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Picked up a first-generation 41C (high keys, gold contacts in battery tunnel; 8039Axxxxx datecode) with a

DIAMOND TELLER
module in it. The back of the module says:
82500A-A02
INTL DIAMOND
ID-31 SINGAPORE

The module's stamped datecode is: 2042

The calc also has two 82106A memory modules and a card reader. All have ~1980 datecodes (ie. 20xx).

The 41C's original back-label/legend is entirely covered with a sticker that says:

International Diamond Corporation, Inc.
FULL SERVICE IMPORT BROKERS
Diamond TellerTM Shipping Instructions

1. Package Diamond Teller,TM with sufficient padding to prevent shipping damages.
2. Ship via Registered Insured United States Mail; Return Receipt Requested.
3. Ship to: I.D.C. Diamond Teller,,TM P.O. Box 2278, San Rafael, Ca 94912

CAT 2 indicates program labels such as:

BUYN
BYPMT1
HOLDFV
SELPMT
INVAMT
RETAMT
RETYRS
BATT
and several others. Has anyone ever seen or heard of this calc/module before? I wonder how the card reader was utilized when running the module? Possibly to allow off-line storage of program results (or not).

Google returned a few search results on "International Diamond Corporation", but nothing when combined with "calculator", "41C", or "module". Would be interested to hear more about this doohickey if anyone has any info.

Matt

My mistake... the 41C's datecode/serial-number is 2039Axxxxx, NOT 8039Axxxxx (1980 on the brain.. sorry ;-)

Matt

Hi;

I think I guess it's a financial module. See:

BUYN - N for Number, and BUY (period?)
BYPMT1 - BuYing PayMenT 1 (first?)
HOLDFV - HOLDing (?) Future Value
SELPMT - SELlers PayMenT
INVAMT - INVestment AMounT
RETAMT - RETails AMounT
RETYRS - RETail YeaRS (?)
BATT - No idea; as it uses card reader, maybe (just maybe) allows user to check batteries before using card reader to save/retrieve a particular account's data; if you are a business man you may be interested on using the equipment, not necessarily mastering it.

These are just guesses; anyway, Diamond Co. seems to deal with international, import business.

My US$ 0.05.

Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil

RETAMT - RETails AMounT
RETYRS - RETail YeaRS (?)

Luiz-

could those maybe be 'RETurn' instead of retail?

Hello, Christoff;

I thought about return and, in fact, in my original text, I used:

RETAMT - RETails (RETurn?) AMounT
RETYRS - RETail (RETurn?) YeaRS (?)
...

But I rememeber reading RETURN as a financial function (HP calculators) in IRR - Internal Rate of Return, while retail is a financial related term. I know it is related to direct sales of small amount of goods, and I thought this program would allow the seller to comopute this particular kind of sale.

BTW, as a non-native English speaker and, mostly, not a financial professional, I do not know exactly when using "retail". In USA marlet, what's the best way to use it? What does it stand for, precisely?

Thank you. As I am guessing, I am also interested on knowing what is this module (and its functions) about, too.

Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil

Luiz-

I'm not a finance major, of course- but the only major applications of the word reatil I know are as:

Retail Price (total of cost + markup)
and
Retail Markup

That's why my first thought was for Return for this. Return over X number of years sounds like something you would want to know about the past of a client company or project into the future for an investment?

Hey, Christof;

thank you. I'm always trying to learn.

I think Gene is one of the MoHPC contributors (amongst others) that deals with financial affairs; also, he wrote books about the subject. Maybe he is one of the guys that could help.

Hey, Gene; any clues? Anyone else?

Thanks again, Christof.

Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil

Luiz,

I would add that the term "retail" (at least in USA English) also refers to the process of selling items (one or a few at a time) to the general public. Somebody who sells to anyone who comes through the door is said to be a "retailer," as opposed to a wholesaler, who generally deals in large quantities and directly with somebody (the retailer!) who will subsequently sell small quantities to a wider range of people.

