Re:HP 9825 Projects
by CliffStoll on Sunday June 13, 2021 @09:05PM
(#27498195)
In 1980, I lived in Nanjing China, working at Purple Mountain Observatory, collaborating on understanding the rings of Uranus using occultation data. I brought along an HP-85 and it was just the thing for this kind of work: robust, reliable, easy to use, and capable. A full desktop computer, programmable in Basic. Other astronomers at the observatory used it for analysis of polar wandering and sunspot physics.
Still have the beast in my attic -- I wonder it'll run after 40+ years?
That's a well-traveled HP 85.
If you decide to play with it, appears there's a community around them, including someone who made new ROM carrier PCBs.
Before powering it up, I don't know whether there's anything worth checking first (tin whiskers? flux capacitor?), but the community might?
Re:HP 9825 Projects
by otabdeveloper4 on Sunday June 13, 2021 @06:04PM
(#27496972)
"Stretch it to the limit and you'll see what I mean - perhaps by the year 1999 all the software ever written will run in less than a minute."
Ouch. Right in the feels.
I think for me it would probably be a Commodore 'Super Pet'..
What was it? like 5 languages in ROM? And a real monitor - not a wimpy lil 3" one like the kaypro's and osbornes had either! Back in my vic-20/c64 days, that sounded like pure luxury :-D
http://www.oldcomputers.net/hp85.html
(I wanted the HP-87 since before the Series 80 became the standard issue computer in the great Brutalist&retro ambiance of the video game Control. I would be sure to get a HP-87 without any supernatural phenomena.)