Origin of the term minicomputer (was Re: PDP-1 as minicomputer

The HP9830 was marketted as a 'calculator', but IMHO it was full-blwon computer. It has a QWERTY keybaord, an alphanumeric display (albeit one line of 32 characters, which is a 'window' onto a 96 character logical line IIRC), and programs in BASIC. I find it to be an interesting machine. It's certainly a candidate for the title 'first personal computer' in that it is an all-in-one desktop machine with ROM BASIC. Put it on a desk, plug it into the mains, turn it on and start typing BASIC. Pretty amazing for 1973. As I mentioned earlier, the processor is mostly simple logic chips with a few ROMs (micorocede and ALU tables). The rest of the machins is also mostly stnadard chips, the only custom parts are ROMs -- those are very custom, not just in the programming, but also the decices themeselves which are HP 512 byte parts (IIRC the chip is 2 256 byte halves, which can be donded out as either a 512*8 or a 256*16 device -- the 256*16 state machine ROM in, e.g. the 59309 digital clock is one of those). Anyway, the ROMs are sufficiently odd that replacing them with more modern parts is non-trivial. The RAMs are standard -- Intel 1103s -- but now very hard to find. But the machine is otherwise very repairable. Of course being HP of that period it's very well made and pleasant to work on. Bit serial machines are not common anyway, which makes this one moderately interesting... I don't rememebr a lunar lander for it (there's a very famous one for the DEC GT40 terminal...), but anyway. There is some information on the 9830 on http://www.hpmuseum.org/ and rather more (including downloadable user and service manuals, scheamtics, etc) on http://www.hpmuseum.net/ -tony