Victor 95

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Calculators: Handheld: Victor 95

	Size (approx):	78mm x 167mm x 25mm (max) (w x h x d) Weight 156g not including batteries. (182g with cover)
	Power:	6.0v DC using 4 x AA size batteries. It accepts an adapter (6V DC) through a socket on the top side to the far left. The batteries are inserted from the front, the case area above the display being the battery cover. Access is by sliding up the cover.
	Case:	The elongated case is two-piece textured plastic in glorious 70s brown and orange. A third shaped brown section acts as a full frontal cover that snaps on quite well. It is embossed with the Victor name and logo. A metallic sticker sits on tope of the keyboard surround area and has the brand name / logo (VC) in black and orange. A red display filter is titled at 45 degrees, gives a very bright display but with limited angle of view. The oversized and low profile keys are short travel with a soft click and work reasonably well. The bold key colour scheme suites the case colour well. The back orange section has instructions and data embossed rather than the usual sticker. It has an area for Date of manufacture, which is stamped “£1G48”.
	Display:	8 digit red LED with bubble lens with no ninth digit. There is no leading-zero suppression when you input a number and display is left reading.
	Features:	Standard four functions with constant
	Age:	est. 1974
	Manufacturer:	Made in Canada for Victor Comptometer Corporation. There is no serial number that I can find.
	Comments:	A long shaped well-built calculator with an innovative cover idea. You cannot help but love orange: a true retro feel to this one. Quirky functionality is typical of its time with the strange hidden exponent system, no reset on power up and “divide by zero” bug. Some of the components are exposed when you open the battery cover, which means leaking batteries could cause havoc.

Components:
Boards:
Construction:	Remove the battery cover. The front keyboard surround comes off by popping the two lugs near the top of it. WARNING the keys then are totally loose as they float on top. I have reserved opening this one until I have two hours to put it back together again!

Logic comments:	The (C) key is used to cancel an entry whilst a second press clears the whole calculator
	Input overflow is suppressed inputting an ninth digit is ignored
	Negative numbers are shown with a "-” in the far left (eighth) digit. Full eight digit negative numbers are allowed, you just do not see the first digit anymore!
	There is a selectable constant function; to use 5 as a constant key in (C)(5)(=)(K), now (2)(X)(=) gives “10”.
	Divide by zero shows “0.0.0.0.0.X.0.8.” where X is a cycling number. I suspect the “8” is a fast cycling number as you can change this display by dividing by 0.0 and see two cycling numbers. It is not recoverable.
	Overflow takes a little getting used to. The calculator has an internal exponent (which you can never see) allowing numbers between 1 x 10^-7 to 9.9999999 x 10⁷⁹. When you exceed this it just carries on at 10⁰.