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I was in the 41 section of the museum and ran upon pictures of printers. The museum has a pic of the 82162A by itself then a picture of an 82143a with a digital casset drive.

Is there a difference in 81143a vs 82162a printers?

Please help me I am looking to purchase a printer for my 41cx. I also have a cv which i would like to use it with as well.

Thank you
GS Leong

The actual printer mechanisms are the same-- it's the interface that is different.

The 82143 plugs directly into one of the expansion ports on the rear of the 41C.

The 82162 is an HP-IL device. You must have an HP-IL module installed in one of the expansion ports to use it.

Apart from HP-IL, there are a few other (minor) differences between the 82143 and 82162. The 82162 has a larger buffer, which means you can do more in terms of graphics (on the 82143, the buffer is too small to hold an entire line's worth of graphics escape codes, although it is sufficient for lots of other cool stuff like high-resolution function plotting).

Also, if I remember correctly, the 82162 lets you control the amount by which the paper advances, so you can create graphics without any gap between lines. You can't do that with the 82143.

Lastly, the 82162 has a low-power standby mode, from which it can be woken up by the calculator. Good feature to have if you want to run it off batteries, while doing lengthy calculations on the 41 where it only prints a few lines every now and then.

BTW, you might also want to look at the HP-82242 module: that's an infrared interface which lets you use a HP-82240 printer. The module supports almost all the functionality of the 82143 and 82162, so most printing programs for the 41 should work with it with little or no modification.

Good luck, and enjoy your 41CX!

- Thomas

Actually there is a very good chance the '143A and the HPIL printer have different printer mechanisims. There were two types used. One had the timing wheel on the motor side of the machanism and is in most '143A units. The other had it on the far side and is found in most HP-IL units.

And - talking of replacing parts - you can also replace the few 82240A and B printers with a new clone of it:

Martel MCP8800 (see at http://www.martelinstruments.com/index2.html?ref=8800.html)

Slightly off topic:
Now we need only a clone manufacturer of the calculators up to the 48 series and we can leave today's hp managers where they wann be...