Great video, thanks! This brings back memories. I used a Casio fx-7700G all throughout college (still have it!). At that time I knew how to program it, but I've since forgotten. It was a lot easier having multiple lines and a screen editor!
Thanks, Matt! The fx-7700g looks nice! What in *the world* was going on that Casio made *so many* caculators, simultaneously, and subsequently?? I also spent days [re]reading the manual for mine to write a few programs (that I edited out). I had mostly forgotten, too. Ya, the screen editor would be nice, but, honestly, I didn't care one wit back in the mid '80s. It was amazing to be able to write equations and notes in a calculator!
@@DrDavesDiversions I still have the original paper manual for this thing somewhere; I should dig it out. I had friends who were more talented programmers than I who wrote entire little games from scratch for the Casio. My programs were never that advanced :P
@@retrobitstv I only wrote guessing games using the random number generator. While researching for this video, I saw people hacked TI calculators and wrote games including tetris for them!
@@retrobitstv I found a photo/PDF of my manual online; you can probably, too. I have the real fx-4000p manual, but I think its on the bookshelf in our Boston apartment that I haven't been to in a year... soon, though!
I had the Radio Shack TANDY PC-7 calculator which was the Casio fx-5200P. I remember buying on discount at radio shack in '86. I used it in my high school freshman geometry class. It was hilarious, because I just made a bunch of programs to solve for things like side-angle-side, side-side-side...etc...to solve all the triangles.
Oh, neat. Ya, I remember that one. I visited Radio Shack all the time. Neat that it's expandable to 1.5KB according to this: www.rskey.org/CMS/8-programmable-calculators/259-pc7 I happened to just yesterday add a link to the fx-5200p in this video description after discovering it had BASIC. I also used mine to write programs that displayed notes, like equations. On the whole, I figure learning to program -- even the calculator --- was a worthwhile skill, hopefully balancing whatever we might have missed by solving some more problems "by hand."
@@DrDavesDiversions I think that it came as 1.5KB with the 1KB mem module already installed. There was another option to add an additional 1KB or upgrade to the 2KB module or add another that would bring the total RAM upto 2.5KB... You know, Casio released an emulator for the fx-8960G for free like in 2008 or so. You should check it out. I wonder if the programming language syntax is the same. It has been years since I used it.
I just ordered a Casio fx-7000g on ebay, can't wait to get started programming it. One advantage over the fx-4000p is that you can see multiple lines of your program on the screen.
@@DrDavesDiversions Yes, it wraps. You still use the colon to separate the statements, but you can see multiple lines of the program and there are arrow keys (↑, ↓, →, ←) to move up and down as well as left and right. Functionally, they are very similar.
Well, after playing around with it, looks like you can use the colon and put everything on one line (wraps), or you can press EXE after each line (no colon), and it will insert a newline and that works as the statement separator. This way it works like a traditional program editor, and it's much easier to read the program.
I totally forgot that I had a fx4000p in high school and programmed it quite a lot. There was some sort of trick you could do which would unlock hidden features/functionality in it. I remember going "whooa" seeing new symbols, words, etc. Sorta like the typical thing where marketing forces engineers to insert a flag that removes certain features (which the system is fully capable of) simply so that people who don't "pay much" don't get the features of the more expensive system. And inevitably some hacker figures out how to put it into "full-mode".
This was the first calculator which I got after passing 10th grade (class) of my school back in 1993 and I was totally fascinated by it. It was the first calculator through which I was introduced to programming and now I am a programmer/software engineer. I wrote my first ever program on this calculator but I felt that it has very low space. However I enjoyed working and programming with this calculator very much. I still have it but sadly it is not in working condition anymore due to wear & tear in so mamy years.
Hi Faraz! I also had it in about 10th grade, but it was '85/'86. I had programmed in BASIC on the TRS-80 and C64 by that time, but I bet this calculator was my first real delving into another language and getting a glimpse of the primitives that make up a lot of languages. I was a programmer for about 20 years, and still do it all the time... but now (as a scientist, that usually codes to solve. a problem I have or to just prototypes products as a proof of concept) I get to choose the language (perl, C, Korn shell, make, etc.) instead of the industry choosing. ;) Peace.
This was a very cool concept to explore, Dr. Dave! I had a TI-92 in high school and it did all of the work for me :) To be able to get this much utility out of a programmable calculator is just plain awesome. And I learned something about Wolfram Alpha too.. had always wondered what it was, but never dove into it. So, ya, I watched the video without any particular question in mind, but by the end had more answers than I could have ever imagined in 21 minutes time! Thanks for making this!!
