brown series
Yep they made the AGM-88 HARM Anti-radar missile
4:44 that defeated "AMORT" killed me.
man with your personality it doesn't matter what you put on here as long as you can keep it entertaining as you always do!! i love your channel mate!
I literally couldn't believe when you showed up the HP calculator. I have the EXACT same model even with the leather cover, and died laughing at you struggling to use it, you looked exactly like me the first time I used lol
I have a newer one that is vertical but otherwise exactly the same. It was so cool seeing someone use one for the first time. I had a class on just using these calculators
@@sand0decker is it the HP 35s by chance because I love that calculator and it’s one of 2 rpn calculators I own the other being the hp prime graphing calculator
i have the HP 15c and i was feeling the same way lol
Still got my HP28S. The RPN concept is easier to for a beginner to grasp when you have a multi-line display. I still use it, but it was handier before Google added conversion functions.
I was internally screaming at the way he was trying to use it. Haha
My dad is a financial advisor and his HP12C comes with him literally everywhere. It can genuinely do some pretty amazing stuff.
His old one died after YEARS and he went out and found one of the same model to replace it because of how much he uses that thing
Yes, in the engineering world, the HP 12C is still sought after for its ability to do Reverse Polish Notation. Not many calculators can do it anymore. If dank wanted to do 2+2, he should have typed "2,ENTER,2,+" and then he would have seen 4. You have to enter in your numbers first, followed by the operator that you want to apply to them.
I work with investment accounts and even though I’ve never seen a calculator like this, I immediately recognized what it was. Lol. Now I want one.
I thought it was funny to see him get annoyed at not being able to use a "simple" calculator. When I got my first financial calc I was confused as he'll too lol
@@brennanlentz2452 I had a cheap pocket calculator for school in the mid 1970s that used that system - took me 5 minutes to figure it out and use it without a problem. Reading the manual helps Danky boy, instead of smashing stuff with a rock.
@@berekhalfhand4775 Bold of you to assume he'd recieve a manual with such a nugget and read it before throwing it away and probably forget about its existence for another 10 years
If you want to turn this channel into some shit like LGR or techmoan, I'm so in for it. Whatever gets you excited, I want to hear about it. Don't ever feel like you can't do something on here just cause it's not "your brand" or whatever.
I mean it already kindof is. Just with a focus on portable audio. And more violence.
They're the best part of the site, only wish there were a lot more of them.
Techmoan is dope. LGR is dope
Technology Connection is dope
Legit, I'm right there with you. I wasn't a huge audio nut before, and while I'm definitely closer to being one now, I'm still pretty much a pleb.
I just love hearing him yell at nuggets and crack jokes in his lovely voice.
He's got an awesome personality, and his excitement is contagious, so I'd pop in to watch regardless of the topic 😌👌
That HP is honestly a fantastic calculator. They still make and sell the HP12C, and I got one as a gift when I went to college for business management. It's fantastic for people working with money, interest rates, net present value, etc.
I think I had a TI BA II plus.
was required to get one for one of my classes for my finance degree. steep learning curve but ended up using it for assignments, exams, everything. pretty neat but I remember it being expensive as hell. I think I paid $50 or $60 for mine lol
My parents had one of those when I was a kid and I remember never being able to make it work. I do know he was on the right track when doing 5+5+ and got it to spit out 10.
The HP 12 series is legendary. I am an RPN partisan to this day.
Update: I left my previous comment before watching Wade completely fail to realize that RPN is a thing for two whole minutes and it is a delight.
6:40 HAITCH PEA, OUT CLASSED BY THE DEAD ZENY
"I'm not a maths guy, I studied jazz" that statement feels somewhat paradoxical
Time signatures are just fractions.
You don’t gotta add those fractions doe
im no expert, but im pretty sure jazz doesnt use factorials
@@borger7171 nah mate the time signatures
My dad uses that HP 12C every day. It's a finance calculator. Not really done for simple stuff as much as it is for more complex financial calculations. It's the only calculator he uses, and is apparently universally loved by the finance industry, and he owns like 4 of them.
