HP 9830
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The Hewlett-Packard HP 9830A was the top of the line of the 9800 series programmable calculators, introduced in 1972. It was programmable in BASIC which could be extended with ROMs to do graphics plotting, matrix math and string variables. A computer controlled cassette drive using audio cassettes with clear leaders was used for storage, with random access to file by number, but a hard drive could also be attached. It later gave rise to the class of "desktop computers", including the Tektronix 4051, IBM 5100 and Wang 2200. Compared with modern PC's which practically require a 4 year computer science degree to program C++ with Visual Studio and GDI, these were designed to be simple enough for a mere rocket scientist to use, and were commonly employed at aerospace companies such as Boeing.
They were built with a processor similar in architecture to the HP 1000/2100 series minicomputer with 16-bit memory address, and an AX and BX general register. They ran at a speed comparable to the first IBM PCs. They could draw a mesh of a 3D SIN(X)/X function with no hidden lines over the course of several minutes, which a modern Pentium 4 can do in a blink of an eye. The ROM cartridges were designed to extend the BASIC language, and were very similar to the cartridges later used by video game consoles.
They were also used by some schools such as Renton, Washington, which used pencil mark-sense cards with card readers to accommodate classroom use.
It used a 32-character 1 line uppercase LED display, which on the one hand might seem limiting, but on the other hand had the same effect as one-line window into a full screen editor which did not become common until the 1980s, with controls to go up or down a line, and cursor left and right, inserting or deleting characters. They powered on ready to do math in "immediate mode", where you would type in an expression such as PRINT 2 + 3, and you would get an answer when you hit enter, without the complication of logging in, or the overhead of maintaining a big computer room and operator.
The matching line thermal printer was quite fast, printing one horizontal line of dots at once. The speed of a page was faster than later dot matrix printers, and not much worse than modern ink jet printers. HP would incorporate thermal printers across many plotting and terminal products later.
The HP 9810 was a keystroke programmable computer with magnetic cards, while the HP 9820 featured HPL, where instead of variables such as A1 and J2, it used numbered registers r1, r2, up to r199999 and so on.
The success of the HP9830 led to a next generation with faster logic, the HP 9815, HP 9825 and HP 9835 which used mini cartridges rather than cassette tapes. The HP 9845 introduced first a monochrome, and then a color CRT. These came out of the Fort Collins calculator division. The HP 85 and HP 87 were smaller BASIC language computers out of Corvallis Oregon. The Data Terminals Division would also produce a BASIC programmable version of the HP2640 series terminal, the HP 2647a which also featured AGL, which was an HP standardization of the HP 9830 plotter commands. The HP 2647 BASIC was basically Microsoft BASIC with HP 9830-style plotting commands added, and was one of Microsoft's first big contracts with a mainstream major computer company. HP was also to produce a series of handheld pocket computers with a one line display such as the HP-75, though such devices were not popular for long. The HP 9835 was also used as the basis for a business computing system, and later the HP 250 which lives on as an application platform.
That division evolved to produce UNIX HP 9000 series workstations, also acquiring the Apollo Computer Company.
In the 21st century, most households and every office has a personal computers with a similar desktop form factor, floppy disk storage, printing, communications and graphics capabilities which can be bought at the local department store.
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