71B documentation

[Mark Hardman]

When TSA in Houston, TX (one of the few repair depots for HP calculators) closed its doors in the late 1990's, they sold off most of their inventory via the MoHPC. I purchased a few items: the HP-41C from the display in their front entry, a non-working HP-19C (repaired), etc.

When I arrived to pickup my purchases, the nice lady handling the liquidation said, "For $200 more, I'll throw in everything that has yet to sell." This amounted to five medium sized storage boxes. Among their contents were: three HP-71 Math Pacs, 41 Translator ROM, two Forth/Assembler ROMs, a slew of 4K modules and what seemed like 100 lbs (45 kg) of documentation. Included in the documentation were many HP-75 and HP-71 Internal Design Specifications.

I've rummaged around and compared what I have to what is available on the MoHPC Document Set (Version 8.0). The HP-75 and HP-71 IDSs are identical to what is on the flash drive (Feb. 1983 and Dec. 1983 respectively).

I did find that I have a copy of the release version of the HP-71B HP-IL Internal Design Specification. The two volumes on the MoHPC flash drive are dated Jan. 1984; the cover page of Volume II even states "Version 1.0 - Preliminary". The copies that I have are dated Mar. 1984 and are clearly labelled as final release. Volume I is 10 pages longer and Volume II is 44 pages longer than the versions on the flash drive.

Is anyone sufficiently interested in a scanned version of these two volumes? They are printed 2-up and 4-up. A quality scan will take some time and effort.

I can't locate 2 of the 5 boxes. I'm sure they are in my private black hole storage unit. I'll keep digging to see what else I can find.

ETC: Corrected "Mar. 1983" to "Mar. 1984".