HP 32E requires case pressure to fully light up

[rprosperi]

(02-24-2021 04:13 PM)mfleming Wrote:  Argh!

A 33C I have suffers from the same problem so I thought, "Why not give this fix a try?" Carefully removing the battery pack there's a *ping* as a broken contact goes flying across my field of view. Great. A repair job that probably won't go well.

Those who complain about the quality of present HP calculators have a blind spot for the defects of the old models. The Spice/Spike series are a lovely handful, but boy are they a POS construction.

Sorry to blaspheme

Indeed, this isn't mentioned nearly enough! The industrial design of the Spice series is abysmally poor. It's not unusual for a company to lose their way, but the drop in industrial design and maintainability standards from the Woodstock series to the Spice was precipitous, in many ways: plastic thickness/toughness, ability to take the damn thing apart, boards that connect with the tall golden fingers to 'press-fit' (who does that?!?!) and worst, they didn't fix the by then well-known susceptibility of damage to the electronics plugging it in w/o batteries.

Some of these shortages were addressed by the 41 design, though clearly still far from perfect, but most solved in the Voyager models, likely the most robust industrial design in calculator history.