kca55611@ihuxk.UUCP (K.C.Anderson) (03/22/84)
x We recently had an HP-150 demonstration model to play with in my department at work. I would consider it a nice machine, but unfortunately there were enough features missing that we decided against buying one. 1. Even though an HP-IB bus is physically present, the software to control and take measurements from lab instruments is basically non-existant. 2. The terminal emualator, expecially the Tek 4014, is excellent. But once you are in the terminal mode, you lose the other capabilities of the 150. It would also be nice if there was a filter to allow the 4014 vector graphics to be plotted using the 7470-type plotters. As it is now, all you can get is the dot-matrix style hardcopy for 4014 graphics. 3. The menu system for setting the options is a royal pain. Any option should be controllable by command, instead of hunting through a tree-structure for where it lives. Some branches of the tree are dead ends. I'm posting this in the hope that the HP people listening will consider this in future work on the 150 and other machines. And to correct me if I have any mis-information from my limited exposure to the HP-150's capabilities. Keith Anderson ihuxk!kca55611
djb@cbosgd.UUCP (David J. Bryant) (03/23/84)
We have seven or eight HP-150's here. I have one of them sitting on
my desk, and have been wrestling with it for the past three or four
months. I the hopes that someone at HP is watching and reading this
newsgroup, and for all of you that may be considering purchasing an
HP-150, I offer the following comments:
1) The 150 is only usable as a computer if you like to program
in BASIC or run a few canned applications. Naturally, around
here we want to be able to program the thing, but have absolutely
no intention of doing so in BASIC. There is no available
programming package (C compiler, programmer's editor, assembler,
debugger, etc) period. None. Rumor has it that HP is working
to rectify this extremely unfortunate situation, but until
then, the 150 is not a computer for anyone that wants to do
serious programming. (You'd be better off with an Apple II)
2) The documentation is terrible. It looks nice and is well
assembled, but there is not much content. For example: I spent
the better part of a month putting together a graphics driver
for the HP-150, and all I had to go on was a terse and incomplete
listing of the escape sequences in the appendix. (With good
documentation, I can write a graphics driver in 4 hours). In
fact, the key to my success was finding some old code that
had 2648 graphics command sequences in it. (Interesting aside:
The graphics are pretty nice, with some interesting features,
but, alas, there is no HP-150 graphics command to draw a circle.)
Other folks here have complained about how useless the manuals are
as a reference. I don't know if non-computer types like them,
but around here the manuals are shoved in a drawer and forgotten.
3) The touchscreen is really great, and seems to be the most
outstanding feature of the 150. Naturally, the documentation
for using the touchscreen is lousy. If it weren't for the
example program that BYTE ran in their HP-150 issue, I wouldn't
know how to use the touchscreen at all.
4) As a result of 1) and 2), we've been relegated to using our
HP-150's mostly as terminals. Here is where they shine, and
reveal considerable potential. The new keyboard is great,
although (as expected) the key layout is different from every
other keyboard in the universe. HP still has CTRL and CAPS
in the wrong place so people wind up in CAPS mode and get
extremely confused. DEL/ESC is now down next to Z, and is
hard to find. The keypad is great, but the big key isn't
return/enter, it's tab. On the otherhand, if you do graphics,
you'll love the graphics mode for the keypad. (The 150 has
separate graphics and alphanumerics screens, and you can flip
back and forth easily - a nice feature). The small footprint
is a plus too.
Bottom Line: If you're in the market for a terminal, the HP-150 is a
good candidate (and certainly much better than the 2621-B) at a fair
price. If you want a canned-program-processor, and can wait for the software
to come out, it's probably O.K. If you want a computer, look somewhere else.
Here's hoping that someone at HP can get the word through to the right
people that the documentation needs real work, and that HP should spare no
expense and effort to provide a professional programming environment. Failing
that, perhaps enough customer pressure could motivate them appropriately.
If we could get a decent editor/compiler, we'd buy HP-150's by the truck load.
As it is, everyone around here is spending their money somewhere else.
Too bad...
* *
David Bryant
AT&T Bell Laboratories
* Columbus, OH 43213
* (614) 860-4516
* .
: djb@cbosgd.UUCP
cbosgd!djb@Berkeley.ARPA
* *tim@umn-ucc.UUCP (Tim Giebelhaus) (03/23/84)
I disagree. I like the tree structure. When they dilivered our computer, they did not give us a manual. I could have guessed commands all day. With the commands in front of me, I did not have to. Now when I want to change something, I just press three buttons and I'm done. The menus are quick and relatively easy to understand. Of course, if you have never used a menu ever before, you may not like it. Take some time. Menus are really nice if quick enough and if they make sense. This is in contrast to the DEC PRO system. The thing is painfully slow. You can wait one or two seconds between each menu selection. There is no excuse for this with a hard disk and a 11/23 processor. It was down right stupid of dec to think they could foist off such a product. I also think that chips in sockets is not the way to go. You can be sure that you will have to clean the sockets every year or so if you have them. Look at the Apple. They always go down due to those stupid sockets. Of course, if your chips are not reliable, you may need sockets.