Conversion HP87XM Basic & HP GL Message #1 Posted by Fred Ellers on 4 June 2000, 1:39 a.m.
Having just reactivated my first attempt at computing (an HP87XM), I am saddened by all the effort that was lost when the improved Basic of the 87XM was stored on disks that can only by recovered and ran in that obsolete version of Basic and on the mass storage systems of that machine.
In the early 1980,s a number of retired engineers,of which I am one, found they could buy these desk sized engineers work stations and program their life long experience into the specially formatted 5 1/4 disks of the related mass storage floppys. With time on their hands and literally a world of experience and data it was a natural thing to do at that time. My guess is that a lot of readers will think, So what, that era is past-get with the fun and games of the world today.
But I am not willing to concede the loss of all that effort so long as there is one fully operable 87XM system left which could read the old format and somehow be manipulated into producing these old programs in a modern lanquage and able to run in a PC machine. Because the 87XM disks had special track spacing and RPM this might at first have to be a small shop operation where the old programs would be processed in the 87XM to the most closely related current Basic and HP GL graphics and output to current floppys and in current format. If my guess is right, we are about out of time. The fellows who wrote those old 87 programs are not going to be around much longer nor have the energy to take on the effort of bringing them up to date. Plus the machines themselves are around 20 years old.
Open questions: How much interest exists among those with programs developed for the 87 to have a PC version of their earlier work and to what extent would HP support such an activity considering in hindsight that we followed them down a blind alley which ended about 1984 when they quit supporting the 87 and similar machines.
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