3:00 My dad has one of those! That's an RPN calculator. Basically you type in numbers, and then do an operation for it. So if you want to do 3+2, you hit 3, then enter, then 2, then plus. That sounds odd but it's so that you can do systems of equations a bit easier.
It also means you never need parentheses, due to some really cool binary tree stuff
@@sosexyimsexy134 That's nice, but reverse Polish notation calculators are so much more fascinating, don't you agree?
So if you wanna do 28 + 93 how do you enter it in? Because typing 2893+ could also be interpreted as 289+3 for example
@@matiastripaldi406 2 8 Enter 9 3 +.
Reverse Polish notations is a total game changer when you consider it has a register that stores your previous value. Consider the equation ((1+2)*4)/4. You do your own parenthesis in a sense with RPN. You'd so 1 [Enter] 2 [+] for the first parenthesis. That result is then in the register, so to do the next operation, you'd do 4 [*] to get the numerator. Then you'd hit 4 [/], and you'd have your answer. It's very efficient once you understand it. I have used a second hand HP 15C for almost 10 years because once you go to RPN, you never go back. (For anyone wanting a modern RPN calulator, check out SwissMicros. They make modern remakes of these old HPs. Not being paid to say this, just a RPN fanboy.)
DankPods 1 year ago: Deep diving into the specifics of elite ~5000$ headphones
DankPods now: C A L C U L A T O R
he's come a long way
The pure joy at resurrecting the Zeny absolutely made my day. You’re a legend!
LGR x Dankpods is the collab i never knew i needed! Ngl lgr is one of my go-to binge channels so i now really would just love to have you two working together on some really manky nuggs lol granted it’d be a very long shipping process
We need CRD x LGR collab
Must happen!!
LGR and Techmoan are great for just leaving out and chill to.
I love both channels. We need LTT and Louis Rossmann onboard with Wade also.
By the way, have you guys tried out TI-BASIC on your graphing calculators? I wrote a blackbody radiation curve program on my TI-84 CE last month, along with a few other physics programs. Pretty fascinating stuff, if you like technology, math and science.
Haha, wait till you see LGR's new video!
I've done what he did to the Zeny with the PKCells before. There's nothing like fixing corrosion by scratching the contacts with some AAAs.
I was going to say you are effectively just sanding the corosion off, quite a good idea.
In 8:14 the stuff is german so lemme translate it for you:
-Glaskolben mit Neonfüllung
Glasstube with Neon-filling
-Kathoden
Cathodes
-Anoden
Anodes
Hope you understand it :)
Those tri-color Bic pens were literally game changing for me as a kid. I grilled my parents for months, begging them to explain how such a obviously magical device worked. We had to take apart one of them so I'd finally shut up. Lol, but then they accidentally broke it, so I kept pestering them until they got me another one. Half a year spent antagonizing my parents. XD
I miss that about being a kid. Everything was just magic. Engines just had a hamster inside spinning a wheel and gasoline was his crack!😂
Didn't expect some ancient calculators to be this entertaining! In fact, I own one myself, handheld (!) calculator made in austria in 1922. It's a super dense, all brass steampunky (all mechanical, no AAs) nugget. It's called Comptator
22? Mate that's cool
Amazing! I found this video of a guy using it ("The Rapid Computer" channel name is " Jaap Scherphuis"), apparently it was an American product copied and improved in Germany.
The video: ruclips.net/video/bgqwab4waGQ/видео.html
@@FastSloth87 yes, that's pretty much what it looks like! Altough the Comptator seems slightly more refined to me, and my unit is still completely functional. I had no idea it was kind of a knock off :D I didn't remember for sure where it was made so I double checked, and the company was austrian. In fact, it's literally called Rechenmaschinen Werk AUSTRIA. Looks like they had some parts made in germany as well though. I'm also surprised that this was quite an old design at that point. The manual (which I also have!) says 1922 though.
