Stuttgart HP Meeting 2024 (replacement Allschwil)

[KimH]

Hi C3D, I sent you a PM. This will need to get fixed!

(10-27-2024 03:31 PM)c3d Wrote:  Thank you to all of you for this incredible meeting. My talk about db48x was quite a bit longer than expected, but I hope that this select audience still enjoyed it.

I came back home with a "new" HP71B, which kept me happily occupied during the flight. Unfortunately, back home, it started exhibiting strange symptoms. The four leftmost columns would "duplicate" each row with the row immediately above, i.e. typing f would give me CAT, g would give me lowercase c, z would show ZA, A would show AQ, and so on. Really weird. Unfortunately, that seems to also impact the ON key. Getting the machine to switch off took me several tries, since f would give me CAT ;-) I could finally switch it off, then back on, same problem. INIT 3 did not fix anything.

Removing and putting the batteries back made the problem worse, i.e. now the machine won't even switch on.

Anyone has any suggestions on what the problem might be and how to fix it?

The root cause of the problem may have been the pouch. It looked really nice on the outside, but the inner fabric inside seems to have gotten bad with time, and when I took the HP71B out of the pouch back home, it was covered with a fine black smudgy powder. I hope that this did nto get into the keyboard and cause damage.

In any case, any idea welcome. The result is that I returned to DB48x and implemented USR mode. Not complete yet, but will be in the week-end's release.

Also, I went to the other retro-computing event today with my daughter, and purchased a nice PC1212, complete with printer, a case/stand/box and an application manual full of old BASIC listings. Not sure if it work, but for 20€, I should not expect too much.

I was really nice to meet people as crazy as myself. See you next time.