![]() ![]() While it does work, it looks a little complicated for today’s standards. The HP-42S emulator, just like the real thing, can be used to carry out a number of operations like scientific functions, statistics, probability, equation solving, matrices, complex numbers, variables & registers, and programming. What is more, all the keys can be controlled using keyboard and numeric pad in addition to the mouse pointer. You will see the HP-42S interface as if you are using the real physical calculator yourself. Unlike some other emulators, it does not require any ROM to be downloaded separately. One of those calculators that HP manufactured in the 1980s – the HP-42S is still a favorite among some people and they have created an open-source emulator for it that can be used to run an emulation of this HP-42S calculator in Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.Īs far as the HP-42S emulator for Windows is concerned, you can just download the emulator file, extract it to a folder and launch Free42Binary.exe from there. Before delving into the computers and their peripherals, they were already producing scientific calculators that were once very popular. (No offense to Jean-Yves Avenard, who did great work within the constraints of the time.Hewlett Packard has been known for manufacturing electronic instruments for a much longer time than they are known for producing the quality computers and printers. I don't really count the 49 or 50 because by that time, the calculator division had been radically restructured and those products were the output of a very different kind of engineering process. So they fell into a gap, and there wasn't enough life left in the calculator market left to fund a way out.Īnother way of looking at this is that the 28 was a v1 product, the 48 was a v2 product, and there wasn't ever the v3 product (where v3 is usually where products hit their stride). The result is that compared to contemporary calculators they were more difficult to use and compared to contemporary computers they weren't nearly as capable. ![]() And then the 28 has the problem that with the flip out case it isn't really a handheld. The devices are very capable, but the capability can make them more cumbersome to use than earlier, simpler devices. I think they both suffer a bit from design overreach. Not sure why it isn't as remembered as the other models, > While I own a few HP calculators, my favorite is still the HP-28. (Although if you need something like an HP-IL barcode scanner or something, you need a 41.) This is a long answer, I know, but the short story is that as a practical tool, the 42 is probably the better choice these days. It's prized because of both the capabilities, and the lack of expansion doesn't matter that much. Where this left the 42 is as the last and best of HP's traditional calculators. The calculator niche narrowed down to essentially the vanishing point, outside of education.) (See my earlier point on the emergence of personal computing, and particularly laptops. A few years after all of this, the entire business essentially shut down. A very similar UI to the 41 but built on the newer technology. The 42 was slotted below the 48 as a more direct replacement of the 41. ![]() But it still had the more cumbersome UI of the 28. ![]() The 48 improved on the 28 a bit, switched back to a traditional handheld calculator form factor, and brought in the expansion and bidirectional I/O from the 41. To address this, HP slotted the 48SX in as a partial replacement for both the 41 and the 28. For a few years, this left HP with two disjoint high end offerings. The 28 was arguably higher end than the 41, but it wasn't expandable and had a more cumbersome UI. These were intended as next-generation offerings. The 41 was introduced as the high-end offering, but a few years later, they also introduced the 28C/S. HP was also working to rationalize its product line at the time. This is particularly true in the market segments that were buying calculators. By the time the 42 rolls around, personal computing is already well established. They're products of different eras - ten years separate the two. ![]()
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