12C Anniversary Edition

[Katie Wasserman]

http://www.expansys.com/zoompic.asp?type=item&code=135691 it looks like there is a 25 anniversary edition of the 12C platinum in addition to the Prestige. Seems like HP is getting a lot of mileage out of one calculator with several different faces. It'll certainly sell to collectors but I'm not sure who else.

[Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil)]

Hi, Katie;

thank you for pointing this link out. One single comment of mine: it seems that, after all of the tryouts, HP decided to get back to the very first Voyager color scheme; would that be the best one afterall?

What else is new...

Cheers.

Luiz (Brazil)

Edited: 18 May 2006, 12:31 a.m.

[Adam Wild]

There is a data sheet for this item I found here:http://www.classic-calculators.co.uk/12cpa.pdf
There is no mention of this product on the main site and it doesnt appear to be available for sale yet

[Frank B. (Germany)]

Dynatech (www.dynatech.de) reports also about two new HP calculators, the HP-39 GS und HP-50 G (date May 12, 2006). Someone already mentioned this at comp.sys.hp48, but no responses yet.

Frank.

[Ronald]

See background info on site of HP:

http://h41111.www4.hp.com/calculators/nl/nl/pdf/12c_anniversary.pdf

[Bruce Horrocks]

The 25th Anniversary Edition of the 12C Platinum was featured on the cover of the March/April (V25N2) edition of Datafile.

HP's intention is to sell the anniversary edition instead of the regular edition for six months or so, and then revert to the regular one (once the anniversary is over). So in that sense, everyone will buy one, not just collectors.

[Mr. E]

How reliable are your HP sources regarding their marketing intentions?

When will the 25th Anniversary edition be available to the public?

[Bruce Horrocks]

I don't have an exact date, only that it shuld be on sale (in the UK at least) from July onwards. This fits in with the "on sale for 6 months" plan. Not sure whether that is a little too convenient, though. :-)

[Mr. E]

Thx! I'll be looking for it in the USA. I couldn't handle the Platinum mostly because I couldn't read the damn keypad and the keypress reliability was questionable. Hopefully, the Anniversary edition addresses both those issues.

[Mr. E]

Here is the official word from Gary Cantwell @ HP:

"It (12C Platinum Anniversary Edition) is currently available in-store at J&R in New York. It will be available online at Hpshopping and SMB this week. It will be in
Staples, Circuit City and Frye's by mid-July"

Hope this helps,

Gary

[Walter B]

Any news about availability in Europe?

[Woody Larkin]

The HP 12c Platinum Anniversary Edition is now available at the HP Shopping website: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/generic_subcategory.do?storeName=storefronts&landing=handhelds&category=calculators&subcat1=financial&catLevel=2
I ordered one this morning. It is priced at $79.95.
Woody

[Tizedes Csaba [Hungary]]

And what about HP15C Anniversary Edition???

Csaba

[Mr. E]

One would think, huh!

According to the HP15c.org site, only 30k would be purchased. Not sure that's enough to ramp up the factory for, especially if it undercuts the newer models.

[Gene]

It's not just ramping up a factory.

There would have to be code programmed into ROM, updated components, testing, probably corporate presentations about alternative uses of capital, etc.

For 30,000 units at perhaps $20 profit each? (Wild guess on the profit...I have no idea)

Lost in the rounding of HP's financials.

That's why there haven't been any 15c anniversary editions.

The 12c anniversary edition appears to be the 12c platinum with a different skin. That's much cheaper to do that resurrect a model that has not been produced in nearly 20 years.

[Jeff O.]

Gene,

I agree that we will likely never see a 15C Anniversary Edition or similar, but would it really be all that difficult? It seems like almost all of your arguments against a new 15C would apply to the 12c Platinum 25th Anniversary Edition, e.g. presentations to the board about use of capital, production of the new silver bezel, production of the new specially embossed case, all for maybe 30,000(?) units at a $20(?) profit. I think we have to assume that hp produced the 12c Platinum 25th at least in part as a gesture of goodwill toward its longtime customers, not solely due to their (certainly justifiable) profit motive. If they could do that for their business users, why not a 15c Platinum 25th Anniversary edition (which would be due out in about a year) for their longtime scientific calculator customers? Regarding actual production of a new 15C, would it really require as much work as you make out? Unless I am mistaken, the current 12c is still running the original 12c code on the same processor or maybe an emulation of the original processor. If the original 15c code were run on the current 12c platform, wouldn’t we have a 15c? Then it would just be a small matter of a few key label and faceplate label changes. They have already developed a “classic” silver bezel, for the 12c Platinum 25th. Just change the “2” to a “5” and delete “Platinum” and it is done.

In the end, I know you are right, but as evidenced by other posts of mine, I like to dream.

