HP97 questions

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Further to what Bob said, mechanically the card reader mechanism in the 97 is identical to the 67 except it is mounted differently, it is much easier to get at in the 97. To get to the reader you take out the 6 screws in the bottom cover, then there are another 6 screw holding in a black plastic sub frame and the reader is fastened down to the top of this subframe with three screws.

The cable going to the reader can be a problem, to get it out of the connector I use a piece of thin stiff plastic cut from a plastic bubble pack and insert in between the cable and the contacts on the connector, if you don't use something like this the connector contacts dig into the cable and you will very likely damage it. The other problem with this cable is with its construction. The cable is made up of copper strips laminated between two layer of plastic and they are getting old and may partially delaminate while you are handling it, I have been successful gluing them back together with cyanoacrylate glue, be careful to not get glue on the contact area.

Inside the reader there are 4 white balls and a small white roller, if the feed roll on the reader has degraded to a gooey mess you will likely need to take the top off the reader to clean it be very careful not to loose these parts, but i am sure the instruction you have will mention that.

Depending on your level of mechanical skill replacing the feed roll with O-rings is pretty straight forward, the first one I did worked first try.

For the printer my observation has been the two main causes of erratic paper feeding are 1) the rollers get hard and smooth and 2) if the calculator sits for a long time unused it develops a flat spot where the friction roll contacts the pinch roll. The only solution is to replace the "tires" on the feed roll, I have had good luck replacing them with slices of silicon model airplane fuel line. The bad news is you need to partially disassemble the printer to do this, and again depending on your mechanical skill, this may or may not be a big job.

Edit: Almost forgot there is a service guide on the Museum's documentation memory stick.

Paul.