Corvallis Calculator Club

The Corvallis calculator club has been defunct for many years.

There were two groups of enthusists: The Hewlett-Packard engineers who made the machines, and their friends from user groups like PPC and CHHU that happened to live in Corvallis; and groups of students from OSU that had the machines.

Occasionally the two groups would collide, especially at more formal meetings or conferences.

The student groups still form spontaneously but tend to be short lived, basically because of the transient nature of the student population, and the pressures of studies taking away from meeting times, especially as the year gets close to finals.

Students are welcome to form such a club.

Usenet

The main activity for all levels of involvement is the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.hp48, which caters to everyone from stark beginners all the way up to developers generating applications in machine code.

Most students at OSU can get a free computer account, which gives you access to the Usenet newsgroups.

Help with the machine

The mathematics department requires the use of graphing calculators (either HP's or TI's) in their precalculus and calculus courses, and early in each term there are a few evening "getting started" sessions. Students can contact the math department to find out the schedule of these things.

The Math Learning Center in Kidder 108 offers some "drop in" calculator help hours

Conferences

There continues to be an annual international calculator conference. These began in 1979. The last one was the Hewlett-Packard Handheld Users' Conference, August 5-6th 1995, Minneapolis MN. Its theme was the past, present, and future of handheld calculators. The next one was in Anaheim,in Southern California in August 1996. Next year's one may be in London.

Corvallis has hosted three of these conferences, in 1981, 1989, and 1991.

There is a meeting in Las Vegas every year around the first weekend of January, coinciding with the Winter CES, and another similar meeting around the last weekend of May in Chicago, also coinciding with the Summer CES.

And there are less formal open meetings here and there usually associated with the more active user groups in London, Chicago, Orange County in Southern California, Seattle, and others.

Feedback to: jeremy at peak.org.

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