I think TI donated the calculators to the schools in the same way it was a “requirement” in CS1501 that all students learn the basics of Microsoft Office on donated software — which, oddly, gets MS more points in the “we donate money” headlines. More people went out to buy TI-85s after using them in class so they could use the bricks at home and TI was happy to pull in the cash. I still love my ‘85 and, for awhile, carried it with me and used it in some USF classes. I got really weird looks for that.

RPN was impressive and made sense, but I never took the time to learn it and never invested in an HP. Do their calculators even recognize RPN input these days?

In retrospect it seems silly for high school kids to be using graphing calculators. Or maybe anybody, for that matter. My recollection of the parts of class that utilized them was that they were very tedious, with the teacher guiding us through it at the lowest common denominator speed. “Ok, now press 2nd. Yes… 2nd. Ok… everybody got that?” Perhaps it’s an effective way of letting kids see an “Oooh! Neato!” aspect of the Math, that an expression like y=x^2 yields a nice curve, but aside from visualizing curves, why is this necessary? If only some math teachers read this blog, all could be explained!

Also, datamath.org says the introductory price for the TI-85 was $130 in 1992 — about the same as today’s going rate for TI-86’s.

“The TI-68 lets you enter an expression into the entry line the same way as you would write it. You can move throught the entry line to review or edit any part of the expression before evaluating it.”

I routinely sneer[ed] at the guys spending three digits for their HP calculators, or even you guys with graphing TIs. For 99% of the work my $60 TI-68 was faster, including at basic programming. For the 1% of graphing and fancier programming, use your PC at home and quit dicking around with your calculator during lecture, young man! Oh and spare me the tears when you lose it :)

Two of my coworkers (Chap among them) swear by the RPN method. I can see the appeal, but it never caught on for me.

As for sound on the data jack — I had no idea this was even possible, but here’s a program that claims to do it!

I never did find the rumored app for ZShell that produced music through the data jack to headphones.