NEW: HP 15C Collectors Edition

[brouhaha]

(05-10-2023 07:45 AM)jklsadf Wrote:  Fixing bugs in these calculators would require a new mask set (which is probably why it hasn't been done...it doesn't make economic sense for HP/whoever owns the rights now)

Fifteen years ago, the cost of a custom mask for the Sunplus 6502-derived microcontrollers was under $1000. It might be $2000 now. It doesn't cost much because:
* it's a very old process, not bleeding edge
* it's only a single metal layer, not an all-layers change
* China

Quote:I believe HP does not have the source code for the new 17bii+, 33s, or 35s developed by Kinpo.
[...]
I can't remember if there was any word from HP if the code for these calculators was actually done in C or assembly?

I was specifically told that the 33s and 35s code is written in C. I also remember an HP engineer complaining with regard to the 33s about how inefficient the C code is on a 6502 (which I already knew), and a few specific examples from the 33s, so I'm not convinced that Kinpo wrote those, though Kinpo did write the 12C Platinum v1 code. Kinpo writing code for an HP calculator also doesn't necessarily imply that HP doesn't have the source code. HP probably has the 12C Platinum v2 source code, because they ported it to ARM, though they didn't release it.

It's my understanding that all the 6502-based HP models are written in C, whether by Kinpo or HP, and really, why would any company do it any other way? These things are written under tight deadlines by engineers who'd probably rather be doing something else, not by greybeard 6502 assembly enthusiasts. It's not like racing the beam in an Atari VCS, or the Apple II RWTS floppy routines, where hand-crafted assembly was the only possible way to make things work at all.

The source code HP _doesn't_ have is that of most of the pre-Saturn models. They recovered a copy of the 12C code, and the code for the HP-41C and some of its peripherals still exists because it was released to user groups, but most everything else pre-Saturn is long gone. Most of it didn't survive the calculator division moving to Singapore (vs. previously only manufacturing there), and anything that might have survived that move didn't survivr the four subsequent moves.