HP Forum Archive 19

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HP9830A Message #1 Posted by Dylan Watkins on 11 Jan 2010, 10:54 a.m. I have sort of inherited an old calculator. Now 42, when I was 6 or 7 my brother an I used to play moon landing on it. My father also attempted to teach us BASIC. My dad put it in the back of his garage when he bought his first Mac and it has sat there ever since under its cover. Is there a market for this sort of thing? I have the 9866B printer also. I haven't as yet stumbled across any cassettes or cables. Have an HP45 calculator as well.

Re: HP9830A Message #2 Posted by DavidShenk on 11 Jan 2010, 1:27 p.m., in response to message #1 by Dylan Watkins Hi Dylan, Yes, there are people interested in those old calculators. However, I think a little less so than hp's smaller calculators because of their size and expense shipping them around. If it is something you'd like to sell, I would try putting up a free classified here at the museum to see who would be interested. It would be helpful to plug it in and test it out some first, then post with the details of what works, included accessories, etc. Even if it isn't working, the parts could be important to fix another machine. I don't think they come up for sale very often, even on the large auction site, but can go for several hundred dollars if in working condition. Dave

Re: HP9830A Message #3 Posted by Tony Duell on 12 Jan 2010, 5:03 a.m., in response to message #1 by Dylan Watkins I would strongly advise against just plugging it it to see if it works. If the power supply has failed in storage (and it can happen), you could wipe out every IC in the machine. It is fairly easy to test the power supply first (you need a voltmeter and a screwdriver, nothing more) which will at least protect against that problem. The desktop machines are much more repairable than the handhelds. In general any HP9830 can be got going again, the chips are still fairly easy to find, and there's nothing custom in there other than the ROMs. However, tracing the fault can be difficult, this is probably not a machine that can be fixed by somebody with no knowledge of electronics. However, I can give it a go :-) The HP9830 is one of my favourite machines, it is in many ways one of the first personal computers.

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