Appreciate the kind words, Chris! I wrote a few other programs for the fx-4000p (after relearning the programming language), including the 99 bottles song program (which works! but is tedious to run... I wouldn't be surprised if it would take an hour because of the slow scrolling text), but decided doing this 60s era math programming problem from the first BASIC was more interesting and appropriate for a calculator. We often become fans of what we have, and too often detractors of what we don't, so I wasn't a fan of TI and it's "you will be assimilated" move with marketing in schools (ties in with books, etc.), but I see the power of that in hindsight. I did watch this TI-81 video while doing my research, which you can see, e.g., at 8m3s, programs similarly to the Casio. TI-81 - Texas Instruments' first graphing calculator czcams.com/video/vqEmG9iaAbw/video.html#t=8m03s
@@DrDavesDiversions oh, I can tell you, the whole reason I had a TI is for that very reason: the curriculum was geared towards it. To think that similar graphing calculators are selling for MORE than they did when I was in high school in the late 90... well... yeah.. you get the idea... TI knew exactly what they were doing! "Vendor lock in."
Thanks - I enjoyed everything about it: relearning my high school calculator, learning about the original BASIC, and doing the performance comparison to the 64. :)
I became a software engineer because of fx-4000P calculator. I mastered every bits of this calculator. It was my secret weapon to terrorized my high school teachers.
No, I much more often need to produce the words to the 99 bottles of beer song. Based on views, people like that outtake better. *eye roll* :) czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html
@@temporarilyoffline Not sure if I follow; do you mean what does the 99 bottles code look like in the calculator? If so, it's here at 10m58s: czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html I don't show me typing it in to the calculator but it is exactly as show on my Mac screen there. Does that make sense?
@@temporarilyoffline If you want to see what the code looks like in the calculator, I show the interest calculating program at 6m25 seconds here: czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html
If you liked this "graphing" solution on a non-graphing calculator, check out this other one on a Casio FX-502p (at 5m in video) - amazing! czcams.com/video/MHAQLQ7RUpg/video.html#t=5m
@@NuGanjaTron I was especially impressed with "Casio fx-603P Scientific Calculator from 1990" on Calculator Culture channel. Check it if you haven't already!
@@DrDavesDiversions I've never heard of the fx-603p, which isn't surprising as it appears to be exceedingly rare. I understand it's a successor to the fx-602p. I have the fx-501/502/602p, and they are gorgeously sleek, almost sexy calcs, and very capable (for their time) to boot. The "music" feature on the 501/502 was of course "just because", but that was enuff to land Kraftwerk a minor hit with "Taschenrechner": czcams.com/video/9_jNIowu1uk/video.html (Heck, the calc's right there on the cover!)
My equivalent of this was the Psion Organiser which was more basic like and if I remember correctly did have more rows than the Casio. Interesting video Dr Dave.
Thanks, Graham. I do have a Psion Revo Plus around... Is it a Revo or (probably) something earlier? I never programmed on it but loved the full keyboard!
Oh, I didn't catch the capitalised "Organiser". I see; it was literally called that, not one of the myriad generic electronic "pocket organisers". I'd never seen the Psion one: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser
@@DrDavesDiversions Dave, yes that's the exact one I had, as you can see it has a few more rows than the Casio and looking at the one you had in your video the Psion was a lot thicker, probably to accommodate more batteries and the memory modules if my memory serves. I had a lot of fun with it as it was easily pocketable and would run for a long time on its batteries.
@@Wallygjs Looks like a neat device! Thanks for sharing about it. I think I found it also ran a Hitachi processor (like my calculator), but one that was Motorola 6800-derived. datasheets.chipdb.org/Hitachi/6301/HD6301V1.pdf
It ran an early version of OPL, a structured BASIC like language that continued to improve on the later Psion machines, right up to the 32 bit Series 5. The Psion EPOC OS then became the basis of Symbian and OPL was dropped. After Symbian was open sourced, OPL even made it to a few of the Nokia Communicators (if anyone remembers them). It's a great language to program in, much more like BASIC than that monstrosity on the calculator! 😉
Hola! To do this, hit MODE then 7, then 3 (the number of digits you'd like to be displayed after the decimal point), then EXE; it will display "0.001". To return to normal, hit MODE then 9, EXE. This is on page 4 of the manual: archive.org/details/casio-fx-4000p-owners-manual Peace.
why did I watch this ? I never owned a Basic handheld computer, I used HP’s calculators in the 80’s (RPN programming). Your presentation was interesting though, thank you Dave. question : where was N initialised in the C64 program ?
