[comp.sys.handhelds] Sparcom

frechett@spot.Colorado.EDU (-=Runaway Daemon=-) (01/31/91)

>7.  HP's EQLIB card is misleading because it contains 8 libraries.  Sparcom's
>    cards contain, typically, one large 128K library.  (More or less.)  There
Ah... I wondered what the sparcom Cards had on them as I don't know that anyone 
has got one of the damn things yet.  ;)  
>
>responsible, as there is no need for it.  As a commercial developer whose 
>income depends on the sale of ROMs, I can say that the last thing I want is 

Then I wonder how you make any money at all.. The purpose of this post was to 
inform everyone that Sparcom has bumped the EE aplication card back to 
APRIL!!!  Are they actually wanting to sell some cards or is this just a big
ploy to hold a few hundred people in suspence.. Educalc is going nuts.  They 
just keep getting orders, (last I checked the backorders were at around 200)
and sparcom just keeps bumping the dates back further and further.  
>
>Scott.
Do you happen to know what is happen to know what is going on here?  

	ian

prestonb@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Preston Brown) (02/02/91)

For some of the cards out there (including my Casino 48 card) copy protection
in not necessary.  Anyone who wants the program will pay less if he
or she buys the card in ROM format then if they download it into RAM.

Backup is not really useful since the restore would require enough free 
memory to load it back.  Not many users have empty 128K RAM cards available
to load a backup copy of their EQ card into should it fail.

Someone with lots of RAM may want to free up a port;  but if you need 
an entire 128K library then you are not going to be able to free the port 
anyway since the library will fill it up in either format.  The person is 
better off spending less on the ROM then buying a 128K RAM card to load it 
into.

I also dislike copy protection and knew the simple methods built
into the 48 would be quickly beaten.  But with the price of RAM so
high and the limited address space of each port I am not to worried 
about it.

Preston

These comments are my own and may not represent those of my company.

prestonb@hpcvra.cv.hp.com. (Preston Brown) (02/05/91)

 >And what does
 >the increased insertion and removal of cards do to the internal contacts of
 >the calculator. Has HP released any info on contact wear??

The contacts were designed with this application in mind and have been tested
to thousands of cycles.

Preston