Re: No luck with HP41CV's Message #4 Posted by Larry Holmes on 5 Mar 2008, 7:48 a.m., in response to message #1 by Martin Sonntag
(((( SORRY I HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW TO FORMAT YET.))))Hi. I don't know if you are looking for yet another hp-41, but I have one, in exceptional condition and lightly used, with card reader, printer, circuits module, advantage module, etc. etc. I am going to "refurbish" it (replace card reader capstan, etc.) and make sure it is in perfect condition, in the next couple of weeks. I was going to put it on ebay but I think I will put it on the classifieds here first and see how that goes. It is in excellent condition. I am a former HP technician, now a senior electrical engineer; I know what I am doing etc. I also have about fifty other calculators in various conditions which I am going to be selling over the next couple of months, as I get them fully refurbished and ready to sell. (I won't sell "as is" stuff unless it can't, or shouldn't, be made as good as possible.. I was an HP calculator junkie in the seventies, member of PPC, etc., until PCs came out and I started up a little company building peripherals for them, etc., and got away from using calculators as limited computers, and just them as calculators (sigh.... those were the days). I was building a collection, got carried away, and, well, I imagine that describes about two thirds of us here, or at least, a lot of us! I was disabled but fortunately, I am recovering and will be starting up my company again with a new pat pending technology I have developed over the past fifteen years, which will have a fairly big impact on the Internet and other networks, wireless, etc., so I don't expect to have much time for the calculators or other hobbies.... and I need every penny I can get my hands on, also! Not that any of this has anything to do with your questions; I just got carried away again and again and again and ... drat! did it again..... The HP-41s have interesting internal construction. They use flex circuits and some other interconnect methods which will become intermittent or fail entirely over long periods of time (decades), especially in extremely dusty, humid, and corrosive environments. I don't think the designers at HP expected them to still be so popular and so widely used, thirty years later! As time went by, their "battles" with TI and other competitors put downward pressure on their prices, which HP was not used to. Prior to getting into calculators, then, personal computers, HP was used to designing very high-end, specialized products, test instruments, etc. When their competitors forced them to start building calculators for less than a thousand dollars (!), HP went through a "learning curve" to get down to the price points they are at now, and they didn't always get it right. They didn't want to start building products which were as cheaply made as TI and others, but, they had to at least get in the price ballpark, so they worked hard to develop novel ways to manufacture them, unique materials and methods, etc., and they went pretty far out on a limb at times. Witness the infamous HP-30 series, where the circuit board was a kind of "sponge" with the traces etched on it, and the parts were put into a plastic frame, then pressed down against the circuit board contacts when the case was screwed together, without soldering anything to the board! Typical HP overkill and "excessive creativity" (being more creative than necessary just for the sake of it, kind of "showing off". We all did it; it was fun but didn't always yield the best results...). Even though HP was/is a huge company (though it was much smaller when I was there..), when it comes down to it, each product has some person in charge of designing it, with an appropriate team of other designers, technicians, etc., just as a smaller company would have. That team's design decisions will usually be good but sometimes a flaw or weakness can sneak through the review process (which is, I can tell you, NOT like a small company; products are scrutinize pretty closely, at least in my experience there...), and show up in tens of thousands of "white elephants" like the HP-30 line with the sponge circuit boards. I guess that works out ok for some collectors though, as it creates a class of collectibles with unique features which become valuable in some markets later on. OK, so why am I writing all this? I haven't a clue.... I just did it! I hope I wasn't too boring...Larry
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