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E-mails from Everett Kaser on the HP-85

Posted by john on 19 Dec 2005, 9:29 p.m.

Hi,

I had a brief but productive exchange of e-mails with Everett in 2001/02. Since this was 3/4 years ago and have done nothing much with them, I thought I would present them here in slightly editted form (with EK's permission), as they provided an interesting view into the devleopment of the HP-85 and EK's work on the project.

Happy Christmas! John

When Everett was working for HP he joined the development team for the HP-85 and later produced software for it including a series of games. He has many articles published in various magazines, and has many mentions on the web (see Everett Kaser links).

I first e-mailed Everett in September 2001 and listed below are extracts from his replies relating to the history of the HP 80 series.

Many thanks to Everett for kindly giving his permission to me to publish his e-mails on the WWW.

Synopsis 3rd September 2001 – introduction, HP-85 emulator 3rd September 2001 part 2 – HP magazines 18th June 2002 – introduction to HP-85 Assembler ROM, comparison HP-85, HP-71B, Kangeroo, VisiCalc port to HP-85 21st June 2002 – Everett’s early career .in HP, initial Assembler, how the Assembler ROM got produced. 13th August 2002 – How the EMS ROM was produced containing two EK games Everett Kaser on the web Synopsis

Everett joined HP Corvallis in 1976 having graduated in Art. Everett joined the HP-85 team working on binary programs, and decided to work on an improved Assembler, as the previous one (for HP internal use only) was inefficient and slow. He worked on this in his spare time away from calculator production, and was called in work on it full time after product management realised that the customers for the newly launched HP-85 wanted an Assembler for it. He worked on finalising the Assembler ROM and working with a technical author on the manual for it until it was released. He then moved into the HP software applications lab.

While the HP-85 was being developed there was a battery powered laptop type computer based on the same chips being developed in parallel, the HP-75C code-named Kangaroo. The HP-71B was a development from the Kangaroo product line.

Everett left HP around 1997, for details of his current work please see http://www.kaser.com. He started writing an emulator for the HP-85, but this was not completed, partly due to him not having source code describing the machines tape and printer routines.

3rd September 2001 – introduction, HP-85 emulator

Subject: Re: HP 85 software query Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 08:06:17 -0700 From: Everett Kaser To: john Cc:

Hi, John.

jtc> I came across the FAQ for your software, which mentioned that jtc> you used to work for HP and whilst there produced several programs jtc> for the HP 85. I have one of these machines, and am very jtc> impressed with it as a landmark in computer evolution - it jtc> packs an incredible amount into a small box, and is the most jtc> accurate calculator I've ever used.

:-) I have a great fondness for the HP 85. It was the first "real" computer (other than a small, home-built microcomputer) that I ever worked on, and its architecture was quite remarkable. Unfortunately, I have very little software left from the machine, as most of what I had was stored on the tape cartridges, and they're no longer readable. Plus, when I left HP 4-5 years ago, much of my HP 85 material was left behind (or thrown out).

What little I might have is buried (literally) behind boxes and stacks of other things, and not readily accessible. As I'm VERY swamped with "staying alive work" :-) right now, I don't want to start digging, but I WILL keep your email handy, and when the time presents itself, I'll see what I can dig up. It may be as long as 6 months, however, so please be patient.

You'll be interested to know that about a year and a half ago, I spent a week or two working on an HP 85 simulator that runs under MS Windows. I "sucked" the bytes out of the HP 85 internal ROMs and most of the external plug-in ROMs that I had (I still have a working HP 85, except for the tape driver and printer, who's rubber belts have rotted away). I then wrote a Windows program in C/C++ that emulated the HP 85 CPU, display controller and keyboard controller. The CPU was a real challenge, as it all math operations in both binary and BCD math, depending upon a flag you set (hence the accuracy of the calculator that you mentioned... most computers do the math by translating the decimal numbers we use into binary numbers, which can cause inaccuracies to creep in... many early pocket calculators would divide 2 into 4 and get 1.999999999999. :-)