EDIT: Looks like it was made by several companies across europe, copying stuff didn't bother them much back then lol
@@michaelmechex Comptometers were very popular back then, there was even formations on how to use it as quickly as possible, mechanicaly it's fairly simple but even when the cash register style of calculators began to take over the market, businesses still used them astheh were still faster. Do keep it well oiled tho, I've seen too many of these beauts jammed up
I lovin this diversity of content, like he’s still doing the same thing, laughing at nuggets appreciating the good ones! Keep going my Australian brother
I like the subtle detail of the music stopping when the Zenny died. Then it resumed once you resuscitated it. Well done, my guy!
07:23 my favorite line so far
I saw someone do a teardown of one of those Burroughs machines a while back and yeah, as you guessed, they're generally pretty tough to fix. Based on the handle not working, its likely one of the gears inside has been knocked askew and jammed everything up, probably due to it being dropped in transit at some point.
As an aside, since they still sell the HP12C, the manual is on their website. Like one of the other comments says, it uses RPN and I believe to clear it, you hold '-' as you turn it on, then let go.
Interesting that they still sell the 12C.
OMG such memories seeing you playing with that HP 12C. My father used to have one (I'm sure he still using it) but I never understand how it worked. He sweared that it was a waaaaayyy better design than normal calculators. I trully enjoyed this video, thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Fun fact, the model of SX-70 you've got there uses a goddamn _SONAR_ to autofocus. Mine still works perfectly to this day, they're such amazing machines.
If you really want to see some magic though, take a look at the Polaroid Land cameras that came before it, like the 100-400 series. The film develops in your armpit. I'm not joking.
he knows. he mentioned it on the after show
I have my grandpa's old Square Shooter.
Where you have the hang the camera upside down to get the film to develop.
And his old SX-70, with his name and date scratched into the leather.
Amort! Amort!
I was in business school from 2019 to 2021 and we had to use finance calculators just like that (a cheaper plastic version, but effectively the same thing). Why not just use Excel, like you would in real life, you ask? Because you can't have your computer with you during an exam. Yeah. That sure went into a drawer the day after the final exam, never to emerge again.
"It's all clint's fault from LGR" is the reasoning behind most of my irresponsible vintage purchases
No joke, I have all these people to thank for my discovery of these hobbies and many, many irresponsible late night purchases ever since:
LGR: Vintage PC gaming (beyond emulators)
8-bit guy: Kit computers (the ones you solder yourself)
Techmoan: Nixie tubes
Now Dankpod: ipod modding and headphones
Thanks to Dank, I can no longer tolerate those no-name chinese bluetooth earbuds.
Duuuude that HP12C brings me back. So HP calcs used this wonky input logic called RPN, where you basically use the enter button to add numbers to a "stack" of memory, and then press operators to pull numbers from the stack, perform the operation, and push the result back onto the stack. So to do 1+1, you'd do (1)(enter)(1)(+). It seems backwards at first but once you get used to it, it becomes super useful when working with complex equations because it effectively eliminates the need for parentheses.
My dad had a 16C back in the day, which was the programmer variant, but it used the same input logic. He taught me to use it as a wee child and from there I used almost exclusively RPN calcs. I got a WP34s (basically a fan made hp scientific calculator) that got me through university, especially statistics and physics.
Oh, so those calculators used postfix logic in order to do math. Neato.
That's a good point, about not needing parentheses. There's actually a bijection between strings of operators and numbers in RPN, and binary trees of operators and digits, which is a proof that you can represent any expression with RPN without parentheses.
I actually design really niche programming languages known as "golfing languages" as a hobby, that try to do tasks with the shortest code possible, and RPN really comes in handy there for that reason (though it's usually just called stack-based or postfix notation for that).
My parents are both chemical engineers and they both still use HP16C’s from the 90s. Complete with leather slide out cases.
RPN isn’t wonky! It’s glorious!
y'know texas instruments made a new calculater with state-of-the-art features such as:
color
solving equations
and... a trackpad.
truly ahead of its time.
imagine running quake on it
calculater
I run a TI-Nspire CX II CAS. Fun.
