Review: Swiss Micros DM41X

[Steve Simpkin]

(12-28-2020 09:25 PM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  

(12-28-2020 06:54 PM)bkg2018 Wrote:  That HP choose a 12 segs display for a high-end machine at the same time Sharp choose the beautiful dot-matrix display for its low-end PC-1211 is still unexplainable 40 years later. But it wouldn't be the 41 without it, and as unbelievable as it seems, I'm somehow happy to find these ugly characters on the DM41X display bottom lines.

Those segments actually were 14.

I suspect HP looked at dot matrix displays while they were developing the HP-41C as their first LCD calculator around 1978 or so. They may have found the contrast to be too low on the ones they evaluated or perhaps some other technical or availability issue but I'm sure they chose the 14 segment over a dot matrix LCD for a good reason at the time. Even 11 years later the HP-48SX had poor contrast on its dot matrix LCD.