Ha, I guess a lot of CZcams is like that. At 3am this morning, I was learning how ROPE read-only core memory worked in the Apollo Guidance Computer on CuriousMarc's channel. Anyway, I'm glad you found it interesting (too). The variable N is initialized by the READ on line 20 (coincidentally by reading the value "20") from the DATA defined on line 900. You can see this in the video beginning about 5m5s. (This is straight from the student's program. It ran as-is on the 64's BASIC.)
Ha. That's on topic. I'm originally from MKE too. :) You might know the sconnie.com apparel is available online, but if you want to surprise her with something from Sconniebar, in Madison (only the loosest affiliation with sconnie.com), drop me an email and I can almost certainly get something to you. :)
Hmmm, I sort of understand your reasoning, but that calculator language is the opposite of BASIC. It's completely cryptic. 😁 For a proper basic, some of the old 68K based TI calculators can run a version of BBC Basic. It was (and still is) a very fast, structured version, originally built in to the 8 bit (Acorn) BBC Micro in UK schools, and later on, in the 32 bit Acorn Archimedes, which had Acorn's new 32 bit Risc processor design. The 'Acorn Risc Machines' processor... better known as ARM.
Sure, I take your point about opposite for some say, Dsz vs. "next", or some similar parallel syntax. CASIO had a proper "real" BASIC (soon after this), based on primitives like the language here. Neither here not there, but I just saw a nice Acorn machine looking a /lot/ like an Amiga 500 at Vintage Computer Festival Midwest this past weekend!
Here's the same program in RPN for the HP-42S. It seems like the Casio programming language is much more compact. 00 { 108-Byte Prgm } 01▸LBL "QUINTIC" 02 INPUT "N" 03 0 04 STO "A" 05 1 06 STO "B" 07 0.5 08 STO "X" 09▸LBL 01 10 XEQ "FX" 11 X
Nice! I've worked with RPN, but not on a calculator, just in programming languages. I see yours say "108-Byte Prgm". On my fx-4000P, mine uses 95 "steps" (across 2 programs, because I made the quintic function a separate program that the other program calls), so similar in that regard. The RPN is much more verbose, in character count (even if line numbers are discarded) and line count (the latter to be expected since each expression's terms get their own line in RPN). Here is the way I showed it in the video (one statement per line): $ wc -l quintic*.pcas # statement (line) count 17 quintic.pcas 1 quinticEqn.pcas 18 total On the fx-4000P, itself, it looks like this: $ head quintic*.cas ==> quintic.cas
@@DrDavesDiversions So, to match yours as much as possible, I broke out f(x) into a separate program. Interestingly, the total byte count went down from 108 to104. That's because I removed an LBL, GTO and RTN from the original program which aren't needed anymore. I also think the code is a lot cleaner and easier to understand this way. 00 { 25-Byte Prgm } 01▸LBL "FX" 02 RCL "X" 03 5 04 Y↑X 05 RCL "X" 06 3 07 Y↑X 08 2 09 × 10 + 11 1 12 - 13 .END. 00 { 79-Byte Prgm } 01▸LBL "QUINTIC" 02 INPUT "N" 03 0 04 STO "A" 05 1 06 STO "B" 07 0.5 08 STO "X" 09▸LBL 01 10 XEQ "FX" 11 X
Hi Dave, I just wanted to know how much this calculator is worth because I found one of these in a cupboard at my grandma's and it's in amazing condition
This suggests maybe it's worth most to your grandma . :) I don't know but you've probably seen on eBay people ask for $50+. I don't know of anyone who would value it at that.
