Collections of (physically) large computers

Oh, be careful there... At one time many companies had complex purchasing requirements for 'computers', but 'calculators' or 'programmed data processors' could be bought without too many formalities. So some computer companies deliberately didn't call their products 'computers' A case in point is the HP9830. It's called a 'Model 30 calculator' in many HP documents, in fact I think it's always refered to as a calculator. But this machine has a 16 bit (to a programmer, the hardware is bit-serial) processor, BASIC in ROM (with extension ROMs to add things like string variables, matrix operations, etc), a QWERTY keyboard, a one-line alphanumeric display, a built-in tape drive and RAM up to 16K bytes. There were optional parallel, serial and HPIB interfaces, and even a hard disk system. Is that a calculator? Sure sounds like a computer to me :-) If you're thinking of handheld colculators (as this thread would seem to require), what about the HP41. It's got an alphanumeric display, optional I/O (including RS232, HPIB, parallel ports, a plotter, disk drive, printers, tape drive, etc). It's user-programmable. It has a microprocessor at the middle of it. I think the distinction I normally use is often called 'keeper'. That's a pun on 'Key Per Function' meaning a calcultor has, say, a key labelled 'SIN', whereas on a computer you spell it out. Byt that definition the HP41 is a calculator (although you _can_ spell out the function names if you want to), the HP9830 most vertainly isn't. -tony