I had a similar pattern though for slightly different reasons. My parents got me TI-83 for my calculus class in high school, which is what everyone had and I

I had a similar pattern though for slightly different reasons. My parents got me TI-83 for my calculus class in high school, which is what everyone had and I was in sync. I managed to drop my calculator down a sewer grating somehow, and I was too embarrassed to ask my parents to buy me a new one, and I couldn't afford another TI graphing calculator, so I ended up getting a substantially cheaper Casio FX-9750G at a thrift store, which actually turned out to be a reasonably good calculator for the price, and got me through Calculus I without too much trouble. In calculus II I wanted the symbolic stuff, so I managed to find a used HP 50g, and I immediately fell in love with it (and RPN in particular), and ended up using it for everything. I got spreadsheet software installed on there, I played with 3d graphing, I got a clone of Zelda working, it was super awesome. It was almost more like a PDA than a calculator to me. Similarly, I run an the iHP48 emulator on my phone as my default calculator now.