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HP Forum Archive 18

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Texas Instruments - The PET Project
Message #1 Posted by Joerg Woerner on 10 Mar 2008, 8:13 a.m.

During my last trip to Dallas, TX the Datamath Calculator Museum received some exciting calculator prototypes from Texas Instruments. I documented them already, just follow this link: The PET PROJECT

Regards, Joerg

      
Re: Texas Instruments - The PET Project
Message #2 Posted by Namir on 10 Mar 2008, 8:26 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by Joerg Woerner

Joerg,

Now I understand better what you told me at HHC2007 about the prototypes that made you really wish you had them. The models looks nice. I feel that the general designs still have potential ... as long as they have a USB port and/or and SD card reader.

Namir

      
Re: Texas Instruments - The PET Project
Message #3 Posted by DaveJ on 10 Mar 2008, 3:43 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Joerg Woerner

When a calculator gets down to essentially having no dedicated keys like this, what's the point in having a dedicated hardware platform any more? Might as well use a PDA or iPhone etc, and spend the design effort where it belongs - on the the software.

Dave.

            
Re: Texas Instruments - The PET Project
Message #4 Posted by Joerg Woerner on 10 Mar 2008, 4:57 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by DaveJ

That's why they cancelled it. The one at the lower right position had even a MP3 player integrated ;-))

Regards, Joerg

                  
Re: Texas Instruments - The PET Project
Message #5 Posted by DaveJ on 10 Mar 2008, 5:44 p.m.,
in response to message #4 by Joerg Woerner

Quote:
That's why they cancelled it. The one at the lower right position had even a MP3 player integrated

LOL! When did they start development on this? I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I suppose the one advantage of doing your own hardware platform is that you own it and can control it. If you have to rely on say a particular Palm or Pocket PC platform then you are somewhat at the mercy of the rather fickle consumer market, with product lifetimes measured in months, not years.

Dave.

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