I was bored and found a HP-27S

[franz.b]

(11-09-2020 07:14 AM)jebem Wrote:  Just to eliminate that possibility, did you increase the LCD contrast to the maximum position?
Sometimes, specially when the power supply is running below the nominal value, the LCD appears to be blank when in fact what is required is to adjust its contrast.

If I remember correctly, on the Pioneer machines the LCD contrast is adjusted by pressing and holding the CLR key and then press the + key several times to increase it, and - key to decrease it.

Thanks Jebem! no, I haven't tried to increase the contrast, it's a good idea. But before this attempt I have to find a temporary way to fix the pcb to the keyboard without twisting the hooks.

[franz.b]

I found out a few things. first of all it is alive.
I managed to lock the pcb on the keyboard by inserting small pieces of metal into the hooks so as not to twist them, but it still did not turn on. then I short-circuited the terminals leading to the keyboard in correspondence with the ON key and it finally turned on, but the ON key is the only one that doesn't respond!
With a lens I saw that the conductive trace P2 is interrupted, yet at a preliminary check it worked, I must have broken it!
Now I have to repair it, the part that protrudes from the sheet is still functional, I have the idea of using a conductive pen, you say it can work? I've never used it and I don't know if the ink adheres and detaches from the plastic ... do you have any other solution ideas?
Also I found that the external screen protector is not polarized, the polarization is part of the lcd.

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Steve Sabin]

(06-10-2014 03:52 PM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  

(06-10-2014 11:18 AM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  In my opinion, one of HP's greatest achievements was the inclusion of programming constructs such as IF, sigma (loop), and L() and G() in the solver found in several calculator models, including the 27s. This made the solver more than just an equation solver; it is a real minimum programming language.

HP should have received some type of award for this solver, but we are all beneficiaries.

If I recall correctly the HP "step-by-step" publication called HP-27S/19B Technical Applications introduced L(), G() and other solver techniques. This was available when the 27S and 19B were first released. It showed how you could use the solver to compute coordinated transforms, solve linear equations, do complex variable arithmetic, find GCD and factor prime among other things. Pretty amazing for a "non-programmable" calculator.

I attended Oregon State University in the mid-1980s when getting my BSEE degree and worked as a student contractor briefly at HP Corvallis during that time writing application manuals during the summer of 1987. As payment, I requested an HP-27S, HP-28S, and an infrared printer (HP-82240A). I still have all 3 devices along with original boxes and manuals. The manuals I wrote are Science Student Applications for the HP-22S and Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B. I have copies of both.

To Katie’s point, I believe the Technical Applications booklet is where the LET and GET functions were introduced. I am a bit embarrassed looking back over these now because the applications book in particular reflects the naivety of someone who had not yet worked in the real world.

HP lent me a sewing machine-sized portable computer to write the manual. It was similar to the old COMPAQ portable computers of the day, before bona-fide laptops arrived, and had a lid-mounted keyboard that removed to expose a display with a reddish-orange tint rather than green. Ran HPUX as I recall and had a 3.5" floppy drive. The program to write the manual was not WYSIWYG and to fully check my work I had to drive about 5 miles from my residence to the Corvallis facility and connect to a printer to generate a hardcopy. It was sort of like HTML (or "reveal codes" in WORD) in that you had to remember to match the bold/un-bold, ital/un-ital, and other "on/off" pairs to bracket the affected text -- otherwise page after page of bold or some other text modifier would persist. There were also special commands to print things that looked like keys with boxes around them, menus with special lines before/after, and fonts that looked like the display characters. I don't recall if this was a standard app or something that HP wrote specifically for authoring technical documentation. I believe it was the latter.

I also had a 41-CV during that time and it remains my favorite. I wish I still had it. Loved RPN once you got used to it. I remember writing a gigantic program that would solve partial fractions. Saved me about 30 minutes one day taking a mid-term exam. I was the first one to leave the room because everyone else was slaving away. But in retrospect, 8 hours to the enter the coding and check it versus the 30 minutes it saved me in one test may not have been a great trade-off. But I certainly got to know the programming environment.

[Don Shepherd]

(06-28-2021 10:23 AM)Steve Sabin Wrote:  The manuals I wrote are Science Student Applications for the HP-22S and Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B. I have copies of both.

Steve, it is great to finally meet the author of the 27s/19b Technical Applications manual. You did a great job describing the solver features that do indeed make the solver a genuine programming language. I have spent the better part of the last 13 or 14 years writing solver equations that are really programs, including a few games.

You guys really achieved a lot making this solver; it has given me thousands of hours of pleasure.

Don

[Steve Sabin]

(06-28-2021 11:49 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 10:23 AM)Steve Sabin Wrote:  The manuals I wrote are Science Student Applications for the HP-22S and Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B. I have copies of both.

Steve, it is great to finally meet the author of the 27s/19b Technical Applications manual. You did a great job describing the solver features that do indeed make the solver a genuine programming language. I have spent the better part of the last 13 or 14 years writing solver equations that are really programs, including a few games.

