26 Jan
2005
26 Jan
'05
12:52 p.m.
The HP9830 is certainly a nice machine. I've got
one, and considering it
has almost all the same features as the Tek 4051 (substitute a
40-character, 1-line LED display for the CRT) but came out 3 years earlier
Acxtually it's 32 chracter (8 off 4-character modules). The driver
circuitry is a little odd too, to save on transistors. Electonically,
it's not a 160 cloumn by 7 roww array of LEDs (each character being 5 by
7), it's a 28 by 40 array. No you really didn't need to know that ;-)
it's definitely comparable overall. I've
never had a chance to play with
my 9830B but I wonder how the BASIC compares to that in the 4051.
The built-in BASIC is pretty minimal, it doesn't even have string
variables. There are add-on ROMs to give string variables, extended I/O
(including some binary I/O features), matrices, plotter, etc.
True, true. The keyboard leaves a lot to be desired
on some models of the
9825 though.
True enough. My 9825 has the 'real' keyboard, my 9831 (electically the
same machine, but with BASIC, not HPL, in ROM) has the chicklet one.
Of course both HP and Tektronix were not trying
to sell to hobbyists, and
their machines were far to expensive for most homes...
Indeed. But my point was that people marvel over the early micros like
the Altair, etc., touting features such as "first with graphics display",
"first with mass storage", "first with integrated CRT", etc., and
fail to
realize that there were much more powerful systems available that were
years ahead of the hobbyist micros. Sure, they were thousands of dollars
more, but there they were. It offers a much different perspective on the
hobbyist machines of that era.