Once upon a time, calculators at school were considered as cool as nowadays smartphones. Although still mostly banned in math lessons as a cheating tool, kids boasted with having the newest calculator with the most interesting non-mathematical features. So as a highend gadget, the German retail price of this one was (if I remember well) quite enormous 119DM (equals roughly the same in modern Euros). But with 12 melodies, musical calculation result rendition and alarm clock calendar complications it was a technical marvel of its time, that despite high initial price sold quite well, so nowadays it is fortunately not rare. As a kid I had begged my parents for getting this fairly expensive little device for xmess. Most exciting of this model was (of course beside the 12 melodies) the musical playback of calculator results - a feature I didn't have in my Casio MG-880 and that basically became my first experience with a composing algorithm. I.e. typing things like "2" and repeating squareroot, or typing "3 ÷ ÷ 2" and repeating "=" often produced surprisingly melodic quasi-classical compositions. And during battery insertion, this ML-90 specimen (serial sticker "0D308A") sounded the wicked R2D2 glitch, involving all kinds of truly bizarre tweeting and chirping sounds with surreal raving LCD segment nonsense that ran for minutes or until pressing the tiny "P" (reset) button at the bottom. Who could ever know if extraterrestrial communication was now taking over the device, or if the date calculation mode featured a well hidden button combination for starting the embedded time machine... The "default" alarm melody depends on the current day of the week.
Que hermoso. Muchas gracias. Esto es una joya!
My precious ML-90 ! I loved it so much
Once upon a time, calculators at school were considered as cool as nowadays smartphones. Although still mostly banned in math lessons as a cheating tool, kids boasted with having the newest calculator with the most interesting non-mathematical features. So as a highend gadget, the German retail price of this one was (if I remember well) quite enormous 119DM (equals roughly the same in modern Euros). But with 12 melodies, musical calculation result rendition and alarm clock calendar complications it was a technical marvel of its time, that despite high initial price sold quite well, so nowadays it is fortunately not rare.
As a kid I had begged my parents for getting this fairly expensive little device for xmess. Most exciting of this model was (of course beside the 12 melodies) the musical playback of calculator results - a feature I didn't have in my Casio MG-880 and that basically became my first experience with a composing algorithm. I.e. typing things like "2" and repeating squareroot, or typing "3 ÷ ÷ 2" and repeating "=" often produced surprisingly melodic quasi-classical compositions. And during battery insertion, this ML-90 specimen (serial sticker "0D308A") sounded the wicked R2D2 glitch, involving all kinds of truly bizarre tweeting and chirping sounds with surreal raving LCD segment nonsense that ran for minutes or until pressing the tiny "P" (reset) button at the bottom. Who could ever know if extraterrestrial communication was now taking over the device, or if the date calculation mode featured a well hidden button combination for starting the embedded time machine...
The "default" alarm melody depends on the current day of the week.
In about 1983, I was 6 years old, and found one of these. I literally thought all my Christmases had come at once. 😂
I used to have a melody watch when I was a kid. I wish they weren’t so rare and expensive nowadays!
4:51: Casio VL-1
And Casio PT-80!