HP Biographies

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Full Name (family, given): Duell, Tony
Email: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Location: London, England
Entered: 12 Apr 2004, 9:48 a.m.

I'm an electronic hobbyist who loves tinkering with machinery (mechanical and electronic). Of course HP calculators count as 'machinery'. I'm also a fairly active member of HPCC (UK HP calculator user club) and at the time of writing, I'm club librarian and 'hacker in residence'.

My first HP was a 41CV that I got about 22 years ago. I didn't use it that much, because I couldn't really afford all the peripherals I wanted. I did a lot more with (gag!) a Sharp PC1500, which I added all sorts of homebrew stuff to. However, I'm now reformed, and have programmed my 41 in M-code, built interfaces to link to the HPIL-GPIO converter, and so on.

I particularly like the desktop machines (HP9100, 9810, etc). The CPUs are built from simple components (transistors, TTL gates and flip-flops) and it's possible to understand exactly how they work. Tracing the 9810 CPU microcode is an entertainment!

Anyway, I'm not a collector, in that I don't have a desire to own one of every model or anything like that. But I do have quite a few machines, and a lot of documentation. As I said, I like tinkering with fine machinery

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