Calculated Desperation
Submitted by: Gary Gehiere via Submit a Kludge!
Most kids get a TI-89 without even considering its illustrious past. Much like the precursor to the T-800, this calculator is functional but not pretty.
Favorite Comment: Fixer Thadius says, “I wouldn’t be so quick to judge that the switch turns on/off the calculator. For all we know, that’s a kludged doomsday device activation protocol.”
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this looks like my time traveling machine
Wow. I haven’t seen a calculator like that in years.
My parents used to have a 1970-something TI that they kept up on a high shelf in a kitchen cabinet so the kids couldn’t mess with it. It was a pretty expensive gadget to own at the time, I suppose, and it had its own fancy-schmancy carrying case, even.
Whenever we did get ahold of it, though, we only used it for important stuff, like spelling words upside down: HELLO, BOOBLESS… oh, you guys know the drill.
You can also write LOL!
I can’t bear to think that because of the advances of technology, my kids will never have the pleasure of typing 55378008 into a calculator and then giggling incessantly as they hold it upside-down. For example, I think the calculator font on my iPod Touch is Times New Roman. The memories. *sigh*
Sad thing is that toggle switch likely cost more than a new calculator, since you can by calculators at every dollar store across America!
True. I’m guessing this kludge was created a few decades ago.
Actually when these calculators first came out they were a couple hundred dollars
Yea, I remember getting one in 1973 or so and it was over $300.
(no, not OVER NINE-THOUSAND!!!111!!11ONES!!)
That was the first thing I thought.
I guess this is just out of determination to keep an old calculator out of the landfill. Mine has all the functions of this one, and it cost me a dollar at Walmart five or six years ago.
(Quiz: How many calculators could I have bought for the cost of one switch? What’s that? You don’t know, because your calculator isn’t working?)
Of course, I have to concede that mine doesn’t have the awesome red or green numbers I expect to see here, so carry on.
Something here just doesn’t add up…
I can’t count the number of times I thought the same thing. Is it a kludge win or kludge fail? I’m a little divided.
…And just watch as the puns multiply.
But what percentage of these puns will be minus any humor?
Hey now, bad puns are integral to this site.
The degree of the kludge is irrelevant. The root of it is just a function of the limit or hackery.
But it’s all just derivative humor. It’s formulaic.
I didn’t think that calculator did integrals. Or derivatives. On the plus side, a switch in time saves 9. That sums it all up.
Don’t forget to factor in the zombie stories and their various derivatives. However, bad puns seem to be a common denominator. But I think we’re going off on a tangent.
I have a toggle swithch doing nothing and a caculator that can’t do anything. Me fix, now both can do something for me.
Oh my name is DR FRANKENKLUDGE, MWHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Now where did I put those bolts?
I think I’m getting a sine-us infection.
*facepalm*
Toggle switches are much more fun to use than pushing a simple on/off button!
Just in time for tax season, a calculator with an “undo all” function!
The switch turns on the “show your work” option.
I wouldn’t be so quick to judge that the switch turns on/off the calculator. For all we know, that’s a kludged doomsday device activation protocol.
The “Armegeddon Key” was standard on HP calculators in the eighties, but no one could figure out how to make it work with reverse Polish notation.
I never could figure out Reverse Polish Notation!! I was (and still am) LIKE WTF?@?!?!?!!
Just after getting out of the Army in ’72 I worked at the TI calculator assembly plant in Dallas. The transistors at the time were as big around as the end of your little finger. They had three long wire leads on them that had to be formed and cut to fit into the calculator printed circuit boards. The circuit boards started at one end of the line and they got stuffed with parts, by HUMANS, including those giant transistors as they walked down the line. The most expensive calculators had three transistors, while others has two. They cost in the hundreds of dollars for five or six primary math functions. Mine still works today except for a couple of the LED ‘wires’ are burnt out. One of the best products TI ever made.
I remember the excitement of friend being able to afford one of these.
And one of my boy friends gave me a transistor or thyristor, big enough to be bent into what was technically a finger-ring. (Wish I knew where that is, probably long gone.)
Yea, Heathkit (anyone remember THEM??) had several calculator kits back in the ’70′s. I got an 8-digit LED calculator kit one Christmas! Woohoo!! Good times back then. Lot of parts, too — it had one transistor per digit and at least a half-dozen more, plus chips to debounce the keys. Then there was the main “calculator” chip – which I fried by walking across the carpet. That main chip was something like $25!!
Calculating with stone knives and bearskins. At least I didn’t have to learn how to use a slide rule, praise the gods of calculators!
Looks like the remote control for my flux-capacitor.
