why was the wand made?

[ThomasF]

(08-20-2024 05:20 PM)vassilisprevelakis Wrote:  Fun fact: The BBC micro keyboard had a CAPS LOCK led which could be turned on or off under program control. So by pulsing this LED I could trick the wand into loading programs into the HP-41C. I remember using Blu Tack to keep the wand over the LED.

Nice!
That is similar to what I do with the Pico. The Pico emulates the Wand HW and is connected to a serial port over USB to my PC.

So, I just send the raw BC data to the COM-port, and the Pico (loaded with the Wand ROM in flash) receives the data just as if it had been read by the actual wand and sends it to the 41.

So with just a click on the mouse on a bar code in a document shown on the PC works as my virtual wand.

Cheers,
Thomas