is anyone aware of a physical calculator (an actual one, with buttons) designed for working with integers, hex, and binary, with support for both arithmetic and binary operations?
I'm looking for something with the simplicity of a basic calculator, with minimal cognitive effort to operate it, rather than something where I have to constantly press a bunch of buttons to switch modes or do anything useful.
NOT a regular calculator that has a hex mode - I want something designed for binary ops.
@gsuberland I have used this Sharp EL-506D for many, many years. When put into Hex mode (2nd function to get there), hex digits and binary operations are one-touch. Most scientific operations require returning to decimal, and hex operation is integer. It also handles octal and binary.
@gsuberland That was not this one, then. Binary operations are single press ... 3fc7 AND 7f or whatever. When you switch to hex or octal, several of the scientific keys become first function binary operations.
@gsuberland I guess binary operations on decimal are several presses, but ordinarily that hasn't been an issue for me. That would depend on usage. If you need binary operations on any base as first functions, I the HP 16C remakes are the only option I know. (They came up elsewhere in this thread.)
@gsuberland The old Casio Fx7000G could do it, I'm not sure the current models; see the layout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_fx-7000G#/media/File:Casio_fx-7000G_FullLength.JPG
I'm not sure of the word size.
I usually just use calc.exe but there are times where a physical device offers a kind of... delineation of purpose (idk if that's the best term, this is hard to explain) that I find helpful in certain contexts.
@astrid yeah I reckon it at least needs hardkeys for add, sub, mul, lsh, rsh, and, or, xor, not, parentheses, and equals. then shift keys for stuff like neg, idiv, rol/ror, pow, log, endian swap, popcnt, etc.
@gsuberland well that was a thing they always used to do, mine does it, you can put it in hex or binary mode and then it's in that mode, it is Casio FX-992s if that helps i use it daily
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