From: Man@the.keyboard   
      
   On Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:22:14 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver"   
    wrote:   
      
   >On 2026/1/28 8:50:44, John wrote:   
   >   
   >[]   
   >   
   >>  I have a dead Casio watch that could have antique value. It's closing   
   >   
   >LED? (I _think_ I did have one in that era - no idea if I still do though.)   
      
    Hmm, I think LCD though it was one of the first ones sold in UKland.   
   So far as I know, it should still work if compatible power packs are   
   still sold.   
      
   >   
   >> in on being fifty years old or so.   
      
    Going on 50. Sometime in the very early 1980's.   
      
   >I also have, somewhere one of their   
   >> original portable calculators. Same vintage. Neither is worth lifting.   
   >>  Unless someone out there is a collector?   
   >>   
   >My one of those was more green gas-discharge tube (didn't half eat   
   >batteries [cells]).   
      
    My calculator almost certainly is LED. That, too, ate power like a   
   drunken M.P. at a party.   
      
   >FX-411 I think - had the a b/c way of doing   
   >fractions, which I think was exclusive to Casio then,   
      
    That *seems* to be familiar though I'm not sure. I *could* charger   
   her up and find out but I'm upstairs, the box isn't and I doubt   
   whether compatible power packs have been sold at any time during this   
   Millennium.   
      
   >though I've   
   >noticed it in cheap ones in the last few years, so the patent must have   
   >lapsed or a way round it found.   
      
    It's circuitry and software, if fifty thousand hackers hadn't cracked   
   it two weeks after Casio first sold one then I'd be terribly   
   disappointed in the species. Whether anyone commercial *cared* enough   
   to copy Casio is another discussion. :) Was the slash format a great   
   selling point?   
      
    But you're totally right: the reason courts are full of cases   
   claiming patent infringements is because workarounds are plentiful and   
   easy. Once you build a Stardrive, the Klingons get one within a week.   
      
    Nothing amenable to the scientific method of enquiry can *ever* be   
   secret for long. It's a pity Apple and Microsoft's marketing and   
   leadership prats never seem to grasp that.   
      
    I could make a rounded 'phone shell in my kitchen from ready-meal   
   trays. It wouldn't be nice but it *would* be rounded and it would hold   
   the guts - temporarily. I might need some sticky-backed plastic, too.   
      
   >>                                                             J.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)