Saturday 21 January 2006

Pic of the day: HP71B, a handheld computer from the age before handheld computers.

"Finding a glove"

Around 25 years ago, when I had still recently moved to the Kristiansand area, I took a couple courses at the local district college. (They are trying – in vain – to get recognized as a real university these days, I understand. "University" is a protected title here in Norway and requires a lot of research. Still, the courses they teach are good as far as they go.) The special thing about those courses I took was that they were taught by a computer. This was a new and revolutionary idea. True, computers aren't very flexible compared to humans, but they are nothing if not patient. And they don't laugh at stupid mistakes.

The reason I remember this now suddenly is that as part of the course (which I can no longer remember much else from) I came upon a small poem by Piet Hein. And as King Solomon is credited with saying, "the words of the wise are like nails". I can still remember those few small lines now around two and a half decade later. In English it says:
"The one who loses a glove
is lucky compare to the one
who loses one, throws away the other
and finds the first again."

Today I went through the drawers in my bedroom. Like most other places, I hadn't moved anything out of them once it was moved in, which means around 10 or 15 years in most cases. I had started on clearing them out a couple weeks ago, then moved on to elsewhere, and now came back for the killing blow. In one of the drawers laid my HP-71B handheld computer.

Before the age of handheld computers, indeed before the age of the PC really, there was the HP71. It had a small but actually functional qwerty keyboard AND numeric keyboard. Not a thumbboard but the real thing, though only children would feel comfortable touch-typing on it. Then again, it would not have been able to handle the speed of touch-typing, I'm afraid. It was the next step up from programmable calculators, of which it was also one, only so much more. With a highly extended BASIC it could also handle text to some extent. I eventually wrote a word processor for it, but not until I got the FORTH/ASSEMBLER module. Yes, you added modules with cool software, or for more memory. I also bought a lot of peripherals to it, spending quite a few months of pay at a time of my life when I didn't have much money yet. (I still don't have by contemporary standards, but I no longer adhere to contemporary standards, and anyway I have more money now and also have already bought the things I really need and then some.)

Sometime around 15 years ago I was putting new batteries in the HP71B, and I accidentally put one of them in the wrong way. It didn't work. I took out the batteries and put them in the right way. It still didn't work. I had killed it! I was feeling quite bad. But on the other hand, the thing was already a bit long in the tooth. Despite me writing time-critical parts of the word processor in Forth and even assembler, it still lagged behind my hands if I was sufficiently inspired. Also it only displayed one line of text, although I could see much more if I hooked it up to a green CRT I had bought for this purpose. I also had an inkjet printer of sorts, specially made for this kind of system. I saved text on small cassettes with a cassette player specially made for HP Interface Loop, and which itself cost a month's pay or so. But at this time the age of the PC was dawning, and I realized that even if it was possible to get the HP71 repaired, I would be better served getting a PC. And so I veered onto the road that took me to where I am today. Without that event, I suppose I would have stuck with the HP71 for a while longer and things would have been subtly different. Perhaps no taking a DBASE II or was it III course in the evenings, then accidentally discovering Dataflex just as I was about to computerize the business of SuperWoman's father and proceed to create an awesome debt collection software. So many things that could have been different.

Tuesday nearly two weeks ago I threw away the handbooks for the HP71B. I think the rest of the entry is obvious from here. Yes. I found the AC adapter and in a fit of nostalgia plugged it in. The HP71B came to live with the not unfamiliar "Memory Lost".

This thing has more sentimental value to me than any other physical object I've had in my life, I believe, even more than the cup with two play-fighting kittens which I used during my whole childhood and which I referred to with the nickname of myself and my oldest brother. Eh. Anyway. OK, possibly not more than my first Bible, which was in New Norwegian and which my father bought not to save my soul (he's still not baptized, I believe) but because I kept reading an old half-Danish one where some of the pages were missing. (He also bought me books about insects, snails, stars and what not. Books were THE thing to give in my family.) Anyway, there will be Bibles – probably in New Norwegian too for a while – long after I have sailed beyond the sunset. But there won't be any more HP71B. It was made in the age when Hewlett-Packard still made things to last for at least 20 years, before they realized that in our world things belong on a museum after 20 years. They used gold instead of copper for contacts, stuff like that. Crazy, but it appealed to something deep inside me.

I had already decided to keep the HP71B with me wherever I move even though it was dead. The irony now is that I have utterly forgotten how to use it and recycled the manuals, but apart from that I could still have used it. Not that there is anything I can use it for that I can't do better with a pocket PC, well a Pocket PC and a foldable keyboard I guess.

Mixed emotions. And memories that go more than half my life back. Well, half my life so far. I sincerely hope to be able to read this 25 years from now and smile at how young I was then. But I still think I'll remember that poem. Because the words of the wise are like nails. (I actually wrote "words of the nice" here but I don't think that is a requirement, though it probably doesn't hurt either.)

In other news today, I woke up late after dreaming that I returned to secondary school. And in the afternoon today I carried my cooking utensils and dry food to the new apartment. Serious commitment here folks! Also my stomach and my teeth hurt. That's about it. It is now wintry cold outside. Brrrr!