Very cool experiment. I hesitate to call the programming language "BASIC" simply because it isn't -- it's Casio's own tokenised language, and IMHO much more compact and concise than BASIC. Personally, I like the challenge of minimalistic programming; although I have a few of Casio's true basic programmables like the fx-790P and fx-850P, I actually find them less appealing. I had an fx-6000G at school, also around '86, which had the distinction of being among the first graphing calculators along with the larger fx-7000G. The programming model is identical to that of the fx-4000P, plus some graphics commands. The 4-line display of course helped hugely when navigating your code! My groundbreaking achievement at the time was a ballistics game that I mostly developed in the boring classes (english lit and history, ahem). I revised it in the early 2000s and used ever single program step -- which I humbly considered quite a feat at the time. I've provided the listing on my personal website here (see bottom of page): ganjatron.net/retrocomputing/casio-fx6000g/index.html
Nice! Thanks for the link. Obv., as I say in the video, it's not BASIC, but functionally equivalent in many ways. I liked using the opportunity to compare/contrast how a student in the '60s and in the '80s would have approached the same task, while also teaching about the origins of BASIC. Hope you did too!
@@DrDavesDiversions Btw, I forgot to point out (and you probably know this) that these Casios accept implied multiplication, e.g. 3π instead of 3×π. That can save valuable program steps, and I had to fully leverage that on the fx-6000G with its tiny memory.
Something about ballistics, apparently. I consider the point when I learned programming to be when dad guided me through writing a golf game on the fx-4500P. I had poked at BASIC on PC and Atari ST before then, but it didn't quite click.
Great video, thanks! This brings back memories. I used a Casio fx-7700G all throughout college (still have it!). At that time I knew how to program it, but I've since forgotten. It was a lot easier having multiple lines and a screen editor!
Thanks, Matt! The fx-7700g looks nice! What in *the world* was going on that Casio made *so many* caculators, simultaneously, and subsequently??
I also spent days [re]reading the manual for mine to write a few programs (that I edited out). I had mostly forgotten, too.
Ya, the screen editor would be nice, but, honestly, I didn't care one wit back in the mid '80s. It was amazing to be able to write equations and notes in a calculator!
@@DrDavesDiversions I still have the original paper manual for this thing somewhere; I should dig it out. I had friends who were more talented programmers than I who wrote entire little games from scratch for the Casio. My programs were never that advanced :P
@@retrobitstv I only wrote guessing games using the random number generator. While researching for this video, I saw people hacked TI calculators and wrote games including tetris for them!
@@retrobitstv I found a photo/PDF of my manual online; you can probably, too. I have the real fx-4000p manual, but I think its on the bookshelf in our Boston apartment that I haven't been to in a year... soon, though!
I had the Radio Shack TANDY PC-7 calculator which was the Casio fx-5200P. I remember buying on discount at radio shack in '86. I used it in my high school freshman geometry class. It was hilarious, because I just made a bunch of programs to solve for things like side-angle-side, side-side-side...etc...to solve all the triangles.
Oh, neat. Ya, I remember that one. I visited Radio Shack all the time. Neat that it's expandable to 1.5KB according to this: www.rskey.org/CMS/8-programmable-calculators/259-pc7
I happened to just yesterday add a link to the fx-5200p in this video description after discovering it had BASIC.
I also used mine to write programs that displayed notes, like equations. On the whole, I figure learning to program -- even the calculator --- was a worthwhile skill, hopefully balancing whatever we might have missed by solving some more problems "by hand."
@@DrDavesDiversions I think that it came as 1.5KB with the 1KB mem module already installed. There was another option to add an additional 1KB or upgrade to the 2KB module or add another that would bring the total RAM upto 2.5KB...
You know, Casio released an emulator for the fx-8960G for free like in 2008 or so. You should check it out. I wonder if the programming language syntax is the same. It has been years since I used it.
@@CobraTheSpacePirate Thanks for the tip!
If it is of interest, I'll post the source code to the Casio programs I wrote for this.
I just ordered a Casio fx-7000g on ebay, can't wait to get started programming it. One advantage over the fx-4000p is that you can see multiple lines of your program on the screen.
Interesting - I wonder if it just wraps (using the same colon to separate statements), or if there are new-lines. I've never used the 7000g.
@@DrDavesDiversions Yes, it wraps. You still use the colon to separate the statements, but you can see multiple lines of the program and there are arrow keys (↑, ↓, →, ←) to move up and down as well as left and right. Functionally, they are very similar.
Well, after playing around with it, looks like you can use the colon and put everything on one line (wraps), or you can press EXE after each line (no colon), and it will insert a newline and that works as the statement separator. This way it works like a traditional program editor, and it's much easier to read the program.