You guys really achieved a lot making this solver; it has given me thousands of hours of pleasure.

Don

I recall that these booklets were written before those calculators were officially released. I guess that is so these companion booklets could be available concurrently with the official launch of the 22S, 27S, and whatever other models came out at that time. I recall the project codename of one was "Leonardo" and another was "DaVinci" but I don't remember which codename went with which product. "Leonardo" might have been the 32S. They gave me my choice of what I wanted, and I chose the 28S due to the clamshell design and that it could do symbolic algebra and calculus rather than just numerical.

The textbooks pictured on the cover of the Science Student Applications for the HP-22S are fictional. I think HP did this to avoid copyright permissions issues associated with photos of real textbooks where the title/author was visible. The author names (such as Rey) on the spines reflect some of my co-workers in the technical publication department. I think they were created using rub-on "letraset" vinyl letters. Racquetball was all the rage in those days and the racquet on the cover was thus quite fitting.

They offered me a job at graduation but I had my sights set on something else. Ironically, much of my career has been spent in the technical marketing and product management domains where the ability to write and convey technical topics is extremely important, so what I learned during that summer job turned out to be very useful.

[Steve Sabin]

(06-28-2021 11:49 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  

(06-28-2021 10:23 AM)Steve Sabin Wrote:  The manuals I wrote are Science Student Applications for the HP-22S and Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B. I have copies of both.

Steve, it is great to finally meet the author of the 27s/19b Technical Applications manual. You did a great job describing the solver features that do indeed make the solver a genuine programming language. I have spent the better part of the last 13 or 14 years writing solver equations that are really programs, including a few games.

You guys really achieved a lot making this solver; it has given me thousands of hours of pleasure.

Don

Thank you, Don, but I was merely the "messenger" and had no role in actually creating that functionality - merely in communicating it. It was curious that they didn't want to include such powerful functionality in the actual manual and reserved it instead for that special "supplemental" publication.

I will have to read at this forum more to remember some of the nomenclature used to refer to the calculating platform / form factor, but I believe I have seen it here referred to as the Pioneer Series. The 14B, 22S, 27S, and 32S all used the same form factor with blue letters reserved for scientific models and orange for financial models. I vaguely recall that the 32S was project codename "Leonardo". The 22S might have been "DaVinci".

[Eric Rechlin]

The 32S was indeed Leonardo. The 22S was actually Plato; DaVinci was the 42S.

Thanks for the time you put into those manuals. You can now see them preserved forever here:

Science Student Applications for the HP-22S: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1149

Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1143

[Steve Sabin]

(06-29-2021 01:13 AM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  The 32S was indeed Leonardo. The 22S was actually Plato; DaVinci was the 42S.

Thanks for the time you put into those manuals. You can now see them preserved forever here:

Science Student Applications for the HP-22S: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1149

Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1143

Yes, it's all coming back to me now. But what were the codenames for the 28S and the 27S? Those are escaping me.

Incidentally, the attribution they provided for me said that I developed the equations and problems in the book, but the truth is that I authored all of the verbiage except for the boilerplate stuff like legal statements, trademark/copyright attributions, etc. It was then edited by their staff, but only minimally. Technical publications such as manuals, datasheets, etc. from most companies almost never show the author, so being mentioned by name in this manner is both quite rare and quite nice.

[Eric Rechlin]

That's true. Very few HP manuals credit the author in any form, so you were lucky to even get credited as you did!

The 27S was codenamed Mentor, and the 28S was Orlando.

[Steve Simpkin]

(06-29-2021 01:21 AM)Steve Sabin Wrote:  

(06-29-2021 01:13 AM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  The 32S was indeed Leonardo. The 22S was actually Plato; DaVinci was the 42S.

Thanks for the time you put into those manuals. You can now see them preserved forever here:

Science Student Applications for the HP-22S: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1149

Technical Applications for the 27S and 19B: https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1143

Yes, it's all coming back to me now. But what were the codenames for the 28S and the 27S? Those are escaping me.
...

The code name for the HP-28S was Orlando and the HP-27S was Mentor.

From this site, here are the know code names for the various models.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#series

[Christoph Giesselink]

(06-29-2021 01:48 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  The code name for the HP-28S was Orlando and the HP-27S was Mentor.

From this site, here are the know code names for the various models.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#series

The list is incomplete. I don't know from where I got the names decades ago:

HP-10B: Ernst
HP-20S: Erni
HP-21S: Monte Carlo

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(06-29-2021 09:09 PM)Christoph Giesselink Wrote:  

(06-29-2021 01:48 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  The code name for the HP-28S was Orlando and the HP-27S was Mentor.

From this site, here are the know code names for the various models.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/collect.htm#series

The list is incomplete. I don't know from where I got the names decades ago:

HP-10B: Ernst
HP-20S: Erni
HP-21S: Monte Carlo

Maybe here?

[Jake Schwartz]

Rick Furr's HP Poster (located here), which he introduced at one of the HP Calc conferences in Nashville, has been another good source of codenames, as well as intro and discontinuation dates.
Jake