Anyway, I got it barely functional before I had to set it aside and return to earning a living. :-) I can type in a simple program and run it. It runs just about the same speed as the original HP 85. :-))) However, there are problems with the graphics display mode, and you can't print or save programs to disk. My hope is to eventually get back to it and fix the bugs in the graphics emulation, and then implement emulation of the tape drive and the printer. However, that will involve disassembly those HP 85 assembly language routines and reverse-engineering the tape and printer routines, as I no longer have any documentation on those chips. The graphics and keyboard controllers were pretty well documented in the Assembler ROM manual, but not the tape or printer controllers. The emulator that I wrote (started) includes a disassembler and the ability to add comments to the disassembly. I have source code listings to the HP 87 system ROMs, which helps a lot, as the code was a port/modification, but unfortunately the HP 87 didn't have a tape drive or printer, so those routines had been removed, and I no longer have the HP 85 system ROM listings. (You can't imagine how many times I kicked myself and beat myself about the head and shoulders for not keeping those!!! :-(

So, perhaps someday...

As I said, I'll keep your email on my "to-do" stack, and will try to get to it eventually.

Best wishes,

Everett

===============================================

Everett Kaser Software Sherlock, Moriarty, Honeycomb Hotel, Hero PO Box 403 Solitile, Descartes, Bumpershoot, Knarly Works Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

===============================================

3rd September 2001 part 2 – HP magazines

Subject: Re[2]: HP 85 software query Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2001 14:54:39 -0700 From: Everett Kaser To: john Cc:

Hi, John.

jtc> The FAQ mentioned you wrote for some HP magazines, could you jtc> let me know the magazine titles and periods they published jtc> HP 85 listings, I might be able to find them in a library over here.

Good luck finding them, they were definitely "small press" magazines. I believe the main one was called "HP Professional", but I'm not positive. I doubt whether I still have my copies or not, but when I get the time to "dig", that'll be one of the things I'll look for.

<cut>

Best wishes,

Everett

===============================================

Everett Kaser Software Sherlock, Moriarty, Honeycomb Hotel, Hero PO Box 403 Solitile, Descartes, Bumpershoot, Knarly Works Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

===============================================

18th June 2002 – introduction to HP-85 Assembler ROM, comparison HP-85, HP-71B, Kangeroo, VisiCalc port to HP-85

Subject: Re[4]: HP 85 software query Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:56:22 -0700 From: Everett Kaser To: john Cc:

Hi, John.

jtc> I hope you are well (and cheering the USA team in the World Cup!)

:-) They're doing remarkably well for themselves this year!

jtc> I now have been given a copy of the HP-85 Assembler manual, and jtc> am starting to work through it. This certainly opens up more jtc> possibilities for the machine, it is a shame that the Assembler jtc> is not a built in ROM as the machine is very limited with its fixed jtc> Basic commands, the Assembler makes it easy to extend & update [the Basic].

The Assembler ROM was an after-thought. Originally the developers hadn't even planned on offering one until after introduction and it became obvious that a LOT of customers wanted it. It was the writing of the Assembler ROM in my spare time (before the product was introduced) that got me my engineering position with the company.

jtc> I am considering getting an HP-71B as a follow on to the HP-85, jtc> is there much in common between the two please?

I don't recall. There were two projects going on at the same time, in parallel, but separate. Both used the same CPU and support chips, one was the HP-85 microcomputer, the other was a "laptop" computer, battery powered, about the size of a slim hardback book. It only had a 1-line LCD display, and all the I/O devices were different, so the language and ROM code was quite a bit different from the HP-85. I don't even remember it's product number, but its code name was Kangaroo. Later on, the HP-71B was created, which used a similar operating system as Kangaroo, but I remember even less about it's internal chip sets, not having been involved in either of those projects. But anyway, the 71B was a follow on to the Kangaroo product, not the HP-85.

jtc> Anyway, hope your company's OK, and yes I am still interested jtc> in any HP-85 software you may have, I have only seen a handful jtc> of things on eBay which where out of my price range, and some jtc> dubious items like an untested tape with VisiCalc written in jtc> ball-point on it!

