CHICAGO CONFERENCE, JUNE 3rd 1988 Report by Michael Markov The annual CHUG/CHIP get-together started friday, with people coming in throughout the day. Around 5PM, most everybody went to supper. The conference proper, with the usual semi-formal presentations, started around 8PM and lasted until 4AM saturday. Saturday, we visited the Consumer Electronics Show, where we could see the great advances in LCD display technology demonstrated on Japanese brand calculators, and impresive advances in lap-top/portable computers. Sunday, we rested our aching feet, and enjoyed the annual picnic at Paul Hubbert's home. People present included Roger Hill, Barry Altman, Larry Weigel (Synergetics), Jake Schwartz and his better half (Sue), Brian Walsh, Rich Ledford, Bob Bradley, Bob Jura, Ron Johnson, Ron Brooks (HP), Bill Prior, Paul Hubbert, Wes Staples, Gary Lizalek, Jack Stout, Phil Frohne, Maynard Riley and many others. My appologies to people whose names are not included, please understand that I am working from memory, which does not work too well when I am tired. I arrived in Chicago around 11AM, was met by Jack Stout at the airport. I started working on swapdisks by early afternoon. This allowed me to have SWAP10 ready for the copying session. As always, Ace Metal Crafts provided excellent facilities (THANKS!), and local members provided the necessary equipment. My thanks to Paul Hubbert, Al Duba, Jack Stout, and all the other members of the CHUG/CHIP chapter for their help and warm welcome. Travelling without disk drives is a real pleasure! My entire collection of swapdiscs was available for copying during both the Saturday evening conference and the picnic. The list of available swapdiscs needs to be updated, see file 'SWAPDISK' for latest version. The most disappointing news of the conference came from Ron Brooks: the HP71 will be discontinued as of Nov'88. Support will continue to be available to Nov'93 (repairs). The HP71 and the HP71 card reader will soon be removed from HP's price list. If you want an HP71, or HP71 modules you better get it now! With the HP71 gone, the future of HP-IL becomes doubtful. The components will be produced only as long as the demand justifies the expense. In other words, it depends on third-party manufacturers and on HP41/HP110 users that create a demand for HP-IL peripherals. So, what about the HP41? The HP41 story continues to be an amazing success, many years beyond all expectations. HP recognizes that, for certain types of applications, I/O is a must. Therefore, we can expect the availability of mass storage and some form of I/O. There are no plans to discontinue the HP41 any time soon. Note, however, that HP is exploring the possibility of eliminating HP-IL by replacing the HP-IL printer with the IR printer. Could it be true that the vast majority of HP-41 users will be satisfied with the card- reader and IR printer? Besides, HEPAX and ZEPROM modules allow you to store enormous amount of software in a single plug-in module, certainly more than most users ever need, excluding only the few half-nuts users among us! What will replace the HP71? Well, what is Bill Wickes working on? If you want to find out, come to the Chicago 1989 conference. HP will bring the next machine out at that time, and people from the development team will be there to answer your questions. HP plans to make the '89 conference a major affair. So, what is the new machine like? Details are not available, but HP71 style basic is not likely to be supported in the future. I suspect some form of mixed RPN/Algebraic, or perhaps a C language. If you want to see any given feature, it would be a good idea to write a letter to Ron Brooks and Dan Terpac. Be specific, describe both the feature and what you want it to do. One question asked was, "What would you want to see in the next upgrade of the HP41?". Here, a separate letter would seem to be a good idea. I want a faster CPU, for a speed up of at least 2 to 5 times and a new HPIL module that would help improve system performance with faster I/O and high capacity disk drives. Next, I would like to have upper and lowercase characters for the entire alphabet, and a better display, perhaps an HP28 type. For use at work, I would very much like to have complex numbers. Give me a bit more time, and I am sure I will come up with a much longer list! One area I would be interested in is improved communications between IBM PC compatible and the HP-41. The hardware exists (the HP82973A interface card), but it needs to be upgraded to work with CPU that operate above 8 Mhz, and the software (such as LINK 1.02) needs to be enhanced to allow software development on the PC... All this, without destroying the HP-41 as a stand-alone computer! HP also released two new machines at CES, the 22S and the 32S. These machine are low-cost, lower