As promised since the project's conception, here is another periodic update on what's new at OpenRPN.

After a great deal of research and hard labor, we have established a documentation site, located here, using the UniWakka wiki engine. In the near future we should have a working roadmap complete with development milestones. Work is just beginning on the *fix Command Reference, as we put the finishing touches on the *fix Command Definition Standard.

As a bit of background. *fix uses the UserRPL command set (all command names and function are identical), and extends it to allow programming in multiple forms of syntax. In addition to postfix, you can also use infix or prefix if you are more comfortable using those styles.

The development of our target form factors is becoming more active and work on CAD models is just getting underway. Once we're happy with the designs, we will ask this community at MoHPC as well as the hp48 newsgroup for additional input and seek general approval of the design. The final designs will be used to define physical constraints for our hardware designers.

We have devised a rather clever way to improve our sales by marketing our products as single board computers/development kits. There are countless alternate uses for our platform, and increasing sales volume is the only method by which we will attempt to decrease prices. Most calculators on the market today cost very little to produce but a lot to develop. We're in the opposite position. What you will be paying for is hardware, publishing, and shipping. Profits on our end will be slim, and will be devoted to future development (rather than $40 million severance packages).

More help is always needed, even in the form of sending a link to openrpn to a friend who might be interested.

Thank you to everyone here for taking an interest in our project, and to Dave for allowing us to post our slightly off-topic but halfway relevant news.

Best Regards,
HDE

Thank you Hugh for the interesting article.

I hope you will find interested people from the following groups:

. Hardware oriented guys with connections to possible manufacturers of the shell, keyboard, LCD and other electronics

. Software experts who can help implement *fix to something usefeul

. Normal end user interested in the final product

I'm IT consultant, but was never hardware related and 15 years ago I wrote my last Cobol program (never changed side to C, VB, Java etc.). So I count me to the last group.

And I suppose the normal end users are the big venue here (and in comp.sys.hp48). Apart from the very impressive shell designs in Voyager, Pioneer and "big" Pioneer style: Can you condense in a few statement what we end user can expect to get in a first production lot?

To make my question concrete, a few questions from my personal point of view:

a) of which material will the shell be made of (alu? inox? some plastic?)

b) will there be a choice in formfactor (P/L) for the 1st series?

c) may I buy a fully customized keyboard (and labels and functions)? E.G. I like many shift keys rather then menus (f,g,h like hp67)

d) will there be a choice for inyard technical details (amount of RAM, MHz of processor, real time clock...) leading to a openRPN43 S or G or V?

e) will there be a choice for external peripheral connection features (HP-IR, serial, USB, SD, LAN, WLAN hehe, I'm dreaming...)? Like a openRPN43G vs GX.

I will stop here. I could write a book about my wishes!
Hope you see the point of my introductory question.

Thank you for the lot of work until today.
Valentino

Thanks for all of your questions, and please don't hesitate to ask more if you have any!

a) of which material will the shell be made of (alu? inox? some plastic?)

Our current plan is to use plastics, with additives if necessary, and possibly offer die-cast aluminum in the future.

b) will there be a choice in formfactor (P/L) for the 1st series?

It's too early for me to make an absolute guarantee, but I think a simultaneous release is *extremely* probable.

c) may I buy a fully customized keyboard (and labels and functions)? E.G. I like many shift keys rather then menus (f,g,h like hp67)

That has been one of the requirements of our design since the beginning. Not only can you have a custom keyboard, we're developing a method to embed the labels so end users can effectively have custom mutliple-shot molded keys.

d) will there be a choice for inyard technical details (amount of RAM, MHz of processor, real time clock...) leading to a openRPN43 S or G or V?

No there will not. Instead, we're going to create excessive overhead since maximizing profit margins isn't a priority for us. You'll get more processing power, and RAM than you'll need. Enough room will be left in the case for internal daughterboards and some form of flash storage (probably compact flash or MMC/SD)

e) will there be a choice for external peripheral connection features (HP-IR, serial, USB, SD, LAN, WLAN hehe, I'm dreaming...)? Like a openRPN43G vs GX.

A fine pitch connector with more pins than we need will provide connections or the potential for connections to just about anything a user could want. IrDA is planned as well. USB, RS-232, and many other connection types will be supported.

I'll address your questions in more detail in the new FAQ I am writing.

Best Regards,
HDE

My OpenRPL account seems to be missing the ".com" at the end of my msn-mail account so I can't get my password nor anything else done.

[VPN]

Send me an e-mail stating the username you used to register at openrpn. I'll take care of the rest.