wjc@llex.ll.mit.edu ( Bill Chiarchiaro) (06/06/91)
Seeing the recent discussions of HP calculator history, I've decided to add a couple of postings which might be of interest. So far as I know, the first HP calculator was the Model 9100A introduced in 1968 at a price of $4900 (this is from the HP Journal of May 1974 -- the one that described the HP-65). It was a desktop machine, considerably larger than, say, an HP-97. The 9100A was quite an interesting machine, and it clearly showed the design philosophy evident in the later HP calculators. It was programmable and had 16 registers. Fourteen of those could hold either a real number or 14 program steps. The remaining two registers could not be used for program storage. Thus, the 9100A could hold a maximum of 196 program steps. There was a built-in magnetic card reader/writer which used credit-card sized mag-cards. The cards could be fed in either of two orientations and thus could contain two 196-step programs. Provisions were made for convenient overlaying or chaining of programs. Until the HP-28/HP-19 series, this was the last machine to show more than one level of the stack at a time. The 9100A had three stack registers called X, Y, and Z. All three were simultaneously shown on the CRT (!) display. Of course, the 9100A used RPN. It could display in either fixed point or floating point. The range of floating-point exponents was -99 to +99. The available precision was 10 digits, internally it was 10. The stack operated a little differently than we are used to. Entries from the keyboard went into the X register, but results of dyadic operators were returned to Y. This made repeated operations easier (X was left unchanged). The built-in functions included: the four basic functions, square root, log, ln, and e^x; sin, cos, tan, and their inverses; sinh, cosh, tanh, and their inverses; polar-to-rectangular conversion, rectangular-to-polar, and vector addition and subtraction; absolute value and extract integer part. Trig functions could operate in either degrees or radians. A PI key was also included. The implementation and realization of the 9100A architecture was quite fascinating. The user memory was 368 words by 6 bits of magnetic core! There were essentially two levels of microcoding with a 64 word by 29 bit "Control" ROM and a 512 word by 64 bit "Program" ROM. The Control ROM was a wire braid toroidal core memory. The Program ROM was a 16-layer PC board which used inductive coupling from its drive lines to the sense lines. HP was proud that they had achieved a density of 1000 bits per square inch. The logic was discrete transistors, diodes, and resistors. The memory addresses and some other state information were kept in 40 J-K flip-flops. The internal operations were performed by hard-wired logic gates. The total number of semiconductors was, I believe, only a few hundred. The clock period was 825 ns. The 9100A had an output port for driving printers or other peripherals. I had the opportunity to use one of the machines a few years ago and it was actually quite nice. The speed wasn't bad. A trig function would take about 280 msec and an addition or subtraction would take 2 msec. A sample factorial program supplied by HP took less than half a second to compute 69!; a similar program on my HP48SX to just over half a second. Now for a question: Does anyone know if HP made any other calculators between the 9100A and the HP-35? Bill Chiarchiaro wjc@ll.mit.edu
Harold Climer <HCLIMER%UTCVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> (06/08/91)
On Fri, 7 Jun 1991 14:17 CST you said: >Subject: The First (?) HP Calculator (long) >Message-ID: <1991Jun6.153021.10025@ll.mit.edu> >From: wjc@llex.ll.mit.edu ( Bill Chiarchiaro) >Date: 6 Jun 91 15:30:21 GMT >Sender: news@ll.mit.edu >Organization: MIT Lincoln Laboratory >Keywords: Not the HP-35 >Article-I.D.: ll.1991Jun6.153021.10025 > > >Seeing the recent discussions of HP calculator history, I've decided >to add a couple of postings which might be of interest. > >So far as I know, the first HP calculator was the Model 9100A >introduced in 1968 at a price of $4900 (this is from the HP Journal of >May 1974 -- the one that described the HP-65). It was a desktop >machine, considerably larger than, say, an HP-97. > >The 9100A was quite an interesting machine, and it clearly showed the >design philosophy evident in the later HP calculators. It was >programmable and had 16 registers. Fourteen of those could hold >either a real number or 14 program steps. The remaining two registers >could not be used for program storage. Thus, the 9100A could hold a >maximum of 196 program steps. There was a built-in magnetic card >reader/writer which used credit-card sized mag-cards. The cards could >be fed in either of two orientations and thus could contain two 196-step >programs. Provisions were made for convenient overlaying or chaining >of programs. > >Until the HP-28/HP-19 series, this was the last machine to show more >than one level of the stack at a time. The 9100A had three stack >registers called X, Y, and Z. All three were simultaneously shown on >the CRT (!) display. Of course, the 9100A used RPN. It could display >in either fixed point or floating point. The range of floating-point >exponents was -99 to +99. The available precision was 10 digits, >internally it was 10. The stack operated a little differently than we >are used to. Entries from the keyboard went into the X register, but >results of dyadic operators were returned to Y. This made repeated >operations easier (X was left unchanged). > >The built-in functions included: the four basic functions, square root, >log, ln, and e^x; sin, cos, tan, and their inverses; sinh, cosh, tanh, >and their inverses; polar-to-rectangular conversion, >rectangular-to-polar, and vector addition and subtraction; absolute >value and extract integer part. Trig functions could operate in >either degrees or radians. A PI key was also included. > >The implementation and realization of the 9100A architecture was quite >fascinating. The user memory was 368 words by 6 bits of magnetic >core! There were essentially two levels of microcoding with a 64 word >by 29 bit "Control" ROM and a 512 word by 64 bit "Program" ROM. The >Control ROM was a wire braid toroidal core memory. The Program ROM >was a 16-layer PC board which used inductive coupling from its drive >lines to the sense lines. HP was proud that they had achieved a >density of 1000 bits per square inch. > >The logic was discrete transistors, diodes, and resistors. The memory >addresses and some other state information were kept in 40 J-K >flip-flops. The internal operations were performed by hard-wired >logic gates. The total number of semiconductors was, I believe, only >a few hundred. The clock period was 825 ns. > >The 9100A had an output port for driving printers or other >peripherals. > >I had the opportunity to use one of the machines a few years ago and >it was actually quite nice. The speed wasn't bad. A trig function >would take about 280 msec and an addition or subtraction would take 2 >msec. A sample factorial program supplied by HP took less than half a >second to compute 69!; a similar program on my HP48SX to just over >half a second. > >Now for a question: Does anyone know if HP made any other calculators >between the 9100A and the HP-35? > > >Bill Chiarchiaro >wjc@ll.mit.edu I remember using one in the late 60's or early 70's for a course in Statistical Meteorology at Texas A&M. Also there was on that looked similar to the 9100A that could be programed in BASIC. Eric T. Lane(Physics Department) said he thought it was the 9300 ? I used the "9300" at Toswson State University in the late 70's. By the way how did the lacross championship game come out last Saturday. I had to do some yard work and only caught about 15 min of it on CBS. Towson was losing 11 to 7. Harold Climer Physics Department U. Tennessee at Chattanooga
rrd@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Ray Depew) (06/08/91)
Bill Chiarchiaro writes: > Now for a question: Does anyone know if HP made any other calculators > between the 9100A and the HP-35? I learned RPN programming on a 9810. The '10 was already obsolete in 1975, when I did all my freshman ChemE homework on it. It was located in one of the computer rooms (terminals for the Engineering Building's DEC-10), and there was always a sign-up list for it. The department secretary would sell you mag cards for the 9810, at $1.00 each. The 9810 had 3? 4? ROM slots, a 3-line (x, y, z) LED display and the same card reader as the 9100, but it could take longer cards as well as the short ones that the 9100 used. It also had a thermal paper-tape printer, and if you had the right ROM installed, you could make some pretty fancy output on the printer. It had a plotter interface as well, which came in handy during Thermodynamics. The 9810 did everything that the 9100 could do. It must have had more memory or something, but that's so long ago that I don't remember. It had a few enhancements over the 9100, but again I don't remember what they were. Once I learned how to program the 9810, I knew that I would never be able to use an non-RPN programmable. Regards Ray Depew HP ICBD, FOrt Collins, CO rrd@hpfitst1.hp.com
stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) (06/08/91)
Thank you for the informative posting on the HP 9100A. I was lucky enough to pick up one of these for free and it is over on the table right now chunking away on a somewhat trivial program (and has been for months). One minor correction: The 9100A has a mantissa of 12 BCD digits although no more than 10 are shown on the display. Each BCD digit is stored in a 6-bit word, so there are two extra bits which are used as special flags. Bit 4 is used to indicate a negative digit and bit 5 suppresses display of that digit (which is how certain things like integer add, subtract, and multiply maintain display precision for results). When you store a floating-point number in a register and examine it in program mode, you can see the floating-point format. A number stored in register 0 has the ten most significant mantissa digits stored in the order least significant to most significant going from 0.0 to 0.9. Bit 4 of 0.9 is the mantissa sign (negative if set); in some cases bit 4 of all mantissa nibbles in a negative number is set. 0.a and 0.b have the exponent with least significant digit in 0.a. Bit 4 of 0.b is set if the exponent is negative. 0.c and 0.d will two additional mantissa digits which cannot be displayed (except by subtracting out the 10 most significant digits of the mantissa). -- Steve VanDevender stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu "Bipedalism--an unrecognized disease affecting over 99% of the population. Symptoms include lack of traffic sense, slow rate of travel, and the classic, easily recognized behavior known as walking."