end machines aimed at students. The 22S is algebraic, while the 32S is RPN. There is no I/O, and only 391 byte of memory, allowing a coulpe hundred instructions, or sligtly more. In my opinion, it would be a greatly improved HP65, if it had a cardreader. The other noteworthy product was a battery powered CMT video interface, which was demonstrated by Richard Nelson. The device is too bulky, slightly larger and thicher than an HP71. It will not fit comfortably in a coat pocket or in my over-stuffed briefcase. (My briefcase already tries to hold an HP-41, an HP-71 a cassette drive, a RAMDISK, file folders, and lots of other junk. Maybe I will get rid of some paper files, and save the info on tapes...). Worse, the mode switch can turn on the display and quickly drain your batteries - which last only 8 hours - and cost $3.45 each. NiCads are definitely required!!! I find the 40 column display inadequate. Serious text editing / programming is much more confortable when you see an entire paragraph at once. I would by far prefer a 40/80 column device that would allow me to look at a full width page of text or graphics. (I would not mind at all a 96/142 column mode, either!). If the cost is smaller charcacters, well, so be it!. The cost of extra RAM would also be well worth it. Keeping in mind the contraints and cost factors associated with LCD's, I would say that the present compromise is acceptable for those of us who use our machines in the field, away from a convenient display (such as a PC or the 80 column video interface). Certainly, seeing up to three lines of text is an inprovement on a one line display! There are some notable features that make it a very attractive item. First, it SUPPORTS GRAHICS COMPATIBLE WITH THE THINKJET. This therefore provides a low cost tool for developing graphic presentations, assuming you can live with the inconvenience of seeing only 240 X 64 pixels at a time. This is roughly 1/4 the width of the page by 1/10 the same width. In order to display a square block of full width graphics would take approximately 40 CMT displays..... However, an amazing amount of information can be modelled on a screen 240 X 64 dots. If you use the GRAPHIC ROM, by Pierre David (Paris Chapter), you can display any portion of a page of graphics with a simple BASIC routine. If you use Chris Bunsen's GRAPH71, a few program changes will allow you to display selected portions of the screen. Just keep in mind that the CMT LCD does not support compressed or expanded print modes, and you are well on the way. You can also transfer the contents of the display buffer to a thinkjet or, perhaps, to mass storage, without much difficulty. However, this works only for the text display buffer. Graphics is processed to the display rather than to a RAM buffer where the bit map is stored. Too bad, a big RAM graphic buffer would would have allowed users with limited available RAM to handle complex graphics. As it stands, the limited graphics capability justified the acquisition of one unit, so that I could preview graphs and plots for some special jobs, without wasting either ink or paper. See the GDUMP program on SWAP11, which I use in conjunction with the GRAPHIC module. I must also say that the screen is very readable in text mode. The contrast and angle control provides a broad range of adjustments for viewing comfort. However, the LCD adjustments do not make-up for the lack of a more sophisticated mechanism that would allow the user to adjust the physical tilt of the display. Finally, I liked very much the fact that you had pushbutton controls on the display that allow you to move the cursor more or less at will, and to scroll the page up or down. I did not have very much time to look at the manual, but it seemed that all of the desired escape sequences were there, thus allowing full control of this display. Among other fun features, you can redefine the display character set under program control. Overall, I would say that the CMT video interface is an excellent buy for people who need a full system that is somewhat portable. My talk in Chicago addressed a variety of topics: - Swapdisc update. - JPCROM status. JPCROM will be available through CMT as a commercial product. I passed around the pocket guide, and talked a bit about some of the newer developments. - Transfering files and data between the HP41 and HP71. See SWAP10, files XFER41, XFER71, XFER4171, PR41. During a demonstration, I discovered a small bug: you need to set flag 21 after executing "PR71". - Advances in the world of HP71 machine language, to include the assemblers that run on HP71 and DOS machines, and the latest version of my disassembler, see DISASM, DISASMLX, DISASMDC and PEEKLEX on SWAP10. This latest super-fast version requires the JPCROM, which is soon to be available, as mentioned above.