@@ChrisNotDuncan Reposting from an earlier reply of mine. The HP Prime fully supports Textbook input (and is the default) as well as RPN and absolutely DESTROYS anything TI has ever put out. It even does (basic) 3D modeling. The Prime actually gets shit done. The TI lines are overpriced as fuck.
@@poble spyware terminater
Those old HP calculators are in reverse polish notation. you put in your number, hit enter, input your second number, and then hit the calculation you wish to do. i.e. 2, enter, 2, + produces 4
I cannot say how much a new dankpods video makes my day 10000x better.
I recognize the 12C, my dad used to have one. Based on his profession, and the Amort button (short for amortization) I would be pushed to believe the 12C is a mortgage calculator.
@@phs125 He worked in the mortgage department at several banks, so, he probably got it as an anniversary gift...
that calculator uses RCL method which means that you place operands into your buffer then press the operator. basically if you wanted to do 2+3, you would press
2 then enter then 3 then plus: first number, enter, second number, operator(+,-,*,/,sin,cos,^,%...) the xy button switches the first number in buffer and the current one displaying.
look up how to use an hp35s and it will be more clear as it shows the buffer row
rpn*
My friends and I in junior high called them cockulators. Now as a 26 year old woman, I am ashamed to say I still call them that by force of habit.
watching dank bring the zenny to climax was more entertaining then it should have been
Oh man, the potential dream team...
Dank and LGR, reviewing 80's tech...
A man can dream...
the HP is an RPN format calculator. a lot of programmers like them. you have to enter the arguments, then specify the operation. to do 2+2, press 2, enter, the 2, then press the plus button.
New technique discovered: Finaegling
rub the batteries somewhat akin to rubbing a genie lamp for additional nuggeteering.
And if someone is wondering why it worked:
The friction rubbed a bit of corrosion away, so the contacts were somewhat restored and it sprang to life :)
I’ve been doing that with TV remotes for years.
Awesome. Love seeing manky old tech doing manky old tech things, especially when it involves Nixie tubes. Those Friden calculators in particular have a real following.
The Zeny did get that (unintentionally large) equation right! It was 49160.79!
Well, I'm not surprised, it is doing it's literal purpose.
Also I loved that technique of twisting the batteries around to sort of, scrape the corrosion off? Wow.
5:38
You can hear the microphone peak when he screams.
The power of AA is a destructive force indeed.
Lol i thought that it was just my headphones
I think it’s a testament to your skills in entertainment that you made calculators a comedic riot.
Thanks for that.
For the Zeny, I'd recommend soaking the battery contacts in hydrogen peroxide to further get rid of corrosion. Also, pretty sure the display is an early LED, not vacuum tube based. But the Friden with the nixie tubes.... that's absolutely beautiful, seeing the refresh of the tubes as you type in the digits.... Great video!
It looks like VFD not LED. You can see the tube around the digit plates.
@@0xbenedikt Could be, I was thinking it was LED since I recently saw a video about these 70's HP LED banks that used small magnifying glasses over the 7 segment displays because they couldn't make the LEDs very big.
@@DavisMakesGames They are a fun display technology too, indeed.
Its a typical 1975-1980's calculator, it's rockin' a VFD for sure. If the display would have been LEDs, the color would have been red since red LEDs were the most efficient at the time (they pretty much still are)
The genuine shock when you resurrected the Zeny was priceless! I’m still giggling like a little school girl
This guy has so much energy bring back to life the zeny just as much as I did watching the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians when they brought back lucky from the dead
God I love how the channel went from ipods to just manky old technology. I just love this channel. Keep it up Dank. LONG LIVE DANKPODS!
