smithj@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Jeremy Smith) (06/11/90)
CHIP HP Handheld Users Conference
Rolling Meadows June 2, 1990
The Conference in Chicago had the usual attendant activities:
6/1/90 Evening informal users get together at ACE Metal's shop.
6/2/90 The actual conference.
6/2/90 Evening informal get together at ACE.
6/3/90 Picnic at Paul Hubbert's house on the river.
6/4/90 CES (which ran 6/2 - 6/5).
The following are the salient points, in chronological order:
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6/1/90 Evening informal users get together at ACE Metal's shop.
Publications:
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Brain Walsh handed out volume 2 issue 1 of HPX. He indicated that the HPX
club (708) 304-0666 continues, and that the next issue of HPX will have a lot
of 48 material.
Stanley Trent of SMI (Surveyor's Module Inc.) introduced the premier issue of
"The Forty-Eight Forum", a bi-monthly Newsletter about the HP 48SX and
related software. It is $25 a year (615) 378-4821.
Richard Nelson pointed out the difference between a club (such as HPX, HPCC,
formally CHHU, PPC), which has participating members, and a publication
(such as 48 Forum). He also reminded us that many people do not have access
to electronic networks, but rely on printed material. He said that many
people had requested that he disseminate 48 information via some kind of
publication, and he discussed some ways of doing this in a low cost but
effective and timely manner. (Richard Nelson was the founder of both CHHU
and PPC, and currently is a technical support person at EduCalc. He also
chaired the meetings in Chicago).
New Products
------------
Casino 48, a 48 game on a 32k EPROM plug in card.
Phone Directory for the 48 (PD) by Ross Cooling. Printed source was handed
out.
Mike Markov mailed nine updated swap discs (see below for information on swap
discs), probably mostly HP-71 stuff.
CMT (Corvallis MicroTechnology (503) 752-5456) has a 1.44M 3.5" serial disc
drive. 4lbs, 8 x 7 x 2.25", $785. It includes cables and drivers for direct
PC operation; it does NOT include the 48 serial cable. CMT made their own
HP-IL cables and therefore could manufacture their own 48 serial cables, but
apparently their is no indication of this yet. CMT OEMs the serial HP smart
wand, but this has not been tested with the 48. One supposes that it is
possible to make a 256k and 512k (with page switching) plug in RAM for the
48. CMT may be looking into this.
SMI have seven forthcoming 48 products, mostly surveying related: basic COGO
$95, COGO w/ elevation $300, advanced COGO $500, data collection pak
(includes hardware & software) $1500, civil engineering card $95, Game card
$?, EE tool box (including symbolic matrices) $95. SMI also announced a
marketing service for developers of any, not just surveying, products (615)
678-4821.
Software protection
-------------------
This issue was thoroughly and vigorously discussed both generally and with
reference to the 48. Copy protection exists. It will be broken. The
technology must be handled responsibly in order to support the 'small guy'
developer.
For sale/buy
------------
Various folks had stuff for sale: Brian Walsh 7470 plotter, Bob Bradley
4th/assembler ROM for the 71, EduCalc will by used 41s, 71s, 28s, and
peripherals.
Hoover
------
The 41cv emulator ROM for the 48 is coming along.
Next Conference
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Friday - Sunday, August 2-4 1990 at the LaSells Stewart Center, Corvallis OR
USA. This conference hopes to attract any and all who have produced 48
software, and 48 related peripherals and hardware, with a special focus on
the technical aspects.
As you can tell from this report, although these conferences are not
restricted to HP handhelds, other vendors products are rarely mentioned even
though they are becoming more and more interesting (Poqet Poqet, Sharp
Wizard, Atari Portfolio, Casio BOSS, MicroWriter AgendA). This is possibly
more because of who gets involved, namely people who have been staunch long
time HP fanatics.
More information: will be posted here in due course, me {see signature},
Richard Nelson (714) 582-2637
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6/2/90 The actual conference. The conference was taped by many
attendees. Much use was made of a transparent LCD screen that sits on
an overhead projector but plugs into an HP 48 slot enabling the
projection of the 48's screen contents. This product should be
available soon; especially useful for classroom 48 applications.
Richard Nelson - Introductions.
Brian Walsh - Customizing the HP 48SX User Interface. One of the
features of this program was having graphics displayed above the menu
keys to enhance the menus. An undocumented feature divulged by Bill
Wickes (see below) augments this theme.
Ron Johnson - User Programming Experiences.
Bill Quinlan - Practical and Fun Applications on the HP48SX. This
included a perpetual calendar in about 1000 bytes, a regular clip-art
library of graphic images. (Bill introduced himself with an apology for
speaking generally and not addressing his subject to surveyors - ten
percent of attendees were surveyors!)
