HP48 application cards image sharable (downloadable)?

[gege]

Many (if not all) rom modules for the HP41 are freely available for download, especially useful with the Clonix/NoV module.
It's not easy to find images of HP48 cards to load into a memory card, why?
Personnaly I don't use these cards, it's for fun and collection.
You can buy application cards on ebay but at a very high price.
Is it because it's not legal? (I think it is not more legal than the images of the modules for HP41).
Is it because nobody want to share?

[BillBee]

I ran across a Ti calculator page that had IIRC a few of the card images, Calculus, Math, Chemistry and the Spice one.

https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=10626

That was a link from this thread:

https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-11420.html

Hope that helps!
Bill

[gege]

Thanks BillBee, I know the tiplanet site and its card images, part of my collection comes from there. But given the wide variety of cards available, it's very light. Personally I have 24 images, but it's very difficult to find new ones.

I can share the ones I have, but already I don't know if it's allowed here (or in general) and if others would be interested in doing the same.
Are there still companies that produce application cards? In this case we can consider that these cards cannot be exchanged legally, it would be piracy.
But for cards that are no longer produced, I consider it as a backup of the software heritage of the HP48.

[BillBee]

I do understand the Hp48 cards/manuals should be gathered for the MoHPC archive.

The people here I have found to be exceptionally generous/helpful so I don't think that its a matter of not wanting to share. It could be that they just don't have them or very few do. The HP41s have a hardcore cult following while (from what I have seen) the HP48's not as much.

-Bill

[rprosperi]

Some collectors will not share ROM contents because they think it can lessen the value of the (possibly) rare item they paid for, but IMHO that's rather silly. It's a rare individual indeed that wants to actually run vintage s/w and would also consider a non-hardware copy of if valuable in place of a genuine hardware copy.

Others don't share them because it's potentially illegal due to copyright violation, which is a reasonable concern, both legally ans ethically. However many of these cards came from companies which no longer exist at all, so the practical legal risk of doing so is nil.

The generally accepted thing to do is to make your best effort to contact the author and ask for permission to share it; in most cases you can't reach them, and in the odd case you do, it's likely they will allow it; I've never heard of an author in the calculator world refusing to give permission, and I've talked to a lot of people about this. Most authors quite honestly are flattered that people are still interested in their work from 30+ years ago.

If you can't reach the author, the common thing to do is to share it, including a statement confirming you've tried to reach the author to get permission but could not, and that if the author eventually sees this and objects, they should contact you and then you will stop sharing it immediately. IANAL, so I've no idea of the legal stance of this approach, but it seems an earnest and fair approach and you will find used often in vintage calculator and PC communities, as well as many other hobbies.

[gege]

Thank you for your comments.
I agree with you, I'm not a collector and prefer to share what's I have and to participate in the backup of the HP48.
Contacting all (dead) companies is a problem, so I added a Readme.txt file that explains my goal.

So lets share it and contribut (if you can, if you want).
My collection of HP48 cards.

[BillBee]

(01-29-2021 05:28 PM)gege Wrote:  Thank you for your comments.
I agree with you, I'm not a collector and prefer to share what's I have and to participate in the backup of the HP48.
Contacting all (dead) companies is a problem, so I added a Readme.txt file that explains my goal.

So lets share it and contribut (if you can, if you want).
My collection of HP48 cards.

You are awesome. Let's hope these make it on the Archive Discs.

Thanks,
Bill

[Chris Dreher]

My recommendation would be to also post such information on Archive.org. While some file-sharing sites only last a few years, archive.org has great longevity.

[gege]

A new release, a big Thank to Klaus Overhage for sharing 4 new cards.

• Calculus Mathematics II V2.0A GX
• Engineering Mathematics Library
• Sparcom Electrical Engineering Pro
• Sparcom Statistics Pac
  

I also change the Readme.txt file to include version and somes informations about cards (not finished).

Putting this on archive.org was my first idea but I have to see how it works and i already had a mega account, it will come later. I wonder if I'm going to make a website to include screenshots.

[rprosperi]

Thanks to both of you for sharing more cards!