8 May
2004
8 May
'04
3:15 p.m.
I just picked up an HP 97 at a church rummage sale. It was sold "tel
Nice toy!. I have 2 of them (and 4 HP67s, which is basically the same
machine without the printer).
quel" ("as is"), so it was a bit of a
gamble, but I figured if it was
broken it'd be even more fun 'cause then I would feel no compunction
about opening it up and Investigating.
The battery pack appears dead (based on a 1kohm/volt voltmeter, it's
producing about .1V) and it didn't come with a wall wart. But the
battery pack was visibly made up of four cells, so I figured four
rechargeable cells is probably about 5V - and the external power
Exactly. It's 4 sub-C NiCds in series. Don't throw out the old back, you
need the plastic housing and metal contacts to rebuild it.
connector is marked 5V. So I hooked it up to 5V from
a peecee power
supply (peecees are good for _something_; they provide me with power
supplies :), and it seems to be in full working order. Even the
printer works (though the ribbon appears a little enfeebled).
The printer is thermal, there's no ribbon as such. Probably the thermal
paper has 'gone off' with age (it does this). You will also need to
rebuild the roller of the magnetic card reader (that's the slot just to
the left of the display).
All I need to do is find a manual for the thing. Anyone know of one?
Buy the Museum of HP Calculators CD-ROM set (http://www.hpmuseum.org/ and
follow the links). It cost me $42 for the 7 disks including shipping to
England, and I think this is a bargain.
On these you'll find the user manual, the _service manual_ (one of the
few service manuals that is there), many of the solution books (books of
user-written progrmas, etc).
If you're interested in HP calculators at all, you need these CDs. I
don't normally like manuals on CD, but I really think these are excellent!
-tony