Handheld and Portable Computer Club
 

This is borderline on-topic here as it's not really a vintage radio club. But the 'audiophool' thread revealed a number of people here like HP calculators, so I will mention there is still an active HP calculator user club in the UK (we accept members for all over the world, of course).

The website is http://www.hpcc.org/

But that does not really give a true picture of the club. The reason to join, in my opinion, is the monthly meetings, held at Imperial College in London. At those meetings just about anything (technical) gets discussed. Old HP calculators. New HP calculators. Other calculators. Other computers, large and small. Vintage radio. Tape recorders. General electronics, old and new. Test equipment, old, new, common and obscure. Telephones (old landline stuff, smartphones, etc) Model engineering/metalwork. Steam engines. Car engines. And much, much, more

Anyone here would be welcome at a meeting as a guest, but please contact the club before just turning up. Or PM me for more details and information.

Re: Handheld and Portable Computer Club
 

This is very interesting for me. I’ve had HP calculators for about 25 years. Currently own a 50G and before that a 48S and my father’s 41CV. I regrettably had to do my degree with a Casio because the 48S died and had to be replaced on warranty by which time I’d got used to the Casio and didn’t want to risk any problems with context switching.

I may turn up. Are there any RPL programmers around as I’ve been scratching my head on a few problems? :)

Re: Handheld and Portable Computer Club
 

There are many RPL programmers in the club. Many of the active members own an RPL machine (I've never bought the 50G but I have a 28C, 48SX, 48GX and 49G). If it's user-RPL that you need help with then there are plenty of people to help. System-RPL might take a little longer.

The club started as a group to explore the undocumented bits of the HP41, the so-called 'synthetic programming'. There are still people around who understand that, who have their byte table to hand. Even people who program the HP41 in the processor machine code. So if you still have the HP41CV, the club can help you with that too (and all sorts of interesting manuals are on members' shelves...)

As I said, we cover a lot more than the HP handhelds. As an example, at the conference this year (the conference is by far the most formal and on-topic meeting) there were talks on the early days of HPIB (and the pre-history of it, including a mention of the Blackburn BIE2114 DVM.), repairing the HP9830, the HP35 (HP's first handheld electronic calculator), the DM42 (the HP42-a-like from Swiss Micros), etc.

If you want to come along, please contact the club (details on the website) or PM me for details of where and when. For obvious reasons we like to know if a new member is going to turn up.