HP Calc Repurposing

[Gene Dorr]

The HP-20B and HP-12C repurposing projects sounded pretty interesting, but I haven't seen or heard of any activity in this area. The Repurposing Wiki hasn't been maintained in quite a while. Anybody aware of anything going on? Also, I'm wondering if the HP-30B has the same repurposing provisions as the 20B?

[Katie Wasserman]

Yes the 30b has the same re-purposing options as the 20b. The 12C+ is more restricted in that it lacks a JTAG connector and other internal parts. There are a few regular members of this forum working on their own projects with these machines but are not posting what they're doing on that wiki.

-Katie

[hugh steers]

Hi,

yes, there is some background activity. a while back, i got going with the 20b/30b coding. last thing i did was try to bring up a dev chain on gcc (as opposed to IAR). the gcc dev chain works, but i needed to hack some more low level stuff. IAR is good, but you are limited to 32k of code, which i know wont last long :-)

i've had a lot of other stuff on at the moment, but i was hoping to make a stab at the 12+ too. i have enough code hanging around to put together an open source scientific RPN calculator for the 12/20/30 - i just need to get around to doing it!

-- hugh.

[Paul Dale]

I've mostly done replacement firmware for the 20b/30b with a decent scientific load out.

I was laid off in February which really impacted progress -- I lost access to all the nice debug and development tools that my employer had. Not to mention getting more than a bit depressed for a while. I've got a new job but haven't had time to progress anything and seem unlikely to for the foreseeable future.

So if anyone is willing to take my firmware load out and finish the port to the 20b, I'd be very happy. What remains is the actual hardware support and you can use HP's development base for the majority of this. PM me if interesting in finishing this project....

- Pauli

[Walter B]

And there's quite some documentation available here, too. Includes an index of operations, addressing, catalogues, keyboard layout, fonts, messages, constants and conversions etc. FWIW ... d:-/

[Bruce Bergman]

Hi Gene --

I'm actually the owner of the wiki you mentioned. There definitely have been a few updates in the past couple of months. Any wiki like this one depends on user contributions in order to grow, so the more folks post things to the wiki, the better.

Also, the more word gets out there, that should improve things too. I know there is a fair amount of interest in the embedded world on how to repurpose these calculators. Especially in circles like the PIC and Arudino groups. It's just a matter of keeping up content and sharing the knowledge.

I have several things I need to post, and some updates to put there as well, but I've just been swamped. If anyone wants to help, just let me know -- I'd LOVE some help keeping things updated.

@Katie: I know you're one of the few consistent contributors to the wiki as well (thank you!!), but you mentioned other projects that weren't being followed on the wiki. If you can convince them to post and share information, or at least route stuff through me, I will try and get information up there.

Thanks!

Bruce

[Katie Wasserman]

Bruce,

I think that you have their ear right here!

-Katie