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HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Printable Version

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HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Joerg Woerner - 02-05-2008

Please find a wonderful interview with Sam Kim, Director of product development of HP's calculator group:

http://www.videsignline.com/GLOBAL/electronics/designline/shared/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=206102182&pgno=1

Some of the statements:

The 8502 is designed by Sunplus Technology, a Taiwanese company. It's based on the 6502, an 8-bit processor that first appeared on the Commodore 64...

The firmware also resides on the 8502 microcontroller. That leaves almost the entire flash memory available for user programming. The 32-kbyte flash leaves about 30 kbytes available to the end user, enough for about 20,000 lines of code.

The initial specifications for the 35s came from a team within HP. Once that spec was agreed upon, the design was outsourced to a team in Taiwan. But even after it was sent overseas, the HP internal design team continued to work on other aspects of the 35s, in parallel with the external team in Taiwan. The internal HP team actually resided in four separate locales: Boise, Cupertino, San Diego, and Vancouver.

Enjoy!

Regards,
Joerg


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Stefan Vorkoetter - 02-05-2008

Quote:
...the 6502, an 8-bit processor that first appeared on the Commodore 64...

That's hilarious. The 6502 appeared long before the Commodore 64. Although probably not the first, one early single board microcomputer using the 6502 was the KIM-1. You'd think that Sam Kim would know that. :-)

Stefan


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Stefan Vorkoetter - 02-05-2008

Quote:
The 32-kbyte flash leaves about 30 kbytes available to the end user, enough for about 20,000 lines of code.

Actually, from my experience with two largish HP 35s programs (one of 315 lines and one of 428 lines), I've found that the average program line takes about 3.3 bytes, so 30KB yields space for about 9,000 lines of code.

My programs are, I think, pretty typical, consisting mostly of RPN instructions with a very few equations thrown in (mostly used as prompts).

Stefan


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Massimo Gnerucci (Italy) - 02-05-2008

Quote:
That's hilarious. The 6502 appeared long before the Commodore 64. Although probably not the first, one early single board microcomputer using the 6502 was the KIM-1

You're right Stefan! It's the second time in a few days that I've read this statement...

Besides KIM-1 single-board computer the 6502 was used in Apple I & II and Commodore PET long before the arrival of the Commodore 64.

Actually inside the C64 lies a 6510.

And the 8502 itself was used in the C128.

Greetings,
Massimo


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Richard Ottosen - 02-05-2008

Quote:
Besides KIM-1 single-board computer the 6502 was used in Apple I & II and Commodore PET long before the arrival of the Commodore 64.
Actually inside the C64 lies a 6510.

Even more amazing was the sale of a cheaper version of the 6502. According to a Wikipeida entry, about 40 million Atari 2600's were sold using the 6507 made by MOS Technology.


-- Richard


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 02-05-2008

The AIM-65 comes into mind, too...

The 32K user memory isn't likely to be flash. If it were, the calculator would never loose memory while you remove the batteries.

BTW, what is an "LCD diver?"

And if the keybord is so well designed and tested, why are there the failures mentioned elsewhere in this forum? I either don't trust the article or the actual manufacturing process. Or neither.

Marcus


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Walter B - 02-05-2008

Quote:
BTW, what is an "LCD diver?"

Assume this "diver" is looking at the bottom of the sea for the lost "r" 8))


Re: HP 35s - The incarnated Commodore C64 - Tom Mathes - 02-06-2008

My thoughts exactly. While the keyboard feel on the 35S is okay, it's not that great and within a week of purchase I had some keystroke entry misses. The "Enter" key being the worst in my calc.

I'll give it a few months and call HP for a warranty replacement. Perhaps they'll solve the problem by then.