I've looked around, and I don't have any tapes or disks any longer. I appear to have left all of those behind at the factory when I left HP over 5 years ago. I do remember when VisiCalc was being ported to the HP-85 by a couple of the other software engineers. It was kind of funny, because the HP-85 has a "clear register" instruction, whereas the Intel 8080 did not. The 8080 VisiCalc code had to do a "load immediate" instruction with a value of 0. One of the engineers (the smarter one, in my opinion) wanted to convert those loads-of-zero instructions into clear-register instructions (fewer bytes, do the same thing), but the other engineer was adamant that they also do load-zero instructions, making NO modifications to the original "logic" at all. :-)

Anyway, sorry I can't help with any HP-85 software. That was a LONG time ago. I wish I still had all of the old games that I wrote for the HP-85! Sigh.

Best wishes,

Everett

===============================================

Everett Kaser Software Sherlock, Moriarty, Honeycomb Hotel, Hero PO Box 403 Solitile, Descartes, Bumpershoot, Knarly Works Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

===============================================

21st June 2002 – Everett’s early career in HP, initial Assembler, how the Assembler ROM got produced.

Subject: Re[6]: HP 85 software query Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 20:58:59 -0700 From: Everett Kaser To: john Cc:

Hi, John.

jtc> You wrote that you started to write the Assembler ROM before jtc> you gained an engineering position, so what area were you jtc> working in before please?

Short version of a long story:

I started college in Electrical Engineering in 1971. Decided (after 1 1/3 years) that it wasn't right for me and switched to Art with a specialization in Custom Designed Jewelry & Metalsmithing (graduated with that degree). Decided I didn't really want to work in jewelry, so got a hired onto HP in Corvallis a month after the plant opened in 1976, as a "Production I" employee (making a whole $580/month...NOT take-home, but gross). Over the next 2-3 years I worked my way up to "Production II" and then "Technician I" and then "Technician II" (this was in the calculator production area).

In college I'd gotten interested in John Conway's "Game of Life" (cellular automata), and wanting to do that in some way other than manually on graph paper got me interested again in electronics, and microcomputer kits were just becoming available then. I built an RCA Cosmac 1802 Elf (256 BYTES of RAM) computer, and learned to program it in machine code (no assembler even :-), just toggle switches and an input pushbutton).

When the HP-85 was getting close to release (about 9 months to a year before entering production) I found out about it and asked the other production tech (who was assigned to it) to take me into the lab and introduce me to the lab engineers, as I wanted to learn to program it (to do the Game of Life, of course). One thing lead to another, and I ended up become quite good at writing binary programs for it. But, the only assembler ran on an HP 1000 minicomputer. One of the engineers had written a BASIC assembler (with a binary program that would store the output to tape as a "binary program" type of file), but it was HORRENDOUSLY slow and ugly to use. (Still with me? :-)

One of the applications engineers had asked me if I'd like to try converting his Fast Fourier Transform subroutine from BASIC into assembly to speed it up. I didn't remember anything about FFT's from my engineering days, but decided it was just a "translation" thing, so agreed to try. When I was done, it was a 750 line assembly language program that took 30 minutes to assembly with the BASIC assembler. So, I decided I was going to write an assembly language assembler as my next project. I was going to do it as a binary program, loaded off of tape, but the lab engineers convinced me to do it as a ROM (we had special boards that we could plug EPROMS into), so I agreed. I was doing all of this programming early in the morning before my normal production job started, and late in the afternoon, and in the evenings at home.

