Texas Instruments - The PET Project

[Joerg Woerner]

During my last trip to Dallas, TX the Datamath Calculator Museum received some exciting calculator prototypes from Texas Instruments. I documented them already, just follow this link:
The PET PROJECT

Regards,
Joerg

[Namir]

Joerg,

Now I understand better what you told me at HHC2007 about the prototypes that made you really wish you had them. The models looks nice. I feel that the general designs still have potential ... as long as they have a USB port and/or and SD card reader.

Namir

[DaveJ]

When a calculator gets down to essentially having no dedicated keys like this, what's the point in having a dedicated hardware platform any more?
Might as well use a PDA or iPhone etc, and spend the design effort where it belongs - on the the software.

Dave.

[Joerg Woerner]

That's why they cancelled it.
The one at the lower right position had even a MP3 player integrated ;-))

Regards,
Joerg

[DaveJ]

Quote:

---

That's why they cancelled it.
The one at the lower right position had even a MP3 player integrated

---

LOL!
When did they start development on this?
I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I suppose the one advantage of doing your own hardware platform is that you own it and can control it. If you have to rely on say a particular Palm or Pocket PC platform then you are somewhat at the mercy of the rather fickle consumer market, with product lifetimes measured in months, not years.

Dave.