Loved seeing the LGR and Techmoan shoutout! Always enjoy seeing channels I watch interconnect in these ways
1:55 that's not a nugget that's whole chicken
with those nixies, probably still worth that 4 grand, those tubes fetch a lot to collectors
ahhhh yes my favorite calculator review channel, I always forget it's Thursday and always get a nice little surprise when you upload, good ta see ya man
7:10 "Did you give me an extra nine there mate, that I didn't ask for?" I don't know why but out of all the things in this video that got me lol
As a Computer Science student, I think that calculator was doing postfix notation where you were trying to use infix. The pain is real.
Beauty is in the eye of the boulder and damn, those calculators have rocking cases
Especially the $4000 one. I honestly wouldn't mind raising my future boss's electric bill by running that beaut as my main calculator!
Disgusting. Thank you.
Dank, you are the reason I spent two months finding myself the perfect set of headphones (for me). I keep coming back because watching you have fun is pure joy and it makes my Friday.
very late to the party here but my dad was a management accountant and used that exact HP for his entire career. Still has it on his desk at home and uses it daily. Others have said, but reverse polish notation is the key. Once you get your head around it, it's bloody brilliant!
This channel is the most consistent inconsistent channel ever and I truely adore it.
4:10 "this is literally a simple calculator"
As someone who attended calculus class, this is NOT a simple calculator!
I was rewatching an old James Bond film (You only live twice), and in one of the scenes they were using a massive fully mechanical calculator, and I was like "wow that's a beauty". Then twenty minutes later you upload this video. I was shocked to say the least.
I’m fifty now and when I was a kid in school the calculator was a fantastic tool to have especially a good TI Advanced calculator. I gave my daughter a high end TI calculator and she thumbed her nose at it because she has access to computers and the internet but damn that calculator is crazy powerful even allowing you to enter bracketed equations. I never used the most advanced features but was impressed with the few features I did use in college..
"You won't have a calculator in your pocket all the time"
My final math exam in school actually tested my skills with the TI NSpire. And now in uni, I'm only allowed to use "dumb" calculators which unlike the NSpire can't solve basically every problem in a single step.
dankpods rubbing the pkcells reminds me of the time when i was like 10, my father would hide the good TV remote, i would use an old one thats being held together with rubber bands and every single time it doesnt work (which happens rather frequently) i would spin the 2 AA battery in it and it would work again.
HP: complicated PC nonsense
Zeny: simple and intuitive enough for an Apple user
Nop. The HP is designed to use less steps for making a calculation than the Zeny. For example, for 2 + 2 the HP uses three steps (2,2,+) and the Zeny four (2,+,2,=)
My old school used to teach us abacus in preschool and it was so slow I learned mental addition and subtraction just to speed things up
This man has gone from ipods, to bootleg mp3s and now is doing calculators what an absolute amazing selection of videos
Hey mate found your vids 3 days ago and I'm hooked...keep it love..Greetings from Jamaica 🇯🇲
As soon as he said " i was looking for something that had something special" in the back of my mind i thought "man a calculator with nixie tube numbers would be sick" and boy i jumped out of my chair when i saw those glass tubes.
Calculator with CRT and nuclear missile port?
My dad used to be a field service technician for Burroughs and those mechanical adding machines were still in used well into the 1970s. My Dad serviced them in banks alongside early computers of the sort that used to need a room to themselves. There's still a box of spare keys and springs for those bad boys in my Dad's garage somewhere. Being entirely mechanical most of the problems with it could be solved by cleaning, lubrication or finding the one spring that had gone ping and replacing it apparently.
i like to call that technique “the genie”, saved me from getting new bats for many controllers
I still use the HP12C for my MBA! It's a beautiful machine that, IMO, works better as an in-the-moment thinking tool than excel. Used in tandem with excel, the sky is the limit with financial computations. They haven't really updated the design because there's no need to! It's timeless design. I hope to see it in the MoMA one day!
That Steins;Gate looking display always looked so cool. I believe using them is still expensive, because I wanted a clock using them.
They’re called Nixie tubes btw.
Now someone can calculate the convergence number to reach Stein;gate
The HP 12C is actually still being produced and along with the TI BA II Plus one the only two calculators that are allowed during the official CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) exam.The TI BA II Plus is definitely the easier one to work with of the two.