A favorite pursuit in the USA is to "try to get it wholesale," meaning you paid a pre-markup, lower price.

Hello, Matt;

I'm sorry I led the others to my own interests; let's see if there is anything else we can take from this module.

Can you identify if module contents are programs or functions? To see the diference, check for the names shown in CAT 2. If you simply see:

BUYN

then it's a function. If it is a program, you'd see:

TBUYN

The small T, that stands for "Text" or, you you prefer, "sTring", defines a program name instead of a function name. As both of them are in a ROM module, if you use either a program name or a function name from a module as part of a program of your own and remove the module, each of them - program or function name - will be replaced for an XROM mm,nn code.

Can you check for any evidence? Programs are easier to deal with, as they can be listed and tracked.

Best regards.

Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil

I am not a financial professional. I do live in the U.S., and so I get exposure to these terms informally all my life. Even so, there are a lot of things we live with every day and do not really question the exact nature of. A financial professional might be able to give you a most precise definition.

Return: this is always in relation to an investment. It is what you get back for having put your value into something. Typically, if all you get back is what you put there in the first place, this would represent a Zero return.

Most investments are intended to return more than you put in; though sometimes the way value is computed is subject to opinion and so not all investments of high return are as good as they look and not all investments of low return are as bad as they look.

In order to compare "apples to apples", be sure that the value of what you are being returned is evaluated the same way as what you are investing. Money, as in DOLLARS, is a good way to do this. If you invest 100 dollars and the return is "a feeling of satisfaction", be aware that you can't REALLY call that an "investment".

Retail: the sale of a good or service to the END-USER. This term is much abused, I think, because "end-users" are kind of a slippery term, and so is "Retail".

But these terms came about from a multi-tier form of distribution that began with the Trading Companies of Europe back in the 1500's. Raw materials would be purchased or bartered for, and they would be refined or turned into finished goods or intermediate products by manufacturers. Other manufacturers would take intermediate goods and process them or otherwise "add value".

Distribution, however, was something manufacturers rarely wanted to do or could afford to do on their own, so a Distributor would buy the goods from manufacturers, or from those who had sheperded products up to that point, Wholesalers.

A Distributor would purchase from a manufacturer or a wholesaler at a LOW price, and there was kind of an etiquette of business here, which was that:

A: the manufacturer would ONLY deal with a Distributor, and refer any customers who contacted them to the Distributor.

B: the only obligation of the manufacturer to his product was to hold safe (by repair, replacement etc) the Distributor from manufacturing or processing defects.

C: the Distributor bore all responsibility for shipping, stocking, damage along the way, theft, spoilage, and so on-- and if the customer was not satisfied by the product, the Distributor would make him happy somehow.

D: To bear these responsibilities, the Distributor had the absolute right to price the merchandise at whatever the customer would be willing and able to pay.

(NOTE: all this has been kind of codified into tax law, such that many countries have taxes on intermediate tiers, called "value-added" taxes. In the U.S., if you are purchasing an item that is used directly in the manufacture of the item you sell, you can "write-off" that purchase, in effect exempting that purchase from exposure to taxation.)

SO: you had a multi-tiered system where things were priced at ONE level to DISTRIBUTORS and at a HIGHER level to the ultimate buyers. Those ultimate buyers were purchasing a RETAIL item. They purchased it at a RETAIL store. They could only buy WHOLESALE if they got a business license in their state and were qualified/approved by a manufacturer or Wholesaler/Importer to buy-- and in olden times, that meant you needed to prove to them that you had been in that business a few years as a Retailer. As with so many chicken/egg scenarios, this meant the new Retailer-candidate had to struggle a while paying more through extra tiers of semi-wholesalers.

"RETAIL" now tends only to mean a price as high as can be gotten before the manufacturer says to the customer: "Heheh, I will sell DIRECT to you for THAT". In such a way, HP calcs have a LIST, or RETAIL price. On the "street", you can do better, say at Office Max, which IS, by definition, a Retailer, since they sell to the end-user from a brick-and-mortar store. Office Max, however, may state the LIST or Retail Price, and say that they are "40% off Retail". So you see, these terms are sort of loose and soft now.

