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hp 85a upgrades?

J

joekster

Experienced Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2009
Messages
273
Location
Palm Beach, Florida
I got an hp-85a as a bonus in a lot of atari stuff. Thought it was a calculator at first, but its a cool little computer. I found some software on the'net, but it would require a disk drive. And adding the disk drive seems complicated: rom drawer, mass storage rom, gbib interface, disk drive...

Are there any cheap options for upgrades???
 
The Hp 85b runs a kind of Basic, so it's not a problem to load the software into the machine. Only takes a lot of time to type it. Problem is the saving of the software. There is a tape slot to save data, but i don't know if they are for sale somewhere. I found some pics of those tapes and they look like my old Conner tapes 120meg, but i don't know if they fit. I'll will try it when i found some tapes, think that i still have some.
 
http://oldcomputers.net/hp85.html shows the back/expansion ports on the system. I haven't played with one much, picked one up off a friend who was losing his house in bankruptcy a while back (it was a gift for helping him but I volunteered some cash for it still). www.series80.org seems to have some manuals available for the system too. I know things could be loaded and saved via the QIC tape drive. Not sure if it could maybe take input from a serial port or something into the basic interpreter, if so maybe you could upload programs to it from another system and perhaps save programs in a similar fashion.
 
The tape is DC-100, developed by HP for the 9825, nearly unobtainable. If you do get a cartridge, it will be pretty old, and probably suspect as a storage medium. However, the tape drive can be modified to accept QIC-40 cartridges. You can see the documents on the HP Series-80 Yahoo group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/hpseries80/files/QIC conversion/. If you do have some DC-100 tapes, before you run them in the drive, be sure to check the rubber on the drive capstan, because it's likely disintegrated and if not replaced, will not only malfunction, but will also leave goo on the tape surface. Also, there has been some discussion on the Yahoo groups about preserving old tapes (with flaking magnetic material) by using a "baking" procedure prior to transferring to a fresh medium.
 
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