Philadelphia Area HP Handheld Club Meeting

Wednesday, June 28th, 1995 - Drexel University

Calculators On The Internet

Among the thousands of home pages on the World Wide Web, both Hewlett-Packard and Texas Instruments have set up areas to browse for information on their calculators. HP's area has mainly material covering the HP48G and GX units, with materials expected on the new HP38G some time soon. In addition to HP's own area, there are various other users' pages with much useful HP48-related information, including a Frequently Asked Questions area, calculator "museum" of all past HP models and software repository. The addresses of some these areas are as follows:

http://hpcvbbs.cv.hp.com/ (HP 48G/GX Calculator Family Main Welcome Page)

http://kahless.isca.uiowa.edu/hp/wwwsites.html/ (HP Calc WWW Sites)

http://www.telebit.com/~eric/hpcalc/ (Hewlett-Packard Calculators)

http://kahless.isca.uiowa.edu/hewlett_packard.html/ (Jeff's HP Calc Resource)

http://www.teleport.com/~dgh/hpmuseum.html/ (The Museum of HP Calculators)

http://www.hp.com/hpj/Journal.html/ (HP Journal)

Texas Instruments' own calculator area is more elaborate than that of HP, with branches off the home page to cover the various types of calculators which TI manufactures. Also, there is an area with the history of TI machines. However, the current highlight is the extensive interactive graphical material on the upcoming TI-92 (which is not promised until at least early next year). This Motorola 68000 CPU-based unit promises full scientific and programmable capability, including elements of the Derive computer algebra system plus interactive geometry.User RAM memory is 128K (with 70K available for use) and a serial interface computer link is included, but no plug-in expandibility. At the projected price of $250, this unit seems a bit pricey for the student market. One wonders whether they'll be more popular as in-class-only loaner units as opposed to being purchased outright. Check out Texas Instruments' WWW page at http://www.ti.com/calc/docs/calchome.html/ for more info. (I have also included samples from TI's WWW site in this handout.)

HP38G On The Street Soon

Some time in July, the new HP38G student/graphics calculator should be available. This unit is priced to sell well in the high-school market and should gather a new following for the HP brand. If you are interested in a low-cost HP machine with algebraic logic and lots of scientific functions, this may be the unit for you. Jim Lawson's Handi Calc has them for $82. and he can be contacted at 908-928-9528. Also talk to Jim about receiving his free, informative HP handheld-related newsletter.

Jim Donnelly's SysRPL Book is Here

Jim Donnelly's promised new book, "An Introduction to HP48 System RPL and Assembly Language Programming" is finally published, and has gotten at least one rave review from Jim Horn (see it elsewhere in this handout). This might get all novices on a leve playing field when it comes to starting off with learning the inner workings of the HP48. A floppy disk accompanies the book with all the necessary programming tools to get started.

New EduCalc Catalog, Bulletin Board System

The latest EduCalc catalog #68 is off the presses and features the HP38G as well as other new goodies, such as the new Omnibook 5000 notebook computer. Also recently announced is the upcoming EduCalc Electronic BBS, accessable at 714-348-8115 (8N1, up to 28.8K BPS) in the next few weeks. They intend to get an Internet Email address as well. This should solve many problems with people connecting up with EduCalc in a fashion worthy of the products they sell.

Countdown to the HP Conference in Minnesota

The HP Handheld Users Conference in Minneapolis at the Mall of America on August 5th and 6th is fast approaching. A handful of significant calculator people are scheduled to attend, with the usual gamut of interesting talks, presentations and banter. Conference coordinator Craig Finseth currently lists the following planned attendees:

Bruce Bruemmer Archivist, Charles Babbage Institute

Diana Byrne HP48 Corvallis software team leader

Jim Donnelly HP48 Software Team member

Craig Finseth HP Palmtop Software Developer

Hal Goldstein The Palmtop Paper Publisher

Joe Horn HP48 wizard and goodies disk editor

Kheng Joo Khaw HP Singapore Division head

Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz Head of HPCC (HP users' group UK)

Richard Nelson PPC, CHHU Leader, Educalc Tech Support

Brian Walsh runs Nybble's Byte BBS in Chicago

Contact me to obtain a registration form or download one from the Internet at http://www.winternet.com/~fin/conf1995.html/, which is Craig's home page.

More Videotapes Available

For those interested, I have videotapes of Gene Rawdin's one-hour-38-minute presentation on the HP19B-II Business/Financial calculator from June's Saturday meeting and also will have Jim Lawson's presentation on the HP38G from this meeting. Contact me at home at 856-751-1310 for details.