Eric Vogel - HP Solve Equation Library. Eric is the manager of this
product, which includes equation library, periodic table of elements,
constants, time value of money, multiple equation solver, engineering
utilities.
Lee Woodriff - Simplified 3-D graphics for handheld Computers. Chicken
wire style 3-D graphics. Real time rotation. Stereoscopic viewing by
duplicate graphics in screen, or using two synchronized 48s! (Worth
getting proceedings just for write up on this subject.)
Jake Schwartz - HP48 RPL: Personal Problem Solving Reaching New Heights.
This was a thorough introduction of RPL aimed especially at hard core 41
users who had skipped the 28.
Namir Shammas - The New Framework of the HP48. Namir, long time user of
C++ and OOP, observes the similarities of these developments to the
implementation of the 48.
William Wickes - HP48SX Software Development. Bill, HP 48 product
manager, gave a detailed slideshow peek inside both the Corvallis plant
where the machine is currently manufactured, and inside the machine,
both hardware and software.
Brian McGuire - Three Dimensional Graphing on the 28S and 48SX. Another
approach to 3-D plotting producing 'chicken wire' diagrams.
Paul Hubbert - Kermit on the HP110. Using this laptop (at one time
available from Elek-Tek at incredible closeout prices) as a terminal to
the 48.
Prizes & Drawings - Apart from tons of junk (er... valuable trivia and prized
memorabilia for the HP calc buff - I won an HP-32E Owner's Handbook)
three lucky participants won 32k RAM cards. There was also an HP-21s,
HP-10b, Charlemagne t-shirts, and an IL/RS232 interface.
PROCEEDINGS: - Proceedings for the conference are available from Jack
Stout (708) 455-1010. The attendees received a standard DOS 360k floppy
along with their proceedings. This may or may not be included in
reprints. During the conference speakers, and others, were invited to
submit their software for inclusion on another disk, which was then
distributed at the evening session. Also, Jake Schwartz made available
a 1.2M floppy containing three months worth of csh (comp.sys.handhelds)
plus some of the unarced programs (Saturn assembler) that had been
posted. These discs may become available as swap discs.
As well as papers submitted by the above listed speakers others
were submitted and included in absentia. Joseph K. Horn - HP-IL
ThinkJet Printing from the HP 48SX. Michael D. Ruth - Molecular Weight
Calculation and Experimental Data.
Swap Discs - There are currently about 20 swap discs, containing
mostly 75, 41 & 71 programs, and currently available from EduCalc (714)
582-2637 for the cost of the discs. Until now they are mostly available
on 3.5" LIF formatted discs readable, for instance, on the HP-IL disc
drive. The idea began at a conference in 1985 simply as an expedient
way to collect material that authors wanted to be available to as wide
an audience as possible. As such it is essentially PD, though any
particular restrictions would be clearly noted.
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6/2/90 Evening informal get together at ACE.
Jim De Arras - RS-232D and the HP-48SX. Not only did Jim discuss this
topic with his usual competence but also demonstrated file transfer
between two 48s over the 'air waves' across the shop floor via an RF
hook up (as well as via a one thousand foot cable). Unfortunately,
these products will not be generally available, nor would you want to
pay the price. He 'happened' to have them with him - he is developing
them as a commercial product - and he assures us that you could make
your own such devices relatively inexpensively if you want to.
Bill Wickes - Released library builder, a PC based program that
'compiles' an uploaded set of 48 programs into a file that is then
downloaded back to the 48 as a library . This is a kind of beta
version, supported ONLY on HP's BBS, as Bill has already mention in a
recent posting on csh.
Divulged the use of GROB in the custom menu allowing the menu keys
to be little graphics instead of text. Basically { GROB object }
instead of { "label" object } (see p215 in manual), where GROB 21 8
[hex_string] <<optional_program>>. When entering, the hex string gets
padded automatically with zeroes, each nybble represents a row of four
pixels, with six nybbles per row - the last three pixels are unused in
each row (21=24-3), rows are top to bottom.
Elucidated Vectored ENTER.
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6/3/90 Picnic at Paul Hubbert's house on the river.
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6/4/90 CES (which ran 6/2 - 6/5).
COMDEX (6/4-6/7) in Atlanta coincided with this show (the scum) and this may
have been a reason why both attendance and exhibitors seemed a little light.
However, both french and english Atari portfolios were there, as well as the
Casio BOSS, Sharp Wizard (in all the latest flavors).
Jeremy |-) Smith ____________
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FidoNet: 1:152/201 (or 152/203 or 152/205) or area:HPHH \/_/smithj@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Jeremy Smith) (06/12/90)
Next Conference
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Friday - Sunday August 2-4 1991, NOT 1990 as previously posted.
Apologies to all, especially overseas, who already rushed out and bought
airline tickets,
|-)