Great video. I remember these calculators from my high-school years. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
How many [programming] steps can one walk down memory lane? :)
I totally forgot that I had a fx4000p in high school and programmed it quite a lot. There was some sort of trick you could do which would unlock hidden features/functionality in it. I remember going "whooa" seeing new symbols, words, etc. Sorta like the typical thing where marketing forces engineers to insert a flag that removes certain features (which the system is fully capable of) simply so that people who don't "pay much" don't get the features of the more expensive system. And inevitably some hacker figures out how to put it into "full-mode".
I did find online references to such a thing, but the consensus seemed to be that it messes up some memory/addressing though.
This was the first calculator which I got after passing 10th grade (class) of my school back in 1993 and I was totally fascinated by it. It was the first calculator through which I was introduced to programming and now I am a programmer/software engineer. I wrote my first ever program on this calculator but I felt that it has very low space. However I enjoyed working and programming with this calculator very much. I still have it but sadly it is not in working condition anymore due to wear & tear in so mamy years.
Hi Faraz! I also had it in about 10th grade, but it was '85/'86. I had programmed in BASIC on the TRS-80 and C64 by that time, but I bet this calculator was my first real delving into another language and getting a glimpse of the primitives that make up a lot of languages. I was a programmer for about 20 years, and still do it all the time... but now (as a scientist, that usually codes to solve. a problem I have or to just prototypes products as a proof of concept) I get to choose the language (perl, C, Korn shell, make, etc.) instead of the industry choosing. ;)
Peace.
i have the same fx and i love the puristic design
It's definitely a great calculator and fun to use (again) nowadays!
This was a very cool concept to explore, Dr. Dave! I had a TI-92 in high school and it did all of the work for me :) To be able to get this much utility out of a programmable calculator is just plain awesome. And I learned something about Wolfram Alpha too.. had always wondered what it was, but never dove into it. So, ya, I watched the video without any particular question in mind, but by the end had more answers than I could have ever imagined in 21 minutes time! Thanks for making this!!
Appreciate the kind words, Chris!
I wrote a few other programs for the fx-4000p (after relearning the programming language), including the 99 bottles song program (which works! but is tedious to run... I wouldn't be surprised if it would take an hour because of the slow scrolling text), but decided doing this 60s era math programming problem from the first BASIC was more interesting and appropriate for a calculator.
We often become fans of what we have, and too often detractors of what we don't, so I wasn't a fan of TI and it's "you will be assimilated" move with marketing in schools (ties in with books, etc.), but I see the power of that in hindsight.
I did watch this TI-81 video while doing my research, which you can see, e.g., at 8m3s, programs similarly to the Casio.
TI-81 - Texas Instruments' first graphing calculator
czcams.com/video/vqEmG9iaAbw/video.html#t=8m03s
@@DrDavesDiversions oh, I can tell you, the whole reason I had a TI is for that very reason: the curriculum was geared towards it. To think that similar graphing calculators are selling for MORE than they did when I was in high school in the late 90... well... yeah.. you get the idea... TI knew exactly what they were doing! "Vendor lock in."
@@RetroTechChris Ah... fondly remembering a time before "Big Calc" had its way with us.
:)
@@DrDavesDiversions those were simpler times!
Saya telah mencoba terapkan pada program statistik pertanian dan hasilnya memuaskan dan wow....keren
Nice. I love it
Thanks - I enjoyed everything about it: relearning my high school calculator, learning about the original BASIC, and doing the performance comparison to the 64. :)
I became a software engineer because of fx-4000P calculator. I mastered every bits of this calculator. It was my secret weapon to terrorized my high school teachers.
haha... well, we certainly have that in common. :)
Benar sekali saya pernah memiliki pada tahun 80 an
Its nice to find the x-intercept... but outside of high school math class, I've never needed to do that. Have you used that?
No, I much more often need to produce the words to the 99 bottles of beer song. Based on views, people like that outtake better. *eye roll* :)
czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html
@@DrDavesDiversions Beer has a little more of a connection for some people. Is this program small enough to show code entry? Did I miss it?
@@temporarilyoffline Not sure if I follow; do you mean what does the 99 bottles code look like in the calculator? If so, it's here at 10m58s:
czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html
I don't show me typing it in to the calculator but it is exactly as show on my Mac screen there. Does that make sense?
@@temporarilyoffline If you want to see what the code looks like in the calculator, I show the interest calculating program at 6m25 seconds here:
czcams.com/video/zy0HPAIi_dg/video.html
@@DrDavesDiversions Yeah, that works... I wanted to see how the code was input into the calc. Thanks!
