BCCs: Gavin wants to read this :-)


> > The HP35 was more or less the first scientific calculator and was utter=
ly
> > stunning in what it could achieve.
>
> Umm, its predecessor was the HP9800, and then Mr Packard (Or it might hav=
e
> been Mr Hewlett) wanted an HP9800 that would fit in his shirt pocket.
>
> See http://www.viddler.com/explore/sleibson/videos/4/ for an interview of
> Tom Osborne, the designer of the HP9800 and the HP35, by Steve Leibson,
> which gives some revealing insights behind the scenes.
>
>
I had a friend who time share converted a TRS80 so that N of his students
could use it at once.
They came out in 1977 I see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80

He obtained an HP35 and decided to try to remote access / control it . I
forget what he was trying to achieve. Maybe time sharing (!) or use as an
arithmetic unit etc. Documentation ion the internal processes was slightly
less than unavailable at that stage so he set to to reverse engineer it at
the bus & board level. He found it was used serial bus between modules /
ICs whatever and had AFAIR a connector in the battery box to access what he
had found to date. Part way through the process it was stolen from (my
memory says - 30+ years says it is probably correct but maybe not) an
unlocked car while he was helping somebody move house, in the time it took
to walk into a house to get another bag. So it goes, or, so it went.

I had 2 x 98xx at one stage . May have been 9830? Fun, But they too got
sold to help finance my jump into my 1st PC.
(Imported 3 from Hong Kong. 2 for resale were std 4.77 MHz. I decided to
lash out and get myself a fast turbo version - 6 Mhz !!!. And TWO x 5.25"
360 kB floppies. (Or were they single side 180 kB?)
TWO drives !!! -  No mucking around !.
The dual floppies were vastly superior to systems with one only. On single
floppy systems you could load the application diskette or O/S diskette but
of course not both and if the operation required soummat from the O/S
diskeete you had to swap diskettes, load software, replace data diskette
and continue. The 2 drive machine overcame this little issue. Bliss.

As I recall, prior to that my 1st ever 5.25" drive was a single sided 160
kB (not 180 kB)  Shugart Associates [tm] 5.25" unit.
Memory says it may have cost ~=3D $400 in those-days dollars
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To this day I have (if my wife has not sent it packing) an 8" floppy drive
in my hall - but I never used it in a system.



           Russell
--=20
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