As anyone who has completed the ICAEW’s Knowledge Stage will tell you, the Aurora SC582 is utter pants. Amazon’s reviews are usually split on opinion bit in the case of this product they are fairly united (here). Anon’s review just about sums it up:

This calculator is the only one that is allowed for use in ICAEW exams. However it is one of the worst calculators I have come across. The buttons are stiff and chunky, the keys are not responsive and the calculator is slow to react. This makes it difficult to use in an exam. When using one of these in an ICAEW exam, I found that often keys would “stick” and not enter into the calculator. This will give incorrect calculations, so you must be really careful. For this reason if you must use this in an exam I would recommend purchasing one to practice on beforehand.

Back on topic, yesterday I completed the last of my Knowledge stage exams (which I passed, woo!). This means there is no requirement to use this waste of space EVER again. Inspired from events earlier in the day I decided to put the calculator to it’s best use yet, an extra curricular electronics experiment. Unfortunately I don’t have access to useful tools such as a soldering iron so my tools were screwdrivers, pen knife, and sticky tape!

After fiddling for several minutes I was able to extract the circuit board from the case in one piece. I then, as carefully as possible, tried to rewire the power supply back together with the sticky tape. This was significantly less than ideal. The contacts were only firm enough to power the screen while I was holding them. Shame. Regardless, I got a couple of pictures showing the calculator powered on and performing (very) simple calculations.

My plan was then to reassemble the calculator with a couple of buttons out of place, unfortunately due to the very weak original soldering one of the battery adapters fell off. I was able to re-expose the cable and tried to sticky tape this to the adapter. This however, was unsuccessful. Probably due to lack of pressure between the wire and adapter. By this time, I had spent too long fiddling and got bored… so I emptied the contents of the case all over the desk 🙂

My work here is complete.

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