Hi, Brian:
Brian posted:
"Valentin, I enjoy reading your posts about the Voyager's."
Well, thank you very much, I'm glad you do.
"I was wondering if you had a website that contains some of the things you have written about them. I'd like to read more, but it gets frustrating searching through all the archives trying to
find things."
I've been thinking about creating a web site to make publicly available the *hundreds* of programs, articles, quality photographs, historic-PPC-times letters, and tons and tons and tons of materials I do have, mainly related to HP (75%) and SHARP handhelds (25%). I would really love to share all of this with interested people, specially as most of it is absolutely unpublished elsewhere.
However, there are two serious problems to overcome: first of all, documenting and preparing all of this in web form will take a lot of effort, scanning, retyping, testing, etc. I don't have so much free time at the moment to do it. Nevertheless, a great deal of it is already in web form and could be published right now but then we're stuck with problem two, namely I don't have enough free web space to host all of this. My computer chess site has only 5 Mb or so free space available, and the rest of my sites are also smallish. I would need some kind people to freely host my materials, and that would take a sizable number of megabytes. So far I've had no offers, so this web project may take a long while to get the green light, if ever.
Meanwhile, you just might be interested in some of my articles [all of them do include a program, full documentation and examples] that are already available on the web, namely:
HP Voyager Series:
Long Live the HP-11C!
Long Live the HP-12C!
HP-12C Tried & Tricky Trigonometrics
HP-12C's Serendipitous Solver
Long Live the HP-15C!
HP-15C Nth-degree Polynomial Fitting
Long Live the Advantage ROM!
Other HP handhelds:
HP-41/42 Othello/Reversi Game
HP-67 Chess Playing Program
Packing Long Integers for the HP 71B (Assembler)
A short, HP-related tale, in memoriam of Sir Isaac Newton
Time Voyager
A chess-related program (TP source code included)
Mater: A simple Mate-Searching Program
There are also a sizable number of postings from mine to this very Forum and some of them do include routines and 'challenges' for Voyagers and other models. I don't have them available so you'll need to search the Archives if interested.
Sounds like you own at least a few. I was wondering if you have encountered any problems with them? My 11c has been
reliable so far and is in perfect condition, but it's almost 20 years old so I'm sure it's days are numbered.
I own a respectable number of Voyagers, indeed (though not nearly as many as Patrick), from a couple HP-10C to five HP-15C. All of them I like in their own way. Were it easily available and relatively cheap, the HP-10C would be the absolutely ideal simple-yet-powerful RPN calculator for everyone to always have one at hand, from housewives to examinees.
As for problems, I've *never*, ever had even the slightest hint of a problem or malfunction with any of the Voyagers I've used. The best example is the first one I got, a USA-made HP-11C presented to me by my close friend Fernando del Rey 23+ years ago. I've used this machine endlessly, it's been with me while I was with the Foreign Legion at the Sahara Desert, it's stood all kinds of rough conditions, yet not only does it work flawlessly, but it even looks like new ! And only 3 battery changes in those 23+ years, the third set still going strong ! :-)
Your 11C has its days numbered, but everyone and everything does, from the Universe to the humblest bacteria. I'd bet that 10-15 years from now your 11C will be absolutely fine and dandy, if properly taken care of as I'm sure you do.
Best regards from V.