Refreshing old Skills

One of the current things in the life of the OTG is refreshing the brain matter, I am writing another book and the process of transcribing and adapting old diary entries into some sort of readable, enjoyable form is triggering many memories of old tech, and in turn, having excess money floating around I am enjoying buying some old and familiar items like calculators and more recently, pocket computers.

This is a pocket computer I have never had, but now I do. One reason why I could never have it is that it was only released in Japan, but operates in English. The PC-G801 is quite popular on eBay and sells for less that would be expected, I suspect the main reason for that is there appears to be no English language manual available, I have searched, and will continue to search, but up to now, nothing.

They called this a pocket computer and it must have fit in pockets back then, they would have been quite large pockets back in the day.

Online, there is a Japanese manual and in addition, a translated PC-G850V manual available, and the operation of that other model is quite similar, so I have been able to program some silly stuff on the PC-G801 and since obtaining this item I have had quite a few hours down memory lane, playing with BASIC programming, a way of justifying the purchase, keeping my mind active.

The programming part of my brain has been neglected now for most of the time I have been retired, so seventeen years, but like riding a bike, it is easy to get back into the saddle so to speak. The little program I wrote here examines the character set and prints it out on the screen based on input limits, I will enter it here for future reference as I intend to write an English manual for the little computer:

10:INPUT "START =";B,"FINISH =";C

15:FOR A=B TO C

20:PRINT CHR$(A);

30:WAIT 10

35:NEXT A

40:END

I have also bought myself a Casio PB-700 which is a "pocket computer" that I did own back in the 1980's so I will report on that one when it arrives, I know there is an English manual for that one.