My personal calculator history

[vassilisprevelakis]

In the late 70s, while at high school, I wanted to buy a programmable calculator but could not afford an HP-67, so I went for the TI-59.
Then I pestered my father till he bought me a PC100C print cradle for the TI-59 and I was pretty happy with my system, but my TI-59 had problems with its keyboard (mainly not registering keys).

When the HP-41 came out I sold my TI-59 and PC100C and got an HP-41C.

That HP-41 had problems from day 1: it would work fine for short periods of time, but if left running a long program, it would eventually crash. Thankfully, the problem was repeatable, so I went to the dealer and left it with them overnight running a simple program, and the next morning I went back to show them that it had crashed. They replaced it immediately, and I still have this calculator with me. After 40+ years, its only problem is that one of its keys no longer makes the click sound but still makes contact, so its OK to type. I suspect that the the dome has cracked, but the plastic is still holding it in place.
In the 2000s I bought a NOS HP-41CX and I am using that instead.

Together with a fellow student and long time friend (hi ji) we were developing programs for the European Users library, and we got lots of goodies for our efforts. I recall getting a quad memory module, a time module and a Wand from UPLE. I also bought a PPC ROM, so with the Wand and card reader, my HP-41C was fully expanded. Sadly I could not afford a printer or HP-IL interface, till the early 2000s and eBay. I remember porting the bar code generator program to my BBC home computer, and modifying it so that it would blink the CAPS-LOCK LED on the BBC keyboard. Then I would attach the Wand over the LED with blue tack and trick it into thinking it was reading barcodes.

In the early 80s, while at university, I bought an HP-34C because I loved the LED display and the integration facility. Didn't do much with it because my HP-41C was far more capable and would run longer due to the LCD display. So after a couple of years I sold it to a fellow student.

In the 90s, my old friend, ji, gave me an HP-28C. Although the huge number of keys were a definite asset, I found the HP-28C infuriating. Eventually I gave up on it and put it aside and never used it since. Its probably still somewhere in my apartment in Greece, but I have lost track of it.

In the 2000s, I was working in the US, and had the opportunity to buy lots of HP-41 related stuff over eBay (the golden period when prices were OK), so I got an HP-IL interface, printers, floppy disk drives and so on. So now my collection is fairly complete. I never bothered with the HP-IL tape drive, since I got a great deal buying four HP-9114s. I got them really cheap since they were not working. Their only problem was their battery packs which needed new batteries. I also cleaned and lubricated the floppy eject mechanism. So I had 3 9914As and one 9114B.
I have the 9114B here in Germany and I think I got a glimpse of one of the 9114As at ji’s home. The remaining two 9114As are probably in Greece with the rest of my Series 80 collection (that's another story).

From the late 70s till the early 2000s my HP-41C was my constant companion, functioning as a primitive PDA, alarm clock, calendar, the lot. Nowadays I no longer carry it with me, but its still on my desk for quick calculations.

I never bothered with the HP-42 as I viewed its lack of external storage a big problem. However, I recently bought a DM42 from SwissMicros, which I am slowly getting familiar with.

Vassilis
http://www.series80.org