hp71 death, please help!

[t-bone]

I could manage to save one thanks to Luiz!
Thanks again Luiz! I did the reinit procedure ON and / and it started an memory lost. Great.
But it did not work on the other one.
When it's powered, all the elements of the display are lit and it's insensitive to any key : I tried to do On and / but nothing happens. When I remove the batteries and press on for about 30s, it starts a kind of display test then the image vanishes and it's the same when I put batteries back: all lit!
Do you have any idea?
In any case, I really want to thank Luiz cause one is already ok.
All the best,
T-bone.

[Garth Wilson]

This message was somehow lost the first time I tried to post it, so I'll write it again (and keep a copy this time!)

I crashed the 71 royally a few times when I was new to Forth. (I knew it could happen, so I had everything backed up, and a program to re-load everything from tape and do all the custom set-ups.) At least once I had to remove the batteries and short the end terminals together while pressing ON for half a minute or more to get things discharged enough to ensure a real reset.

I should make a side comment here. A few times I got the dredded "Memory lost" message at unexpected times when I turned the 71 on. I told this to the friend who got me into it, and he said he did too, and suspected it was from keys getting pressed while it was in the soft case in his atache case. Acting on that tip, I had a woodworker friend make me a little one-piece box that I could slide the computer and soft case into the end of, which fit just snug-- not tight. I've never had a memory-lost condition since then. That was ten or fifteen years ago.

[Tom Sherman]

A colleague once expressed surprise at the old Dutch Masters cigar box which accompanied me in my backpack when I bicycled to work. I opened it up to show him my HP-71B. Those who have not inherited cigar boxes from a previous generation will find that some of the school pencil boxes (made by Rubbermaid and others) fit the 71B (and soft case) perfectly.

Cheers, Tom