HP33C radix is a comma

[Dieter]

(06-16-2018 08:48 AM)jomorley Wrote:  I've just got myself a great little 33C. It works well but, for some reason, the radix is a comma and not a decimal point.

It's not a big deal but is irritating!

Things are different throughout the world. ;-) I'd be irritated by a decimal point as the radix mark, and commas as thousands separators. Just as half of the world would, while the other half prefers the other way round. That's why HP produced two different versions of the Spices.

(06-16-2018 08:48 AM)jomorley Wrote:  I thought that a point would be the default but removing and replacing the batteries does not work.

Yes, that's correct. This is a hardware thing. The LEDs always can display both points and commas, and they have to do so because one of these is the radix mark and the other one the thousands separator. Which is which is not set by software but by hardware:

(06-16-2018 11:33 AM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  The 33C is one of the "Spice" series of HP Calculators. That series came with two different LED display modules -- one for the US market with radix points and one for European markets with radix commas.

Hmm... I don't think that my knowlegde of HP calculator hardware internals is even close to Katie's, but in this case I am quite sure that there were no two different LED modules as the calculators always displayed both dots and commas: either 1.234,45 or 1,234.45 – depending on the region where they were sold.

As far as I remember the switch between both display modes was done by a jumper on the PCB. Take a look at this thread in the old forum. One of the posts even says that it was Katie who provided this information. ;-)

Sadly the most interesting picture in Luiz's post has vanished. But it really seems to be nothing more than having two points on the PCB connected or not. Maybe someone here has some more detailled information.

Edit: I see Sylvain was 3 minutes faster. And the other thread in the old forum even has two pictures – by Katie ;-) – that show the PCB details. Since it's a bit hard to detect: there is a thin black line pointing upwards from the yellow text label, and at its upper end you can see the jumper in place (radix mark is dot).

By the way, this is not a US vs. Europe thing: take a look at this map on Wikipedia.

Dieter