Having worked many years in Retail establishments, I can tell you that the Gross Profit (similar to a Return of an investment), computed upon what we pay for furniture, as opposed to what we sell it for, is a rate of about 40 percent. The GP of a Pizza is about 33%. Trophies and plaques can range from 25% to over 300 percent above what we pay for the parts and pieces. Batteries tend to retail at twice what we buy them for at wholesale.

I used to wonder if this was good or bad or exploitive in some way. But I began to realize over time, that that Gross Profit is not all it is cracked up to be. In a Retail establishment, there are many expenses and responsibilities that erode the RETURN on the owner's INVESTMENT. In addition to rent, utilities, fixtures, banking fees, equipment and upkeep, licenses, advertising, employee wages and wage-taxes, health and unemployment insurances, you also eat the costs of theft and damage of product, eat what goes bad or is too old to sell, reduce to cost things that are wasting your space, and then at the end of the year the state makes you inventory and takes a percentage of the value of that EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVEN'T SOLD IT YET.

And finally the Federal and most State governments tax your net profits, so the old story that all the above sort of expense doesn't count, because you can "write it off" at the end of the year-- that's just reducing what will be taken from you out of your profit-- it never increases what you make, just reduces what the government takes from YOU. All retail organizations are under scrutiny, and not allowed to claim losses in operations year after year.

Overall, while, from a consumer standpoint, profits on the retail side seem kind of galling, once you understand what makes those profits go away and WHY, a Retail store does not harm or exploit anyone. If you don't like their prices, there are plenty of places looking for your business-- but prices don't tend to vary so much from one business to another precisely because they all have the same battle: give your customer what they want, and make SOME money doing it.

The beauty of Free-Enterprise, really. As the Internet redefines who can buy and sell what to whom, retailers are going to be there only because they can give you what you want NOW, rather than overnight or longer. And to do this, they'll have extended catalogs of inventories to assure that WHATEVER you are looking for, they'll have it. That, alone, is worth Something extra.

I really hope that I have explained all that correctly, and that it is understandable to people in all different countries. Business is an important thing in the U.S.A., so much so that it sort of defines our political and social systems as well as just our economic one. I know that's why some people look at us as crazy... ;-)

I wonder you can print out the program listing and email to those of us who are interested.

CAT 2 results in 100% program names as identified by the T prefix, except for the first one, which is the name of the module. The entire CAT 2 looks like this, with the following display, result, or prompt when the program name is XEQted:

DIATEL
TR *PRICE LIST* CLARITY?
TP CLARITY?
TF14R COLOR?
TF14X WEIGHT?
TS *BLUEBOOK* TABLE?
TM NONEXISTENT
TT *PROFIT* *COMPARISON* INVEST$?
TU *MELANGE*
TV *AUTO S* INV AMOUNT?
TW NONEXISTENT
TW1 *VARIABLES INVEST / YR:
TBUYFV 2,495,000.00
TBUYFV1 -2,188.29
TBUYN 38.06
TBUYN1 35.41
TBUYPMT 538.59
TBYPMT1 6,771.18
THOLDFV 110,120.67
THOLDPV 172,034.15
THOLDN 0.64
TSELLPV 10.00
TSELLN DATA ERROR
TSELPMT 0.00
TSELBAL DATA ERROR
TINVAMT INVEST / YR: 0.05
TINVYRS INV YEARS: 1.55
THOLDYR HOLD YEARS: -0.19
TRETAMT YR RET AMT: NONEXISTENT
TRETYRS RET YEARS: <beep> FOREVER: END RET BAL: AT 20 YRS: ID* 0.00
TRETBAL END RET BAL: ID* 0.00
TPRMPT NONEXISTENT
TX *FINANCIAL* *UPDATE* PURCHASE$?
TX1 PURCHASE$?
TX2 PURCHASE$?
TX9 LIQUIDATION$ 5.00 PROFIT$ 0.00 % PROFIT 0.00 PURCHASE$?
TY *TBLS LOAD* LOAD TBLS?
TZ *TBLS CHECK*
TF1 CLARITY?
TC1 COLOR?
TC2 COLOR?
TC3 COLOR?
TC4 COLOR?
TC5 COLOR?
TC6 CLARITY?
TC7 CLARITY?
TF2 COLOR?
TK8 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 4 turn ON>
TK7 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 4 turn ON>
TK6 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 4 turn ON>
TK5 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 4 turn ON>
TK4 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 4 turn ON>
TK3 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 3 turn ON>
TK2 CLARITY? <and flags 1 2 turn ON>
TK1 CLARITY? <and flag 1 turns ON>
TF3 WEIGHT?
TF13 0,01PT $0,00
TF13Z PRICE
TF7 4.00 -10
TBATT *WARNING* *WARNING* *WARNING* REPLACE BATTERY.

