Re: Exotic Calculator Modifications Message #7 Posted by Raymond Del Tondo on 25 Dec 2007, 11:08 a.m., in response to message #1 by John W Kercheval
Hello,
I think one of the most exotic mods to the HP-41 is the W&W HP-41CY Turbo.
Ok, that was a commercial thing, but it was a very deep mod.
Some time ago I also saw an HP-34C with speech synthesizer (now may be somewhere in southern Europe;-)
Back in the Eighties, a friend of mine and me made a small 'backlight' for the HP-41.
This mod consisted of two _very_ small light bulbs (from ALBA) and a small switch,
like those used with the CY Turbo.
The bulbs were put into the small gaps on the left and right end of the LCD plastic.
It worked fine, but it was more an effect to impress the colleagues,
because the display readability didn't improve when using the 'sidelite'.
Actually, it was better readable when the lites were off;-)
And there were some other side effects,
like higher battery drain and the bulbs getting warm after a short while.
At the same time in the early eighties, some US company offered an external light,
which was mounted on a flexible neck, and connected to the HP-41 via a printer plug.
Very much like the current USB lites for notebooks, but decades earlier.
<OT>ThinkPad users like me have a ThinkLight, of course:-)</OT>
Regards
Raymond
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