ACT available

[PANAMATIK]

(07-21-2015 10:38 AM)vido Wrote:  I received my new ACT earlier this week, and took some time today to replace the ACT of my old HP-25.

Wow, just wow. This really renews the subject. All of a sudden, my HP-25 has permanent memory, is much faster, and there are lots and lots of funny options, not mentioning the memory multiplied by 100, essentially.

The ACT daughter board had a small issue with what looks like a extraneous drop of solder joining two of the pins, but this was easily fixed.

I also made a mistake by first soldering the 5 pins connector for the USB link, only realizing later on that this made the calculator impossible to close because of the vertical space taken. I had to desolder it, which is a bit painful on such a small board and aging eyes. I ruined one of the 5 pins in the process, so I'll just replace that socket with another one later on, no big deal. I should have read the documentation entirely before doing that, or maybe it would be a good idea to add on the small printed matter which comes with the USB stuff "do not solder the 5-pin connector do the new ACT board !"

Also, in the documentation, there is a reference to some code to enter in register 0 in order to activate the "continuous memory" thing, I didn't have such code, but still got the "continuous memory" activated, so I guess that part of the documentation is obsolete ?

The IR LED was very easy to set, I also added a small 2-pins connector inside the case in order to make future disassembly of the machine easier. If you grind some space in the internal indents, the connector gets a natural position inside. Although I don't have a working IR printer (yet), I could verify that the LED is correctly activated when printing things by using my digital camera (which is sensible to that IR color, and shows the LED illuminating when a signal is emitted).

I have yet to play with the firmware update features (5-pins connector ruined means I'll be delayed just a little while until I grab a replacement one), because I'd really like to see my HP-25 behaving like a HP-35, for example. By the way, I'm looking forward to the vinyl stickers which will make this comfortable.

In summary, it is a very impressive achievement, and a real pleasure to use and discover !

Congratulations for your successful HP-25E ACT replacement. This is the first "new ACT" in the far east.

Thanks for giving this hint, to add a printed notice. Although it is written in the manual not to solder it into the circuit, it can be easily overread, and will be part of the delivery from now.

If you are lucky, you ruined only pin 1 of the connector, which is not needed for updates. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Vinyl overlays are still in the early process of design. There will be an HP-34C, HP-67, and HP-29C overlay. But I don't think that they are reusable after having been attached once.

Thanks for your wonderful feedback.

Bernhard