Mark Wickens

Casio Pocket Computers

A collection of information about Casio Pocket Computers. As a kid of the 80’s mad on computers these computers were so appealing. Back in the day I had a Casio PB-410.

I’ve recently acquired a Casio FX-850P and a Casio VX-4. There doesn’t appear to be an emulator for these machines which would be a great help in writing BASIC programs. So I’ve set myself a mission to try and get to that point, with the aid of the Retrochallenge Competition to spur me on. I’m also planning on creating a repository for the BASIC code that still exists on the internet, with the aim of being able to present these in Unicode for ease of reference.

Here’s a short example from routine LIB5810 of the FX-850P Scientific Library:

10 DATAsin²𝜃+cos²𝜃,1,10,20
20 DATA1+tan²𝜃,sec²𝜃,10,30
30 DATA1+cot²𝜃,cosec²𝜃,20,40
40 DATAsin(𝛼±𝛽),sin𝛼・cos𝛽±cos𝛼・sin𝛽,30,50
50 DATAcos(𝛼±𝛽),cos𝛼・cos𝛽∓sin𝛼・sin𝛽,40,60
60 DATAtan(𝛼±𝛽),(tan𝛼±tan𝛽)/(1∓tan𝛼・tan𝛽),50,70
70 DATAcot(𝛼±𝛽),(cot𝛼・cot𝛽∓1)/(cot𝛽±cot𝛼),60,80

Casio VX4

My Applications & Documentation

A Converter between Casio ASCII and Unicode

This is a Scala Application to convert back and forth between Casio ASCII and Unicode. The documentation includes a reference card and a cheat sheet showing the mapping between Unicode and Casio ASCII.

HEX 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0     SPACE 0 @ P ` p Å ⁰ ␣ ー ﾀ ﾐ ≥ ×
1   (DEL) ! 1 A Q a q ∫ ¹ 。 ｱ ﾁ ﾑ ≤ 円
2 (LINE TOP) (INS) ” 2 B R b r √ ² 「 ｲ ﾂ ﾒ ≠ ⽜
3     # 3 C S c s ’ ³ 」 ｳ ﾃ ﾓ ↑ ⽉
4 (SHIFT RELEASE)   $ 4 D T d t ∑ ⁴ 、 ｴ ﾄ ﾔ ← 日
5 (LINE CANCEL)   % 5 E U e u Ω ⁵ ・ ｵ ﾅ ﾕ ↓ 千
6 (LINE END)   & 6 F V f v ▒ ⁶ ｦ ｶ ﾆ ﾖ → 万
7 (BEL)   ’ 7 G W g w █ ⁷ ｧ ｷ ﾇ ﾗ π £
8 (BS)   ( 8 H X h x 𝛼 ⁸ ｨ ｸ ﾈ ﾘ ♠ ¢
9 (CAPS L→U)   ) 9 I Y i y 𝛽 ⁹ ｩ ｹ ﾉ ﾙ ♥ ±
A (LF)   * : J Z j z 𝛾 ⁺ ｪ ｺ ﾊ ﾚ ♣ ∓
B (HOME)   + ; K [ k { 𝜀 ⁻ ｫ ｻ ﾋ ﾛ ♦ ₀
C (CLS) (→) , < L ¥ l ¦ 𝜃 ⁿ ｬ ｼ ﾌ ﾜ ◻ ➀
D (CR) (←) - = M ] m } 𝜇 ﹪ ｭ ｽ ﾍ ﾝ ▢ ➁
E (SHIFT SET) (↑) . > N ^ n ~ 𝜎 ⁻¹ ｮ ｾ ﾎ ゛ △ ➂
F (CAPS U→L) (↓) / ? O _ o ␡ 𝜙 ÷ ｯ ｿ ﾏ ゜ \ ➃

Casio FX-850P/FX-880P Online Manual

As part of RC2022/10 I converted large parts of the original Casio FX-850P User Manual to Markdown format for easy reference.

Retrochallenge October 2022 Entry

My retrochallenge focussed on developing the Converter, I also installed a modern day 32KB RAM expansion, the RP-33 into my VX-4.