On Mon, May 27, 2024 at 1:40 AM Rick Bensene via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Mike Katz wrote: > > > I'm sorry but you are misinformed about the HP-41C Calculator. > > > The HP-41 was the first calculator that had Alpha-Numerics. > > That is not true. > > Technically, out of the box, it was the HP 9830. Yes, it wasn't a handheld > calculator, and it didn't run on batteries(it was big and quite heavy and > required standard 115V AC power), but it had an alpha-numeric display(and > optionally a printer) that could be programmatically written to, and the > machine could accept alpha-numeric input and process it as such.
Could it? The 9830 could certainly use fixed text strings to prompt for input and label output but I thought that to manipulate text in memory you needed the 'String Variables' add-on ROM module. > > The HP 9820 had an alphanumeric display, and could be programmed to generate > alphanumeric prompts on the display, but I don't believe (off the top of my > head, I could be wrong) it had the capability to accept and process > alpha-numerics out of the box. All the 98x0 machines, even the 9810, could be interfaced to a paper tape punch and reader and could read/punch the tape one byte at a time So : Type some text on a Model 33ASR and produce a paper tape of it. Read that tape one character at a time into a 98x0, manipulate the data, and punch the output Feed the resulting paper tape back into the Model 33ASR and print it. Is that handlng text on a calculator? -tony
