HP-01 prototype: What a bargain!

[jebem]

If I were a rich man I would get this piece of history to start a proper calculator collection.

Look to the nice photos. Really exquisite item.

[walter b]

Quite an expensive hobby, isn't it?

d:-/

[jebem]

(12-06-2014 12:32 PM)walter b Wrote:  Quite an expensive hobby, isn't it?

d

Hallo, Walter!
Good to have your feedback.
Hope you are doing fine.

Indeed this is a lot of money to pay for a single object (of desire).
I will never own such things, as my money has to go for vital goods to maintain a minimum life quality, like paying the house mortgage and car leasing

But one can dream!

PS- I was in Brussels this week for yet another VMware vSphere training and this time I had an international classroom team (besides myself):
One German, one Belgian (Flemish side), one Dutch, one French and one Italian!
I had no problems at at all talking to the Italian guy - when English was not sufficient, I switched to Portuguese and he answered in Italian - Pas de problème - as long as we kept a low talking pace !

[walter b]

(12-06-2014 12:45 PM)jebem Wrote:  I had no problems at at all talking to the Italian guy - when English was not sufficient, I switched to Portuguese and he answered in Italian - Pas de problème - as long as we kept a low talking pace !

I had a similar experience decades ago, talking business to an Italian and a Catalan. We got along with a mixture of English, slow Italian, Spanish, and Catalan. Luckily, Roman languages share a lot of words and structures.

d:-)

[aurelio]

(12-06-2014 05:25 PM)walter b Wrote:  

(12-06-2014 12:45 PM)jebem Wrote:  I had no problems at at all talking to the Italian guy - when English was not sufficient, I switched to Portuguese and he answered in Italian - Pas de problème - as long as we kept a low talking pace !

I had a similar experience decades ago, talking business to an Italian and a Catalan. We got along with a mixture of English, slow Italian, Spanish, and Catalan. Luckily, Roman languages share a lot of words and structures.

d:-)

Hi all, the good of life is that despite the Babel tower, we are able more or less to communicate and understand... My father learned in youth just a little french at school and how many times he asked me for a translation of the radio amateur's handbook or of the RCA, Fairchild or other companies' electronics components data sheets... but was able himself to understand, just witha dictionary, the contents of many service manual for R.Bosch radio equipments mostly were written only in german language!!!

OT: I'm just back (three days ago) from a carpal tunnel surgeryon the left hand, and the right one is waiting as well.

All the time to follow this forum and to learn something more

Back to the main post: watching that item is like to look to the sky, and ask himself if is it so important reach the stars, the life is so short and we have not time enough for everything

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(12-07-2014 10:09 AM)aurelio Wrote:  OT: I'm just back (three days ago) from a carpal tunnel surgeryon the left hand, and the right one is waiting as well.

My best wishes for a quick recovery!

(12-07-2014 10:09 AM)aurelio Wrote:  Back to the main post: watching that item is like to look to the sky, and ask himself if is it so important reach the stars, the life is so short and we have not time enough for everything

Stars are beautiful to watch at, it is not necessary to own them. ;)

[PANAMATIK]

I do not know why a prototype should have this value. Besides in my eyes it should be easy to produce a prototype by replacing the back cover by a CNC produced new piece, which looks identical. But I'm not suspecting anything bad.

I like to ask, whether somebody knows why inside of the HP-01 at both edges of the circuit board are small metal or tin pieces instead of normal wires to connect some golden pads. I made a picture of the left side of the board. They are covered with epoxy electrical isolation material. The right arrow shows another pad which is covered with black plastic, obviously another isolation material.

It could be a protection against short circuit with the outer metal ring, which is only one millimeter above. But then just the epoxy alone could have done the protection. Why did they use this piece of metal?

Any idea?

Bernhard

   

[MarkPalmer]

I got to try on a HP-01 from a friend’s collection a while back. It is a big and heavy watch. But it really is beautiful, and an LED watch is fantastic to look at. The main problem with owning one is if you get one in nice shape, you can only wear it on special occasions and then have to be very careful with it. You don't want to leave the batteries in the watch for too long, and removing/replacing them is a major PITA. It’s really just a collector’s showpiece more so than being anything too exciting, and unless the people you show it off to know exactly what it is, they probably won't be impressed by it. It isn’t anything that typifies HP products either as they weren’t in the jewelry business. For the same amount of money you could almost get all of the models of any one given calculator series (Classic, Woodstock, Spice, etc.) and have one heck of a collection of actual HP calculators. Plus you could use them on a daily basis if you wanted to without much worry.

-Mark-