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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!ihuxx!ignatz
From: ignatz@ihuxx.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: 'Artificially' different products: HP calcs.
Message-ID: <476@ihuxx.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Jul-83 03:19:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxx.476
Posted: Thu Jul 14 03:19:53 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Jul-83 12:24:11 EDT
References: <108@ucbvax.UUCP>
Organization: BTL Naperville, Il.
Lines: 24

Just FYI...concerning the 'HP calculators...that had undocumented timers'...

The HP-55 had a documented stopwatch.  By pressing three keys simultaneously, the
HP-45 went into stopwatch mode, too.  The difference was that the clock was
calibrated for the HP-55; the one on the HP-45, while not too far off, was
uncalibrated.  I calculated the error, and found it to be linear, and so
wrote a little post-processing program which gave me an accurate stopwatch.
At least, until someone stole the calculator.

Oh, yes...on the UNIVAC 1100 series thing...I didn't hear about UNIVAC's
government problems; what a UNIVAC rep told me, when I was at IIT (bastion
of the UNIVAC 1108, then 1100/81, till this year) was that the 1100 series
was a hush-hush project to pile into IBM's market.  At the time they were
designing the 1100, the leading IBM was a 36-bit oriented machine; he
mentioned the model number, and 1400 seems right, but *DON'T* hold me to it.
IBM-types let me know the real number. (Ever notice how IBMmers talk in
alpha ssoup, even more than the rest of us?) Anyway, this thing was supposed
to be code-compatibble with the IBM product, and be a real screamer.  Just
weeks before product annoucement, IBM announced that it was getting out of
the heavy number-crunching biz, and lookit our new 360, 32-bit machine...
Poor UNIVAC...

					Dave Ihnat
					ihuxx!ignatz