ewp@ihuxn.UUCP (07/01/83)
A lot of time and effort is needed to do the physical design of hardware. In some cases the parts not needed are left off the boards (for example, a memory board half empty). In some cases the cost of separate assembly lines, extra inventory, parts tracking, etc. make it cheaper to just disable the unordered logic. After all, you are paying for the value added by the engineering, not just the cost of the parts. Ed Pawlak ihnp4!ihuxn!ewp
mjb@brunix.UUCP (Mike Braca) (07/06/83)
I was told once that IBM's TSS (time sharing system) OS has a configuration
parameter that allows you to set the "minimum response time". The purpose of
this, of course, is so users don't get used to fast response time when the
system is lightly loaded.
Mike Braca, Brown CS, {allegra,ihnp4,decvax}!brunix!mjb, mjb.brown@udel-relayrh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (07/12/83)
Several years ago, Hewlett-Packard made a calculator with a built-in stopwatch, and another calculator that was the same except for the stopwatch. Naturally the latter calculator was cheaper. However, by pressing an undocumented combination of buttons on the latter calculator, you could put it in the stopwatch mode that it wasn't supposed to have! yeah, my dad just bought a remote control TV. The box doesn't have a mute switch on it, but if you press down two buttons at once (I think it was CH-up and CH-down, because that's more obscure than the volume buttons) it would mute. He was really blown away by that. I guess you pay more for not being inventive. -- Randwulf (Randy Haskins) genrad!mit-eddie!rh or... rh@mit-ee (via mit-mc)
ark@rabbit.UUCP (07/12/83)
stopwatches in calculators: You may be talking about the HP-45 and HP-55. The HP-45 did indeed have an undocumented stopwatch feature that the HP-55 had in documented form. However, the HP-55 was also programmable. Furthermore, the -45 didn't have a crystal-based oscillator, so the stopwatch was only accurate to 10% or so. As for TI and HP calculators having the same chips -- I doubt it. Casual investigation will reveal that the two machines give significantly different results -- at least one TI I have seen does its arithmetic to 13 places, of which the last few are garbage, and HP's machines all do arithmetic to only ten places, but with great care given to rounding and accuracy. On the whole, I'd trust HP's arithmetic more.
mark@hp-kirk.UUCP (07/17/83)
#R:ihuxn:-27300:hp-kirk:11300004:000:702
hp-kirk!mark Jul 15 07:51:00 1983
The HP45 calculator did indeed have a stopwatch built-in that was
not a documented feature of the product; however, this was the only
version of this product ever put on the market. As far as any common
hardware between HP and TI calculators go, not a chance. All of the
integrated circuits for HP's calculators were developed by HP
specifically for those calculators and are not available outside the
company. I am not certain, but I suspect that the same is true of the
TI calculators.
Death Rowe
hp-pcd!hp-cvd!mark
Corvallis, Oregon