New third party firmware (Not HP'PRIME TEAM)

[DrD]

-- Hardware
Hardware, like I mentioned, hasn't found it's way to the consumer marketplace. The marketplace is rich with calculator and other programmable devices, and selection of one or another isn't much more than competition looking for opportunity, driving costs down. There are quite a few things that can be done, at the layman's level, with regard to a hand held versatile device, that hasn't been exploited to this market segment (yet). It might easily cross over everything from automotive to medical, to scientific, weather technologies, etc., well beyond mere calculation. I think such a consumer grade product would be quite a marketable item.

-- Museum antiquities
Reviving legacy software may not be a totally bad thing, but, what's the point? Proving that your fathers software can be made to run on a machine intrinsically capable of better performance, is great for capturing a moment in time; but hardly a countermeasure for problem solving "performance" limitations, such as an inter-woven web of goto branching.

-- Open source
It's conceptually, a good thing. I readily agree. More to the point, there isn't anything about the Prime internally, that IS open source. Open season, perhaps. Developing third party firmware, or overlaying an old BASIC language interpreter, (I predict), isn't going to find much momentum, here or anywhere else. What percentage of Prime owners are likely to implement either? Re-purposing the Prime, isn't much better than using Arduino or similar devices, or leveraging retired PLC's, where open source has greater opportunity.

--
So, like they used to say in the legacy photography business, we'll just have to "watch and see what develops."