Card programmer

[Han]

Does anyone here own one of those card programmers for the HP48? They were sold by Educalc, if I recall. Can you explain how they work, where you got the cards to be programmed, and if any of this is still available?

[Raymond Del Tondo]

Hi,

we had these EEPROM card programmers back then at W&W.

It consisted of a card dock/programmer with serial interface,

an HP-48 library for programming control,

and the EEPROM cards, of course;-)

You simply copied the library to the HP-48,

and then you could either copy HP-48 RAM contents

to an EEPROM card, or just copy one card to another.

Nice items!

However the cards cases were made like the other TDS

cards at that time, out of one piece of plastic,

with a metal plate on the back, and no contact protector slider.

Cheap design, you always had to store the card

in an extra non-static case when not in use.

I don't recall if these EEPROM programmers were ever sold in Germany,

maybe due to the price...

And no, I don't have any of these EEPROM programmers here.

However I have an EPROM programmer which is able to

burn EPROM cards (from EPSON) for the HP-48:-)

Unfortunately the suitable EPROM cards are hard to get these days...

Regards

Raymond

[Han]

How much would an EPROM card from Epson cost nowadays? It seems that the software for the HP48GX has become fairly stable in the sense that the programs are not being updated all that much (if at all). It would be nice to be able to do away with battery operated RAM cards and also not worry about having to redownload programs if something bad should happen (e.g. forgetting to write-protect the cards when testing low-level programs).