HP97 The journey begins

[mfleming]

(12-25-2019 11:55 PM)teenix Wrote:  I have done a lot of preliminary work on a HP-97 CPU replacement. It is more complex than the 65 and 67 and due to the internal calculator layout, there will most likely be some soldering required. I am looking into replacing the printer driver board and incorporate a new simpler driver for it on the CPU board, but we'll see.
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I'm not sure there is any demand though, so might not be worth all the effort.

cheers

Tony

There are probably fewer HP-97s out there, which limits the audience for a replacement board. On the other hand, the benefits are the same as with the 65/67 CPU boards; a machine with a non-working card reader becomes useful again, you needn't worry about wear on cards once they are stored in flash, and there's less wear on the card reader mechanism.

I realized the last two benefits while loading up some cards this morning and getting an Error message on a few of them. I don't know if it was just a glitch or if the mechanism is going wonky on me. The gummy wheel repair was bad enough, I don't want to get into gears, timing and all that!

For a 97 board, improving the print driver and character set would be a plus. I doubt the 97 power supply could support a modern thermal printer, but providing a serial port and driver support would help those calculators with dead printers. I wouldn't mind seeing Note text on a real printout either.

Perhaps you'd get about half as many 97 owners interested as you do 67 owners in a replacement board?