On Jan 10, 2014, at 7:32 AM, ARD wrote:
But you could not add a card reader to
a TI58 to make it into a TI59 (and I always thought it was a pity there
was no TI59-C).
Agreed on the TI59-C!
A friend of mine who owned a TI-58 ordered a TI-59, decided it was not suitable, and
returned it. Somehow his TI-58 was subsequently able to read magnetic strips. I assume
somewhere down the line, someone came to be in the possession of a TI-59-shaped mag card
piggy bank?
Right, there was no official way to add a card reader? :-).
Of coure the HP41 could _later_ be expanded with the
extended memory
modules, but those were not avaialble when the machine first came out. So
you would probably not have considered those.
Had I paid much attention to the four ports on top of the machine, I might have. But you
are right.
Incidentalyl, never try to
print non-normalised numbers on an HP97. The print routine gets confused
ans leaves the pritnhead turend on for too long. The result is a
burnt-out head.
!! Good to know. Thank you! Pretty sure my Dad had use of an HP-97 at one point, but I
think it has long since gone back to the university.
Every non-HP machine I've tried (TI, Sharp,
Casio,...) gives 0.
I?ll find out when I can, but I have at least one (years-old) project I need to finish
first.
The TI59 uses a BP1A battery pack which is 3 AA
NiCd's in a plastic
housing. No other internal electronics.
The pack I have, so I can probably get the plastic housing open. Are they plain AA
ni-cads, or do I need to order cells with solder tabs? Never mind, I?ll find out when I
get there.
If you have a PC100 printer cradle, it will run from
that without a good
NiCd pack anywhere.
Sigh. I did, two moves ago. I have not seen it for decades, though. I fear it?s gone.
Or you can runn it from a 3.75V bench supply. There
is a TI59 service manual on the web (Google foudn it for me this morning)
which gives the polarity, etc.
Thank you! That?s on my hard drive now. I did not find it the last time I looked!
- Mark