News from Swiss Micros

[Eric Rechlin]

Thomas's guess seems the most plausible.

A DM50 would be amazing, even if it's a bit higher than the ~$250 price of the current DM42/DM41X models, because that's still cheaper than a new-old-stock 50g is going for now (though more than a used 50g). It would be half as thick as the original 50g, making it much more portable, with a much better display (the memory LCD in the DM42 is the perfect resolution at 400x240 -- it would use 393x240 for the 50g display and have some pixels on the right or left for some approximations of the annunciators). And with a modern CPU it could be a lot faster than the 50g.

I would assume it would not cost much more than the DM42/DM41X because it would have a very similar build cost with the exception of a better SOC (more memory/flash/speed) and 8 more keys.

And of course, they'd want to avoid legal troubles with HP by not selling it with a ROM. Yes, they could probably get away with it (HP is fine with distribution of the ROM, and probably doesn't care even if it's commercial because the RPL machines are dead products), but making it a clean-recreation of a simple machine that coincidentally has a keyboard layout compatible with the 50g (but please do a double-wide ENTER key if possible!) and coincidentally has an emulator that can make it run a 50g ROM too would make it unquestionably legal.