I’m most impressed with the blue plastic Pendaflex tab held on with Scotch tape that serves as the screen protector. That calculator must really have some sentimental value to go through all that effort to keep it working.
looks like fallout 3…
i guess it is an early prototype of the pip-boy wristmounted computers.
ofc, it would be highly impractical to have to fish it out of your pocket every time you need to change weapon…
or it is a recreation of the fusion-pulse charge, continuing on the thought of it being a doomsday activator.
I’m still not clear how installing that mini joystick is going to give you and your fellow mathletes the advantage over your competitors at the next meet.
They might be using the switch to click in Morse code to each other.
My father once said: “Son, you can play your fancy little Tetris games on your calculator, but when I was your age, all we had was Pong”.
Where’s the touchscreen?
It’s a divide-by-zero override switch!
student: “Ok, lets see….two trains leave the station….mnnhmm…40…carry the….” tap,tap,tap. “and then i hit the equal button aaaaaand” tap….
(calculator hums ominously to life)
Student: “Oh…Oh God! OH GOD NO! HELP!!!”
Professor: “What is it!?”
Student: “I..I think I divided by Zero! What do I do!?
Professor: “Damn fool of a child! Quick, throw the override!”
Student: “The what!?!?!?!?!”
Professor: “The switch! for the love of all that is Holy, TOGGLE THE SWITCH!”
I miss my HP 32sII. RPN FTW.
My sister had a RPN HP. I thought it made so much sense and would have loved to have one, but I had already bought a nice, spanking TI-86 with normal, human notation and by this point I’ve already forgotten why I ever loved RPN
I guess a bit of my nerdness has died with time, I’m sad to say.
The switch toggles between calculator and time machine.
This looks like the perfect solution to the On/CE button.
So many years… so much inability to turn calculator off before five minute mark to save battery life …
Covering up the sensor was too rudimentary for you?
You young people and yer fancy SOLAR calculators!
I doubt I’d worry about battery life in the ones powered by the sun… now, kludging a collector array for the solar one so it works on cloudy days might be a good option.
You young people and yer fancy calculators! I still have my first abacus!
You young people and yer fancy opposable thumbs. Why, when I count on my fingers…
Maybe they added the switch to make up for the lack of exercise from the decline of the slide rule.
I guess you had to be there. This ‘kludge’ was common among those of us who didn’t want to pay extra for the same calculator with a memory function. If you had a modicum of soldering skill, and a cabbaged toggle switch, you could add the ‘amazing’ memory function to any four function calculator of the time.
Should have added that: Yes, this calculator already had a memory function, but not the memory-swap capability.
I own a pair of TI89′s (it’s a long story), but I keep my dad’s college calculator as a spare. It’s an ancient 81 (height of cold war technology!). The joke in my calc class currently goes, “fear Strife’s 89, it’s the anti-christ. Fear the radiation from the 81.”
My attempts to reduce the radiation leak with duct tape went somewhat well, but then I had to change the batteries.
Look Macgyver, walk over to the dollar store and buy yourself a new one.
I had a calculator of that vintage with wires coming out of it.
If you typed +1= it would add 1 every time you hit the “=”. So it worked as an electronic counter. I added a photo sensor. This was around 1974. The calculator was really cheap, because it came off of the broken stuff table at RadioShack. Easy to fix. Yes kids, in my day, it was possible to repair electronics.
If you cut the black wire, the calculator can reduce irrational numbers to fractions. If you cut the red wire, it explodes.
9999. √. Int.
“Hey Sanborn… SANBORN!!! The butcher’s got a calculator!”
“Damn – burn him, Eldridge, burn him! Thompson, get out of there!”
what scares me is that the kludge hasn’t made the calculator any uglier
REDUCE , REUSE , RECYCLE
Looks like a similar calculator I ‘fixed’ while in high school. Only, I ran the wires through the little hole where the power switch was, and I epoxied the switch to the top of the case. Hey, when calculators cost $100 in today’s money, it’s worth the time to cobble them into working!
OK, I didn’t post this, but that is my calculator. Yes, I already had the switch lying around so I didn’t need to buy it. The color window is from a file folder. I did buy a new one at Walgreens for 99 cents but didn’t like how the buttons felt, this one has a definite click to it. The calculator belonged to my ex-wife, I kept it, it’s about 1980 vintage from Radio Shack and I believe it cost about $5. I took it in to work (where I use it daily) as the batteries were two AA, and the one I had before that took a hard-to-find “N” size. My work wouldn’t buy us portable calculators then.
And when I came to I had a vision…a picture in my head! A picture of this…the flux capacitor!
Damn, that belongs to the guy who did my taxes this year!
WOW!this calculator already had a memory function.
I have only one question regarding this Kludge.
How do I turn on the WiFi?
Why throw away such a perfectly good calculator just because one button is broke?