Hi,

Please recommend a calc model that
* is programmable,
* Is or can be powered by AA batteries,
* has some means of storage expansion, such as SD card slots
* is currently in production

Actually any kind of programmable device, not necessarily graphing calc, is fine with me, as long as it's portable and has user interfaces (display, a lot of keys..) like those of calcs.

Thank you!

Unfortunately, programmable calculators that use AA batteries without user modification do not exist or if they do, then they suck, otherwise we would have seen them around here being programmed.

Same goes for a SD card-compatible calculator that is still in production, as the only two calculators to have SD card support were discontinued a few years ago

Indeed, AA batteries are a tough constraint in that list, as is the SD card slot one. Most z80/ez80 TI calculators have been given USB mass storage device connectivity by the community (starting with USB8x on the TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and ending with the TI-84 Plus CE family), the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and TI-84 Plus CE are still in production, and are programmable. The TI-84 Plus Silver Edition has AAA batteries, though.

Let me cross AA batteries off the criteria. Would that yield any results?
Dry cell batteries is my very personal preference. For one thing, they're more likely to be found in a doomsday looting
But while there are many days before the day, I am also okay with replaceable non-standarized li-ions.

Those are some pretty interesting requirements... I can't think of any model that meets all these requirements.

The TI-92 does... And it doesn't suck
I can't think of a single model currently in production that has an SD card slot (the HP-50G is pretty recent though...) But you specified any type of memory expansion... The TI-92/TI-92 Plus is probably as close as you'll get. It can be expanded with modules, its programmable and it takes AA batteries. It was discontinued in 2002 though.

Well, if you accept discountinued models, CASIO fx-9860G(II) SD might satisfy you. It uses 4 AAA batteries, and it supports SD card expansion. Although it's discountinued but you can still find one pretty easily(on IdleFish and platforms like that). Hope that helps

Well from perspective of hardware capabilities Casio electronic dictionaries (have a look at one of them here) are the closest to what I am after, however they are not programmable unfortunately. Ever disassembled one and it turned out that the processor and flash chips are COB encapsulated (purposely I believe, to protect in-built dictionaries). No obvious way to study further about HW specs.
Casio did a really great job to reduce power. Those dicts last for more than 20 days on three AAA sized batteries, under normal usage conditions like in school classrooms.

Casio Fx-cg10/20 or 50 is AAA (alkaline type or even rechargeable ones) powered - doesn’t have SD expansion from factory (but possible to have add-ins to read/write with additional hardware connected to uart pins) but factory storage capacity is actually very high vs competition, as is display real estate and unhindered support of C and other programming languages development.