i'm sorry but you are misinformed about the HP-41C Calculator.
The HP-41 was the first calculator that had Alpha-Numerics. It could
very well give text descriptions, text prompts and even manipulate
text. It also had a full goto and gosub to alphanumeric labels.
It had a very sophisticated programming language that could be user
enhanced in both user (FOCAL [No Relation to DEC's Focal]) language and
machine language.
The user community enhanced the user language through the use of
"Synthetic Programming". This is creating additional user commands not
originally implemented by HP.
It came with four expansion slots built into it for RAM, ROM and
peripherals.
It supported several different file systems in both RAM and digital media.
There was a forth interpreter available for it as well.
Here is a list of some of the peripherals available for it (I know there
are way more than this list):
Direct Plug In:
Magnetic Card Reader
Bar Code Reader
20 Column Thermal Printer
HI-IL (2 wire network)
EEPROM Box for Machine Code
RAM Box for Machine Code
Additional Program Memory
Extended Memory
ROM Module for user code and machine code (both from HP and user
written).
HP-IL Peripherals
20 Column Thermal Printer
80 Column Ink Jet Printer
Digital Magnetic Tape Drive
3 1/2" Floppy Disk Drive
RS-232 Interface
IEE-488 (GPIB) Interface
Video Interface (40 column, 80 column, graphics)
HP-IL Interface for Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer
Digital Multimeter
Frequency Counter
20 Channel Data Acquisition Box
The CPU had a 10 bit instruction word with a 56 bit data word. With a
Harvard Architecture (separate RAM and ROM address spaces). The RAM
address space was 8192 8 bit bytes. The ROM address space was 65536 10
bit words. With paging the machine code address space was expanded to
192K maximum)
That hardly sounds like just a calculator to me. It could be called the
first Pocket PC.
On 5/26/2024 4:14 PM, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
if it only manipulates numeric data, it is a calculator. It must be able to
search, rearrange look up, compare, and display characters. I would have
thought that to be obvious. I don'care if it has 99 terabites of high speed
memory and does fourier transforms in minus 0 seconds, if it cannot give a text
description of the answer, it is a calculator.
Also something about arbritray branches to any location (ok, any executable
location if something has separate code and data memory).
<pre>--Carey</pre>
On 05/26/2024 3:01 PM CDT Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 5/26/24 11:11, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 2024-05-26 10:56 a.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
I did use a CP/M machine once, but the 8" drive was a bit sticky.
You rap the drive to get it unstuck, but if you rap it too hard
the machine would reset.
Fred, just forget it. We belong to a bygone era and there's no sense in
trying to explain things to the younger folk.
However, perhaps someone can tell me why an HP-41 or TI SR-52 isn't a
"personal computer"...
--Chuck