Best regards

[Gene]

Nope. I think it takes much less capital to change the color front of a calculator than to redevelop a ROM, create new keys, test it, get a part number, etc.

The 12cp 25th anniversary IS the 12cp with a new skin. that's all.

There are no 15c's in production, so it would be a much bigger deal.

Add to that though that the 12c and 12cp sell many many more units than the 15c ever did.

HP is essentially assured of selling tons of 12cs. Other than a few of us nuts, how many 15c's would be bought?

30,000 probably isn't enough to consider doing. Just MO.

[Jeff O.]

Gene,

I think I allowed myself to get caught up in some wishful thinking. With the black faceplate and the aluminum bezel, the 12c Platinum 25th looks very much like a 15c (it would have even more if only they had used the yellow "f" key and legends from the current 12c instead of the orange of the 12cp.) Having never looked closely at a 12cp, I thought its bezel was white, so when I saw the aluminum bezel on the 25th anniversary edition, I wrongly assumed that they had produced it just for that edition. Upon further review, I see that the standard 12cp uses the same aluminum bezel. So producing the 25th anniversary edition was just a simple matter of some new labelling on the standard bezel, and using the standard 12c black faceplate with the 12cp orange paint. The case was also probably relatively cheap to have produced also, so all in all, not a very expensive proposition for hp. I’m not sure of the potential market, though. I agree that hp is assured of selling lots of 12c’s or 12cp’s. Aside from “a few of us nuts”, I’d think that every 25th Anniversary Edition would represent a lost 12c or 12cp (standard version) sale. So basically whatever they spent to produce the 25th Anniversary Edition was spent to capture those few extra sales to us nuts. Based on this tenuous line of reasoning, I’ll still ascribe at least a portion of hp’s rationale for producing the 12cp 25th to customer good will. That being the case, and with my rose-colored glasses firmly in place, I’ll still hold the tiniest hope for the release of the 15c 25th Anniversary Edition early next year.

Aside from the above cost to produce and likely market, I thought you (or someone else) might take issue with my postulation that creating the 15c should be relatively easy, i.e., just plug the original 15c rom code into the current 12c electronics. A couple of years ago, there was a thread regarding conversion of the current 12c to a 15c via aftermarket modification. In that thread, the chip used in the 12c was identified as part no. 2AF1-0001, manufactured by Agilent. At the risk of showing my near complete ignorance of such things, if the 15c rom was provided to Agilent, could they not produce a 15c version of that chip fairly simply? If so, and this chip was then sent to Kinpo, would not the 15c be reborn (with some minor faceplate and key label changes)? If hp won’t do it, perhaps a third party could get Agilent to make the chip, then do the retrofit of current 12c’s as was envisioned in the thread referenced above. Anybody care to check with Agilent to get a price on the new chip? (I know, I know, price would probably be $1,000,000 for the first few, then $10 each after that in lots of 100,000.)

[Eric Smith]

The 2AF1 chip doesn't have enough ROM or RAM for the 15C. The 15C has always required an extra "R2D2" chip to provide the additional memory. The 2AF1 was probably designed specifically for the 12C, so it might or might not have the hooks for the extra R2D2. Even if it does, you're going to have to get that R2D2 manufactured, not just the 2AF1 with different ROM code.

I suspect that Agilent would not be willing to manufacture the 2AF1 chip for any new customers at any reasonable price. Probably the only reason they were selling it to HP was that it was developed before/during the HP/Agilent split.

I think it would be possible to develop a new 15C chip as a drop-in replacement for the 2AF1 and get 15 prototype pieces (not all of which would be functional) for under $6,000, using the MOSIS AMIS 1.5 micron process.

To start volume production, there would be up-front NRE for the
mask set, but the per-chip cost woould be very low.

I've actually done some VHDL design work on the core of a Nut-compatible processor, and run it in an FPGA. Monte Darymple is even further along on such a design in Verilog with his NEWT project, though his aim is a high-performance upgrade for the 41C.

If I thought I could actually sell enough 12C-to-15C upgrade chips, I'd be willing to finish the design work. But I doubt very much that enough people are willing to make a serious commitment (i.e., money up front or at least in escrow) to make this happen.

[Monte Dalrymple]

Actually, becauee the NEWT design is a superset of the CPU
originally used in the 10c/11c/12c/15c/16c as well as the 41C,
the design could be used to make a replacement processor for
any of those. Of course, the display driver/RAM would also have
to be reverse-engineered.

The costs are not as exhorbitant as you might expect. I just
finished a comparable design (18K gates, 64-pin package) and
the NRE was less than $60K. The first hundred chips were about
$10 each, but the volume price (50K) is less than a dollar each.

Designs like this don't need the latest bleeding-edge process
technology. The design I'm talking about uses a vanilla 0.35u
gate array and runs a hundred times faster than the processor
in a 15c.

Monte