HP 33E - died?

[GreyUser]

(04-02-2022 06:34 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  And yes Massimo, the 'clamped' style came first. Weirdly unreliable behavior, but excellent keyboards.

Perhaps from a pressure and tactical feedback viewpoint but certainly not from a reliability standpoint, the keyboards were no better than the other mechanical aspects of the original 30 series design. Engineered to a price point, nothing more.

I’m certain most collectors know the 30 Series was a rushed design. What may not be as well known was that the series was put into production before accelerated life testing was complete on the new keyboard design. If you look closely at the flexing dome sheet of an original keyboard, you’ll see conductors on the plastic dome sheet that travel through the flexing areas of the domes. Yep, they fracture and fail as expected.

So, the redesign using a soldered chip pc board and the keyboard design of the 41 wasn’t because it was cheaper, it was because the original design was flawed in every way.

I’ll agree with you that the redesign resulted in a nice keyboard. But, it still suffered from the 20 series battery charger flaw and a crappy, weak mechanical design for the battery contacts.