My gosh the amount of love I have combined for LGR and your channels is absurd.
The HP calculator --
You "enter" your numbers onto the stack first.
Selecting any operator (+, -, etc.) immediately collapses the top two entries into one, using that operation.
That's about all there is to it.
I love seeing my favorite tech youtubers in other channels. I was literally yelling out in passion when mentioning LGR and TechMoan
I could not care less for calculator, yet this man still makes it interesting
@@sosexyimsexy134 get the fk out no one cares about that, get a life
I've just got to say thank you!!!
For months now my remote for my TV hasn't been working,I've gone through everything I could think of .... Untill I watched your video and you got that nugget working , I did the same thinking what's the worst that could happen and ..... IT WORKED!!!
Need something to calm down a bit went to bed late and suddenly had my heart rate jump through the roof, while trying to sleep..
Love your videos man keep it up!
I love the great and funny content Dank makes, thanks for uploading it makes my day 😊
The HP 12C is a reverse Polish notation calculator. So, you enter the numbers first and then the operation. So, (5+5)*2 would be entered as 5 enter 5 + 2 *. The great thing about reverse Polish notation is that you don’t need parentheses to alter the order of operations. I’ve been wanting to get a calculator like that of late
Fun fact: Zeny spelled "zenny" is the fictional currency used in capcom games! I was just playing one and this was a pleasant surprise.
6:17 HOW
google it hebehehh
(you see it’s funny because there picture is there google logo)
The thing he did with the batteries must have scraped off enough of the corrosion on the battery contacts to allow it to work.
Never thought someone talking about calculators would be so entertaining
Lmfao u didnt even watch it 💀
You haven't watched the video yet
Imma be honest I’m just assuming
farming for top comments💀
@@woobyy you know it 😎
" ... and maybe you find that, it never stopped being good." Huh. That was an unexpectedly nostalgic and feel-goody thing to say
I love calculators, please talk about other tech products more.
have you seen numberphile's calculator unboxings? pretty nuggety tbh
Me seeing the zeny corrosion: clean Dat
Dankpods: "CPR ON THE ZENY"
My dad had IT texis instruments from the 80s were you place chip for different functions. So during homework me and dad would race who could calculate the fastest. I had the modern version of his calculate but didn't need to swap chip but had to go through menues etc for math formula functions inputs.
You know, at some point I was expecting to see an Mp3/calculator. With all that we've been shown in the past, it wouldn't have been that out of the blue.
Ipod did that with the clickwheel once upon a time. Imagine doing your taxes using that.
@@xmctmariaville511 No doubt it'd be immaculate. And stylish.
"There's Zeny EVERYWHERE" - best quote
9:16 “I’m not a maths guy, I studied Jazz” is unironically something I can see being printed on a shirt
The HP is like an “adding machine” instead of the normal style of calculator you are used to. Lots of businesses still use machines for counting money and such and it can be very annoying at first if you’ve never used one.
from what i noticed, its like first its one digit
so
_ _ _ = _
then first digit
2 _ _ = _
then second digit
2 _ 3 = _
then symbol and it gives result
2 + 3 = 5
idk if thats right or nah
@@aqaridot yes basically! It’s called RPN, and it’s how computers natively think. Calculators that interpret the “normal” way of writing formulae have to do a bunch of extra work reordering things before actually doing the calculation. (Hence the large desktop unit being able to do it but the tiny vintage battery powered unit opting not to.)
Huh, never thought of it that way, interesting
That Nixie tube calculator is BEAUTIFUL
1:08 "I don't know if this is gonna fit" - That's what she said
oh you little
The Nixie Tubes sold me. I'm not kidding I have "Nixie Tubes" in my RUclips browser at this very second because I was looking them up and geeking out about them. I was not expecting a guest appearance, this is great.
5:49 Vacuum whatever displays?
Vacuum Florescent Displays are beautiful