non-functional calculators wanted for reverse-engineering effort
Message #1 Posted by Eric Smith on 12 Feb 2005, 4:11 a.m.
I'm looking for non-functional calculators to tear apart for reverse-engineering purposes to further my simulation work (as seen in Nonpareil).
I mostly need LED models, and some Voyagers. It's OK for the display to be broken, and for there to be significant physical damage. The HP-01, HP-10, HP-10C, HP-81, and HP 9805A (all rare) are particularly needed; for the HP-01 and HP-10 I will need to have the ROM chips deencapsulated and photomicrographed to be read optically, as Peter Monta did with the HP-35, because I don't think there's any other practical way to extract the ROM code from those models. For other models, including those I didn't explicitly list, I will try to read the ROMs electrically first, but if they prove to be bad (e.g, the overvoltage problem on Woodstocks), I may need to read them optically as well.
I also hope to get working ACT chips (processors) of various part numbers, and run them in a special test fixture to compare their behavior. There are many different part numbers, and the HP-97 service manual discusses some incompatibilities between certain ACT part numbers and certain ROM revisions. I'd like to find out the detail, as if there were functional changes made to the ACT behavior (as opposed to purely electrical changes), this could very much influence accuracy of simulation.
I am willing to pay some money for these (and postage), but not a huge amount. But you can take comfort in knowing that your old, broken HP is helping to advance the cause of simulation. And you can get your name listed in the acknowledgements in the Nonpareil README file. :-)
Eric
Edited: 12 Feb 2005, 4:16 a.m.
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