When the HP-85 was introduced in January 1980, all of the lab/marketing engineers and managers went out on New Product Tour (sales offices, retail stores, etc) to introduce it. When they came back, they realized that everyone wanted to know if there was an assembler available for it (assembly language was BIG back then!) They said, "Sh*t, maybe we'd better get an assembler product written for this thing!!!" The lab engineers cleared their throats and said, "Hrrmmm. We just happen to know someone who has one almost done..." (It was functional by that point, but not polished and completely finished.) All of a sudden I found myself demoing my assembler ROM to all of the managers from first-level clear up to the lab manager and the marketing manager (one-step down from the division manager). Scary stuff for a lowly production tech. :-)

Anyway, they talked to me, to my production supervisor, and all of a sudden I find myself on loan to the lab to finish it up and work with a contract writer on the manual. When it was done and ready for release, they offered me a job as a software applications engineer (August 1980). Eventually, I moved into the lab and worked there from then on.

Ok, I guess that wasn't so short. It's just a tough story to tell in one paragraph... :-))

Best wishes,

Everett

===============================================

Everett Kaser Software Sherlock, Moriarty, Honeycomb Hotel, Hero PO Box 403 Solitile, Descartes, Bumpershoot, Knarly Works Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

===============================================

13th August 2002 – EMS ROM and its EK games

Hi, John.

J> Although I have an HP-85 I also have the HP-87 EMS ROM (long story..). I J> looked through the contents of the ROM (using Assembler ROM & a PC) and J> there seems to be a game in there. Here are the strings I have found:

I was working in the R&D lab at the time, and a good friend was working in marketing. This company (Structured Software Systems, I imagine, tho I don't remember the name for sure) approached HP about getting a custom ROM made with their own code in it. HP was happy to (pay the price, get whatever you ask for). Well, I was delegated the job of taking their bits and making the release tape to send off to the ROM factory. I noticed, though, that the code they wanted in the ROM only took up maybe 1/2 of the available 8K bytes space. And I had a few little games around that I'd written in my spare time... I thought, "What the heck? What they don't know won't hurt anyone, right?" (I was young and foolish... :-) So, I added the binaries of a couple of the games and gave them ridiculous statement names to invoke them (so that they wouldn't ever collide with anything else in the name space). All was well until the ROMs came back and were sent to the purchaser. One day my friend from marketing wanders into the lab to my desk and asks, "Say, Everett.... you didn't happen to put anything extra into those ROMs did you?"

Well, with a sheepish grin, I had to admit what I'd done. It turns out that the ROM purchasers had apparently written some binary programs that, rather than calling the code in the ROMs through the normal vector tables, jumped DIRECTLY into the ROMs to a specific address... and adding the two new statement names to the name tables and their corresponding addresses to the address tables had (because those tables are always at the top of the ROM's address space) pushed everything else down a few bytes.

Oops.

Oh well, all they had to do was recompile their binaries with the new addresses and all was well. Fortunately they didn't complain (apparently), as I never heard any more about it.

And that's the story.

Best wishes,

Everett

======================================================================

Everett Kaser Software Logic & Puzzle Games for PCs PO Box 403 Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

======================================================================

J> I find it hard to believe that the straight-laced HP corp would J> permit some games code in the ROM - was this public knowledge J> before?

:-) No, HP would NOT have given permission had I asked. Forgiveness is easier to get... :-) So far as I know, the story has never been told publicly. Feel free.

Best wishes,

Everett

======================================================================

Everett Kaser Software Logic & Puzzle Games for PCs PO Box 403 Albany OR 97321-0117 Phone: 541-928-5259 8am-8pm PACIFIC TIME USA http://www.kaser.com

======================================================================

Everett Kaser on the web

There are several thousand hits on a search for “Everett Kaser”, thanks to his work on producing a series of highly respected puzzle games. Here a few of the places on the web where Everett’s work with HP crops up.

Everett’s homepage http://www.kaser.com has a FAQ that mentions the games he wrote for HP series 80.

The Evolution of HP Palmtops – an interview with Everett: http://www.palmtoppaper.com/ptphtml/12/pt120055.htm

Windows CE review – including picture and a precis of Everett: http://www.pocketpcmag.com/Premier/kaser.htm

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