If you liked this "graphing" solution on a non-graphing calculator, check out this other one on a Casio FX-502p (at 5m in video) - amazing!
czcams.com/video/MHAQLQ7RUpg/video.html#t=5m
The fx-501/502/601/602p series r00lz!!! Probably some of the best calcs Casio ever produced. Particularly if they can play "music"... 😜
@@NuGanjaTron I was especially impressed with "Casio fx-603P Scientific Calculator from 1990" on Calculator Culture channel.
Check it if you haven't already!
@@DrDavesDiversions I've never heard of the fx-603p, which isn't surprising as it appears to be exceedingly rare. I understand it's a successor to the fx-602p. I have the fx-501/502/602p, and they are gorgeously sleek, almost sexy calcs, and very capable (for their time) to boot. The "music" feature on the 501/502 was of course "just because", but that was enuff to land Kraftwerk a minor hit with "Taschenrechner": czcams.com/video/9_jNIowu1uk/video.html
(Heck, the calc's right there on the cover!)
@@NuGanjaTron Rock on!
My equivalent of this was the Psion Organiser which was more basic like and if I remember correctly did have more rows than the Casio. Interesting video Dr Dave.
Thanks, Graham. I do have a Psion Revo Plus around... Is it a Revo or (probably) something earlier? I never programmed on it but loved the full keyboard!
Oh, I didn't catch the capitalised "Organiser".
I see; it was literally called that, not one of the myriad generic electronic "pocket organisers".
I'd never seen the Psion one:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser
@@DrDavesDiversions Dave, yes that's the exact one I had, as you can see it has a few more rows than the Casio and looking at the one you had in your video the Psion was a lot thicker, probably to accommodate more batteries and the memory modules if my memory serves. I had a lot of fun with it as it was easily pocketable and would run for a long time on its batteries.
@@Wallygjs Looks like a neat device!
Thanks for sharing about it. I think I found it also ran a Hitachi processor (like my calculator), but one that was Motorola 6800-derived.
datasheets.chipdb.org/Hitachi/6301/HD6301V1.pdf
It ran an early version of OPL, a structured BASIC like language that continued to improve on the later Psion machines, right up to the 32 bit Series 5. The Psion EPOC OS then became the basis of Symbian and OPL was dropped. After Symbian was open sourced, OPL even made it to a few of the Nokia Communicators (if anyone remembers them). It's a great language to program in, much more like BASIC than that monstrosity on the calculator! 😉
Hola..como dejo la fx4000p normal 2 ???....si divido 1/1000 me muestra 10 elevado a - 3 y quiero que muestre 0.001....me ayudan?
Hola! To do this, hit MODE then 7, then 3 (the number of digits you'd like to be displayed after the decimal point), then EXE; it will display "0.001".
To return to normal, hit MODE then 9, EXE.
This is on page 4 of the manual:
archive.org/details/casio-fx-4000p-owners-manual
Peace.
@@DrDavesDiversions gracias master!!...fue la solución!!! gracias!!!
why did I watch this ? I never owned a Basic handheld computer, I used HP’s calculators in the 80’s (RPN programming). Your presentation was interesting though, thank you Dave. question : where was N initialised in the C64 program ?
Ha, I guess a lot of CZcams is like that. At 3am this morning, I was learning how ROPE read-only core memory worked in the Apollo Guidance Computer on CuriousMarc's channel.
Anyway, I'm glad you found it interesting (too). The variable N is initialized by the READ on line 20 (coincidentally by reading the value "20") from the DATA defined on line 900. You can see this in the video beginning about 5m5s. (This is straight from the student's program. It ran as-is on the 64's BASIC.)
@@DrDavesDiversions now I get it, thank you Dave , and continue to enjoy 😊
I know it's a little off topic, but my wife, who is from the Milwaukee area, loves that sweatshirt.
Ha. That's on topic. I'm originally from MKE too. :) You might know the sconnie.com apparel is available online, but if you want to surprise her with something from Sconniebar, in Madison (only the loosest affiliation with sconnie.com), drop me an email and I can almost certainly get something to you. :)
Hmmm, I sort of understand your reasoning, but that calculator language is the opposite of BASIC. It's completely cryptic. 😁 For a proper basic, some of the old 68K based TI calculators can run a version of BBC Basic. It was (and still is) a very fast, structured version, originally built in to the 8 bit (Acorn) BBC Micro in UK schools, and later on, in the 32 bit Acorn Archimedes, which had Acorn's new 32 bit Risc processor design. The 'Acorn Risc Machines' processor... better known as ARM.
