The HP48 library, HP49/50 library, and a commercially sold HP16C emulator for HP48
may all be quite different, with different degrees of completeness of the simulation.
The HP16C was what was once called a "programmer's" calculator:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp16.htm
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Texas Instruments, IIRC, may have been first, with this early product:
http://www.datamath.org/Sci/MAJESTIC/Programmer.htm
http://www.christophlorenz.de/calc/ti/programmer.php
The "wire crossbar" keyboards in that era's TI calculators
simply stink, IME -- you may need to rent an elephant to trample on them
for a while, after they have oxidized over any idle period.
There was also a subsequent, much nicer looking TI LCD version
http://www.datamath.org/Sci/Slanted/LCD-Programmer.htm
(the keyboard, however, may have remained the same)
There's nothing you can't do for yourself,
using built-in HP48/49/50 functions (or small programs),
but the specialized HP16C packaging and creative
"decimal floating point <-> binary floating point" conversion,
plus programmability, of course,
and special flags to detect "carry" and "overflow,"
all added much value and quickly surpassed any TI offering,
even though memory was limited and speed not dazzling.
Were it not for the awful keyboards, many of TI's LCD products
would have been very nice, and often very creative:
http://www.datamath.org/Sci/Slimline/Converter.htm
Note the "square" (area) and "cubic" (volume) shift keys on the top row,
as well as the artfully designed, human-friendly layout;
this was the best all-around "units converter" that I'd ever seen,
except for the still-lousy keyboard (has any other company
ever put out such creative but physically flawed stuff?)
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