What group made it?

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

>Where does the 35s (or the 32SII) fit in there? I'm particularly interested
>in the design history of the former.
in the early 2000s, we lost the ability to make any of the saturn based chips...
The designs were to old and we did not have any HW experience...
So we could not manufacture the 32S anymore... Hence the 32SII.
When it came close to the 35th anniversary of the 35, we (don't know who) decided to make an "anniversary model", and since we needed, at the same time to make a new rev of the 32SII to fix some bugs, the 2 got merged together...
Working with the ODM, I created first a 2D design, then a 3D design.
The work would go as follow. I sent ideas as "text" with pictures of existing calculators to the ODM, saying: use this from there, use this form there and so on and then would generate a number of drawing (first 2D, then 3D). I would ask them to make some changes and iterate until we only had 2 designs left. Then marketing got to pick from them.

At some points, I had 8 or 10 pictures lying on the floor, looking at all of them, selecting features I liked from here and there to try to generate the final version.

I am not a "mechanical engineer", nor an "artist"... I can not draw and I have a hard time with imagining colors... But I am good with imagining volumes and I can tell, when I see something what I like, what I do not like, and why...
I am also quite traditional... So it helped in the process...
Here is an example of one of my création... 20 points for the first one who can figure out what it is... and 5 point per wood essence identified :-)



>Also curious about the physical design changes between the 38s/48s
>and the 39s/49s.
The change came at the Corvalis/Australia split time...
The Melbourne team did not have any of the mechanical files, so we had to redo it anyway...
At the same time, the focus for the calcs changed from engineers to more youth/education, and also lower cost...
This drove the change to the harder/more solid plastic body, the super hard plastic screen protection (which I hated, I have a version with the screen protection hollowed out for clearer view!) and the cheaper membrane based keyboard.
The 39/49 are very tough calculators... they are smaller than the 48 series and not unpleasant to look at... save for the frozen hamster but color (which is how this community called the 49g blue when you first saw it :-)....


>It's been a long time. Is there any chance that you could tell us about
>some of the aborted projects? If not here then perhaps at HHC under an NDA.
Xpander is public, and the links have been posted...
The other one, Calypso (I think HP X25 was the official name) was a PDA for teenagers... It was also shown publically. It was a black and white 320*240 screen PDA with a 201Mhz strong arm running Linux, a Java VM (HP Chai) and on which you would be able to connect to a "store" and download applications... Mind you, this was designed in 2000/2001! Ho, it was also blue :-)

We were ready to release version 1 when the calculator group was disbanded...

At the time, I traveled to Helsinki to present the thing to a developer conference (hosted by HP, but with 3rd parties)... Then I had a "pit stop" in france to see my familly. I was due to travel back to Australia, through the US, on september 12th 2001...
As you can imagine... This did not happen... I finally flew on the 14th (from memory), it was an earie experience, with empty planes...
The Chicago Ohare airport was deserted... I remember security was mostly not present as they was no-one... I arrived at the door for my flight from Chicago to SF and they was no door attendant, the door was open, so I just walked in... above the door, the sign was displaying "Everything is done to ensure your security"... I found it funny...
Basically, every passenger had a row to himself in these flights... Which is nice when you are flying on a 13h flight in a 747 from SF to Melbourne!
Upon arrival, I got a phone call from a friend telling me: don't bother coming at work after landing, they just anouced that the division is being disbanded as part of the 10% layoff that is happening...
Anyhow, this is now ancient history!

Cyrille