Sure, I take your point about opposite for some say, Dsz vs. "next", or some similar parallel syntax. CASIO had a proper "real" BASIC (soon after this), based on primitives like the language here.
Neither here not there, but I just saw a nice Acorn machine looking a /lot/ like an Amiga 500 at Vintage Computer Festival Midwest this past weekend!
Here's the same program in RPN for the HP-42S. It seems like the Casio programming language is much more compact.
00 { 108-Byte Prgm }
01▸LBL "QUINTIC"
02 INPUT "N"
03 0
04 STO "A"
05 1
06 STO "B"
07 0.5
08 STO "X"
09▸LBL 01
10 XEQ "FX"
11 X
Nice! I've worked with RPN, but not on a calculator, just in programming languages.
I see yours say "108-Byte Prgm".
On my fx-4000P, mine uses 95 "steps" (across 2 programs, because I made the quintic function a separate program that the other program calls), so similar in that regard.
The RPN is much more verbose, in character count (even if line numbers are discarded) and line count (the latter to be expected since each expression's terms get their own line in RPN).
Here is the way I showed it in the video (one statement per line):
$ wc -l quintic*.pcas # statement (line) count
17 quintic.pcas
1 quinticEqn.pcas
18 total
On the fx-4000P, itself, it looks like this:
$ head quintic*.cas
==> quintic.cas
@@DrDavesDiversions So, to match yours as much as possible, I broke out f(x) into a separate program. Interestingly, the total byte count went down from 108 to104. That's because I removed an LBL, GTO and RTN from the original program which aren't needed anymore. I also think the code is a lot cleaner and easier to understand this way.
00 { 25-Byte Prgm }
01▸LBL "FX"
02 RCL "X"
03 5
04 Y↑X
05 RCL "X"
06 3
07 Y↑X
08 2
09 ×
10 +
11 1
12 -
13 .END.
00 { 79-Byte Prgm }
01▸LBL "QUINTIC"
02 INPUT "N"
03 0
04 STO "A"
05 1
06 STO "B"
07 0.5
08 STO "X"
09▸LBL 01
10 XEQ "FX"
11 X
@@gaius_marius Nice! Fun stuff.
I have
Fx-720p casio its a cool
Hi Dave, I just wanted to know how much this calculator is worth because I found one of these in a cupboard at my grandma's and it's in amazing condition
This suggests maybe it's worth most to your grandma . :)
I don't know but you've probably seen on eBay people ask for $50+. I don't know of anyone who would value it at that.
Very cool experiment. I hesitate to call the programming language "BASIC" simply because it isn't -- it's Casio's own tokenised language, and IMHO much more compact and concise than BASIC. Personally, I like the challenge of minimalistic programming; although I have a few of Casio's true basic programmables like the fx-790P and fx-850P, I actually find them less appealing.
I had an fx-6000G at school, also around '86, which had the distinction of being among the first graphing calculators along with the larger fx-7000G. The programming model is identical to that of the fx-4000P, plus some graphics commands. The 4-line display of course helped hugely when navigating your code!
My groundbreaking achievement at the time was a ballistics game that I mostly developed in the boring classes (english lit and history, ahem). I revised it in the early 2000s and used ever single program step -- which I humbly considered quite a feat at the time. I've provided the listing on my personal website here (see bottom of page): ganjatron.net/retrocomputing/casio-fx6000g/index.html
Nice! Thanks for the link.
Obv., as I say in the video, it's not BASIC, but functionally equivalent in many ways. I liked using the opportunity to compare/contrast how a student in the '60s and in the '80s would have approached the same task, while also teaching about the origins of BASIC. Hope you did too!
@@DrDavesDiversions Btw, I forgot to point out (and you probably know this) that these Casios accept implied multiplication, e.g. 3π instead of 3×π. That can save valuable program steps, and I had to fully leverage that on the fx-6000G with its tiny memory.
@@NuGanjaTron nice tip!
Saya juga merasakan hal sama, melatih logika namun program basic pada literatur dosen sampai sekarang tidak paham
Something about ballistics, apparently. I consider the point when I learned programming to be when dad guided me through writing a golf game on the fx-4500P. I had poked at BASIC on PC and Atari ST before then, but it didn't quite click.