I've put a photo of four graphing HPs on my website as a response to a discussion in the French MySilicium forum. Here is a translation of my original post:

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A picture tells more than a million words, as we say here:

The production dates of these machines (week/year):

48S : 14/1992

48G : 39/1996

38G : 25/1995

39G : 21/2000

The screens of the 48G and 38G are equivalent.

Who can explain how to get rid of the annunciators on the 39G screen?

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As an additional info: Reset did not turn those annunciators off.

Hi,

I don't know how to put off the annunciators on your 39g,

maybe it has suffered from bleeding?

But your pic reminded me of a pic series I made some years ago.

HP-48G Series Screen comparison

The pic links of the original thread are dead,

but I just uploaded one of the pics to my guest account:

Short summary: All three LCD types have been used in the HP-48G series calcs.

Left calc: Typical GX LCD; Middle: GX with SX LCD; Right: G+ with high contrast LCD.

From today's perspective it's incredible that they used the left and middle LCD at all!

Cheers

Raymond

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From today's perspective it's incredible that they used the left and middle LCD at all!

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Amen! I recently purchased an HP-50g, and I now realize how absolutely terrible the display is on my 19 year old HP-48SX.

Not only Hewlett Packard...

June 1996:

October 1999:

Regards,
Joerg

Has anybody an idea, why the 39G lights the two rightmost annunciators? It's not bleeding, they are extinct while the machine is turned off. They've survived different reset attempts (I haven't tried a memory clear yet.)

Is this a hardware or a software problem?

Marcus,

The shot is not very distinct, but it looks to me like the two annunciators are the hourglass (busy) symbol and scroll right arrow. This may be a dumb question, but can it be as simple as the calculator is waiting for you to scroll right to see part of the graph that is off the screen? Or do these always appear no matter what mode?

Martin

The right arrow is the I/O annunciator. But the calculator is neither busy nor doing any I/O. As I've already mentioned, they appear even directly after a reset of the machine.

Still puzzled...

Well, so far has anyone else reported this behavior with a HP 49g? Perhaps, it is just a hardware/firmware fault with your particular unit. Did it always do this, or just recently?

I wish I knew. The device is on a shelf most of the time.

My 19-year-old (or so) HP-48SX has had some annunciators permanently visible whenever the machine is switched on for some years now. It also has a dead column of pixels. I have always assumed that the annunciator problem is simply to do with the age of the display.

Sorry I can't provide a picture; my HP-48SX is currently elsewhere!

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The right arrow is the I/O annunciator. But the calculator is neither busy nor doing any I/O.

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All stuck annunciators I have seen to date are either a defective LCD or logic board, never a software issue.

It is a faulty LCD at least 95% of the time.

I just had success with printing via I/R. The annunciators are still lit.

Thanks Randy for the clarification. Its more of a cosmetic issue and does not affect the functionality of my 39G.

Another idea:

The calc is busy trying to get out of that ugly housing.

It's crying: "Get me out of this depressing algebraic existence, and transform me into a real and exciting HP-48!"

SCNR;-)

I don't think that the case. An algebraic calc lacks the sense of it own deficiency. ;)

Someone mailed me with another idea: The voltage of the batteries might be a cause for the sticky annunciators. I'll have to check if his assumptions hold (by checking the batteries and their voltage.)

Just use a good emulator (Emu48) and copy/paste a screen shot to Paint Shop Pro or what you prefere and get rid of your funny annunciators. What? You still use real HW? I go with George Clinton in that song (from Prince): "... and virtual is real."

Ciao.....Mike

I just do not want to miss the 39's superb rubber keyboard. My iBook simply cannot compete...

;)