Hello Gentlemen !
While some of us here enjoyed discussing about the next HP-35S, imagining numerous variants of keypads and the related functions, or solve some mathematical and programming challenges, the idea came to my mind to materialize me too my interest for HP calculators.
As I have, as most of us I assume, a special relationship with what is probably a pillar of the Hewlett Packard building, I mean the beloved HP-41, I decided to make my way a sort of tribute to this fascinating machine, by doing a complete tri-dimensional model of it. This is not, of course, as interesting as an emulator, but visually speaking, it goes further and, in this way, this is complementary.
I took the dimensions on my ’41, which is an early one (serial no : 1944A…), also called a “tall key”, with square corners on the screen and gold-plated ball-bearings on the side of the battery compartment (to allow for a future AC adaptor that was never produced, as you can read in the MoHPC).
As you can see on the attached picture (I apologize for the poor quality of this picture), I think the result is not so far from the original model. I really had some fun by making the parts one by one, and by assembling them to give life to this project, and I hope you will enjoy playing with it at your turn, because that's what you'll be able to do !
(Please, be indulgent with me, I didn’t disassemble my ’41 to draw the PCB !)
I explain : you’ll find here a small website I’ve quickly made to host the 3D-file and a link to a free software, a viewer of 3D files, eDrawings viewer 2007®, necessary to display this file.
Download and install the viewer, then download and open with the viewer the file HP-41C.easm, and play !
You can zoom, rotate the model, move the components, hide them or make them see-through : you will see your HP-41 closer than you never did !
This is totally useless, but absolutely necessary for who is HP-41 fanatic !
Kind regards from Jean-Michel.