New-to-me HP-71B

[rprosperi]

(11-29-2019 06:33 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  There is some speculation that the date codes relate to the fiscal calendar.

A recent post in the HP facebook group by a former engineer in Corvallis said that in the earliest days, the date code specified a given h/w configuration, and that date code was used for all production up until the configuration was changed, then they switched to the new date and continued using that code, until the next change and so on, until at some point (probably as volume dramatically increased) they changed to the week of manufacture scheme, seemingly based on the week of the fiscal year.

This would explain why the earliest 35s (and 80's too I believe) all have one of only 2 or 3 date codes for all units.

It would be nice to have definitive answers on some of these obscure details.