In '82, when I went back to school, the physics teacher recommended we all buy a Casio ft-3600p calculator, which I did.
It had the capacity to program 2 different formulas.
I did one for converting numeric numbers to binary.
Other students started to complain that I was unfairly using it during exams, even the ones who had purchased the same calculator. So the instructor forbid the use of all calculators on the next exam.
I still got a higher score than anyone in the class...
It's not the tool, it's knowing how to use it.
Same applies to shooting, or machine work.
I see cops empty their glucks, and never hit their target, and 'machinists' with the best machine tools available, make nothing but scrap, while good ones take perps out with a single round, and good machinists make precision parts on old, worn out equipment.
By the way, that Casio lasted 40+ years, when the button contacts wore out, but fortunately, I found a new one, still in the box on eBay.
Around that same time, I bought my first computer, a Timex Simplex 1000, that I don't think I had more than a few months, before stepping up to a Texas Instruments, TI99.
One of the programs I had written for the Casio, was a two-cycle tuned pipe program, that I had been using for 10 years, but with a normal calculator, it took a lot of steps, and paper to finally get to the finished pipe dimensions.
Later I wrote that program on the TI99, and was streamlined so I could just enter the RPM, port timing, and how wide I wanted the power band, and step through it, have the numbers within a minute or two. Then that was rewritten to run on a 386 pc.
The last pipes I built using it was back around '93, when I was still racing, and building pipes for others.
One of them was for the 250cc super kart that won the S.W. Road Racing Championship that year.
It had the capacity to program 2 different formulas.
I did one for converting numeric numbers to binary.
Other students started to complain that I was unfairly using it during exams, even the ones who had purchased the same calculator. So the instructor forbid the use of all calculators on the next exam.
I still got a higher score than anyone in the class...
It's not the tool, it's knowing how to use it.
Same applies to shooting, or machine work.
I see cops empty their glucks, and never hit their target, and 'machinists' with the best machine tools available, make nothing but scrap, while good ones take perps out with a single round, and good machinists make precision parts on old, worn out equipment.
By the way, that Casio lasted 40+ years, when the button contacts wore out, but fortunately, I found a new one, still in the box on eBay.
Around that same time, I bought my first computer, a Timex Simplex 1000, that I don't think I had more than a few months, before stepping up to a Texas Instruments, TI99.
One of the programs I had written for the Casio, was a two-cycle tuned pipe program, that I had been using for 10 years, but with a normal calculator, it took a lot of steps, and paper to finally get to the finished pipe dimensions.
Later I wrote that program on the TI99, and was streamlined so I could just enter the RPM, port timing, and how wide I wanted the power band, and step through it, have the numbers within a minute or two. Then that was rewritten to run on a 386 pc.
The last pipes I built using it was back around '93, when I was still racing, and building pipes for others.
One of them was for the 250cc super kart that won the S.W. Road Racing Championship that year.
Attachments
Last edited:
I started on RPN in 6th grade or so. If I use a calculator, it's RPN. I tried to explain RPN to a friend about a year ago; he didn't get it. 
It's more efficient and just better than anything else. 
