HP once built machines so tough a calculator survived a hippo's digestive tract
An illustrated online book on Hewlett-Packard equipment
A Hacker News thread celebrates an illustrated online book about classic Hewlett-Packard gear. Commenters recall the HP85a desktop computer with its 32K expansion cartridge, great BASIC manuals, and keyboard feel that rivals modern mechanical keyboards, plus the HP-67 RPN calculator that let a father move a mainframe FORTRAN program into his briefcase. One legend: an HP-12c passed through a hippo and still computed bond yields.
The calculator survived the hippo's digestive process as well as the washing that followed.
- peterus
Besides them being wonderful test equipment, it's always fun showing people the hidden Centipede game on the HP 54645D oscilloscopes.
- ofrzeta
As I understand it it is focused on HP test equipment. Here's a video where Dan Gelbart talks about the HP test devices in his workshop https://youtu.be/HWPYoE1SNnA?t=2019
- seanhunter
Aw man! Some serious nostalgia-bait there, with two of my personal faves on the front cover. People may not realise, but HP used to make really amazing devices, primarily targeting scientific and engineering users.
The computer in the back with the magnetic tape drive and thermal printer is an HP85a. We had one of those in about 1982-ish, which my dad bought for home use since they used HP equipment in his lab at work. My friend who had a Sinclair ZX-81 would marvel at the fact that (since we had an expansion cartridge) it had a mighty 32K of ram! Absolutely vast in comparison to the 1k of a ZX-81. The HP85a came with really great manuals which taught you how to program in basic, and had a wonderful keyboard. I have a ton of mechanical keyboards and I only once managed to get keycaps that feel as nice as the ones on the HP85a.
That calculator (which I think is an HP-67) also has some history for me. I can’t be exactly sure of the model number, but that looks like the one which was the first RPN calculator I ever programmed. My dad gave me some pocket money to translate a FORTRAN program he had written (which estimated something or other to do with some chemical process) to run on that calculator. He was really excited by the fact that a program he had written to run on an enormous university mainframe that took a whole floor now could run on a thing he could carry well, if not in his pocket (it’s a pretty chunky calculator) at least in his briefcase. That calculator ha […]