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Mike Sebastian, whose interest in vintage technologies is not limited to just calculators, is organizing the 30th annual Retro-Tech Show in Dallas/Fort Worth, on May 9, 2026. See RetroTechShows.com for details.
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It's not every day that I post a backlog of as many as 12 calculator images (all thrift store finds from the past few months; none are programmable, though):
- Two Aurex 108i scientifics, a red and a blue one.
- A large-digit basic calculator labeled CORA TK-400.
- A Canon F-605G.
- A Casio fx-300s, not exactly in great shape (heavily used) but functional.
- An HP 10bII, with a faulty display... oh the shame! Once mighty HP using the cheapest Asian manufacturers I guess, using the same unreliably zebra strips that you find in dollar store budget calculators...
- Two no-name scientifics, one black, one white.
- A Sharp EL-540 (oldie but goldie) And a far less common Sharp EL-738 (business/financial).
- Last but not least, two more variants of the all-time classic from Texas Instruments: A TI-30Xa and a TI-30X IIB.
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Mike Sebastian, who is at least as fond of vintage calculators as I am, is organizing the 28th annual Retro-Tech Show in Dallas/Fort Worth, on May 11, 2024.
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There's a horrible epidemic that is taking a toll on software installations. It's called versionitis: The unwelcome, but necessary, upgrades that consume an awful lot of time, cause a lot of frustration and ultimately, even break features.
Versionitis recently attacked rskey.org: That is to say, the content management system we use, Joomla, has a new version (well, it's been around for years really) and as a result, the version we've been using, Joomla 3, is going out of support. And on the Interwebs, we cannot have public-facing software that is unsupported by security fixes. Hence the mandatory upgrade.
Unfortunately, it broke at least one feature: Our ability to link articles to Facebook, using a Facebook plugin to let users "like" calculators or post comments.
Oh well, the feature was not used much anyway, but I still regret that we lost it. Perhaps one day I'll be able to bring it back in some shape or form, but for now, my next major project will be (if I ever get around to getting it done) an upgrade of the visual appearance of the site, to make it more compatible with small-screen mobile devices.
Anyhow, expect glitches: this upgrade was complex and chances are there are still some rough edges, resulting in broken links or other errors.
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Not on this site, but deserves a mention: Joerg Woerner's detailed history of the development of the TI-88.
