How many of you like HP41C calculators?

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Tue Nov 18 09:23:43 2003

Holger wrote:
> The HP41 is rather moderate in speed, with a clock of 300kHz and an
> instruction cycle length of 56 bits, so it is no problem at all to
> write a precise emulator with one or two modern microcontrollers
> (you wouldn't just take the lowest level choice like a PIC which is
> too inferior for this, but maybe a 16 bit controller like an MSP 430).

Actually the PIC is ideally suited to this, because what you need is
high speed, not 16-bit wide or fancy instructions.

I got the HP-45 microcode running on a PIC-based emulator about eight
years ago. The first-generation HP calculator chipset had a similar
architecture in most regards to the later chipset used in the HP-41C,
but ran at 196 KHz (still with 56 bit times per instruction cycle).
I wasn't trying for cycle accuracy or electrical compatability,
though that wouldn't have been too difficult if it had been my objective.

Eric
Received on Tue Nov 18 2003 - 09:23:43 GMT