Trying to enter program mode (by pressing PRGM key), results in PRIVATE response (of course ;-). I guess I need to check the archives now to refresh myself on how to "unPRIVATE" the programs (if possible).

So nobody's ever heard of this module before?

Matt

Hello, Matt;

you have a financial module, indeed. I believe it's a custom DIAmond inTErnationaL (DIATEL?), probably used by its representatives. I also believe it must exist a user's reference, available internally at Diamond International. I am almost sure this will be only found with old Diamond employee/salesperson.

As an example:

TF14R      COLOR?
TF14X WEIGHT?
It seems F14 refers to an specific product/catalog item/production line preference

These are all suppositions based on what I see. All of the financial programs should be tested and listed (at least partially) so one could find its particular use. Anyway, as a financial "tool", (big) chances are it can be customized so you can use it as a "quasi" general-purpose.

I hope others add comments, suggestions, corrections.

Success.

Luiz C. Vieira - Brazil

Aren't Color, Clarity and (Carat) weight the "Three C's" of DeBeers, the monopoly that controls the world's supply of diamonds? I do wonder about "melange" - isn't that French for "mixture"? I saw a very interesting documentary on public television about the diamond business. It turns out that DeBeers' biggest problem is that there are too many diamonds in the world to justify the high price (hmmm ... I wonder if there is a lesson in this for HP calculator enthusiasts? I'm going to listen as I go on.) One thing DeBeers has done to help solve their problem is to spend a lot of money on TV advertisements popularizing the slogan "A Diamond is Forever". The goal of this campaign is to discourage people from selling their diamonds because DeBeers has enough trouble without lots of people trading used diamonds instead of buying new ones, which depresses the price of new diamonds. Another thing DeBeers does is to require their customers (diamond cutters) to buy diamonds in lots that include both high and low quality diamonds - I think this is where "melange" might come in. Customers who complain are given fewer good diamonds, so to get the best stones you have to take lots of inferior ones along with them, and then you have to try to make your money back on them. Anybody remember Sams PhotoFact TV repair manuals? Same idea. They came in sets of three - one popular model and two obscure ones. It worked to everybody's benefit because otherwise, Sams couldn't have afforded to bother printing the unpopular ones. If you were a diamond cutter, wouldn't you rather just cut the best quality diamonds, so you could make the most return on your work? So DeBeers, who make it their business to try to buy every diamond mined in the world, need to try to make a return on their lesser acquisitions. At the same time, the retail diamond market can offer a range of quality so that anybody can afford some kind of diamond. I wish I could remember coherently more facts of the diamond trade, but I can only recommend you try to see this PBS documentary. I'm quite sure it is separate from another on a related subject: artificial diamonds which, if I remember correctly, turn out to be fairly easy to spot because they are too perfect. Either that or their impurities make them easily identifiable.

Seems you're interested in diamonds. If so, have a look
at this link:

Diamond Treatments