Ah hi! don't mind me just rocking up to work with my portable computer. Come check it out. So let me show you what a real portable computer looks like. Now this newfangled iPad Rubbish.

Here we go. Whoa, look at that baby. Yeah, now we're talking. let's have a look.

Ah, why doesn't the feather only weighs about 8 kilos or something like that? Beautiful! This is state-of-the-art portable computer technology from 1979 slash 1980 The Hewlett-packard 85. This is the original model A is no, didn't have ion here. There was a later model B came standard with 8k of RAM expandable to 64 K didn't use AZ ID or a 6502 or any of the common processes at the time. It had a custom HP calculator just like all the Hewlett Packard calculators did and it had a full QWERTY keyboard on it, a numeric keypad, function, keys, all sorts of stuff.

Fully equipped, even came with a high-speed professional cassette interface. none of this side, you know, regular consumer cassette rubbish. Proper professional, high speed cassette storage about 200 K Worth 256 by 192 resolution and monochrome non this newfangled color rubbish graphics display and it came with a built-in thermal printer fantastic and expansion ports on the back. Look at it where you can memory expand.

you can get IO serial interfaces, industrial interfaces, all that sort of stuff. And that's the ticket with this baby is that although technically this was a personal computer, it was really marketed as a scientific and industrial personal computer or just a you know, scientific Engineering computer for professionals. It had full graphing, lots of very advanced graphing capability that we'll take a look at, and that was its primary market, and it was priced as such. It was about three and a half thousand US dollars at the time in Nineteen Eighty dollars.

so you know, pretty expensive, better kit, so you could actually get better functionality cheaper and around about the similar time. But this was designed for professionals and it was portable. Woohoo! Tell us the speed Dave Okay, a whopping six hundred and thirteen kilohertz? Okay, high Isn't she a beaut? Look at this. What a Bobby Dazzler it.

We've even got the original tape cartridge. Look at that certified data cartridge HP 200, thank you very much indeed. Wow I Don't think I've ever seen one of those before anyway. I Always lusted after these.

never had an opportunity to use one, but geez, that's terrific. Check this out. They've got themselves somebody who used it previously. What are they been doing? 40 DB Minus 17 Is that degrees? C And that twenty six point six, six milli mows? perhaps? Wow It's upside down, but that's a University of Washington This is where it came from and it was that serviced.

Genuinely serviced by HP back in the day. If we have a look at the back here, we've got us selectable mains. Input voltage was set to 110 I set it to what? 230 Just then, we've got ourselves four cartridge slots here. X-rays generated.

Yeah, real genuine. CRT But check this out, so can we. Well, they're difficult to get out there you go. but we've got the 16 K memory module.

Doesn't look very exciting at all, and we've got the wrong drawer. Oh, look at that look. You can put roms in there. That's what it's That's actually what it's for.

It is actually a draw for roms that's terrific. So this one actually has I Oh, and the wrong chip is going to be inside that puppy there and it plugs into the module like that. Wow Isn't that neat? So this thing came standard with our 8k around. But as you saw, got a 16 K Ram expansion pack Fantastic 64 K maximum.

The tape drives are about two hundred and twenty K a pop or something 200 K a pop. And as I said, it works at a screaming a nought point. Six megahertz on there. about six hundred something kilohertz.

Anyway, let's power this puppy up. and by the way, at the 5 inch CRT can do up to 256 by 192 graphics as well. Hopefully we can get some stunning graphics on this thing. and HP a basic built in and apparently all the chips in it are custom HP ones apart from the memory devices and stuff like that.

So here we go. Fingers crossed. let's switch it on power. come on.

But tape drive is loud anyway. I Don't see anything on the screen. Maybe it's got to wait until it rewinds the tape. Perhaps because it's got a load from tape.

If there's a tape in there, maybe I don't know. I've never used one of these puppies before. Twiddle my thumbs. Oh geez, Sequential access memory.

Those were the days that's really churning. How long? Second: the tape should have powers up. without the tape. That was quite a non-event wasn't it? Geez, Nothing on.

wait much longer. Anyway, no magic smoke escaping. Check it out. Sloppy.

there. It is. Beautiful. All right.

Let's pair it up again without the tape and see what we get supposed to be working. They did show it powered up in the ad, although they did have two of them and they only showed one. Oh oh no, we have a cursor. Was there before and I just didn't see it.

Hello like Yay! God it works. Beautiful. Error 92 Syntax fantastic. so we can go ten.

Oh no, no. oh how do we clear? Whoa. Oh Scratch here at night. Continue before.

run I don't know how to use this or UHP 85 aficionados are probably screaming at me I Don't know if I can directly do this, but I did list and it showed. um, presumably the amount of memory a bit 16 K plus eight. that doesn't sort of add up. anyway.

Okay, maybe you run. Oh, error 48 on line 909 end. But but check it out. there, it is it printed.

Hello World. It actually printed it instead of going on the screen. Oh winner. Check this out.

We can actually press the roll key here and make it scroll. It looks like here we go it's like got a like a screen buffer on it and we can just scroll through that and it's got a list command like a well, a list, a dedicated list, a key down here so you can type in list and you know Sure enough, there's my program. So I think what's happened there is that I haven't put an end command in my basic program so it's actually gone through all 9999 lines presumably if no, my programs only one light. It didn't know that it ended.

so if I go 20 and then end like that okay I can now list there we go. and now if I run it I should not get that error message it. Here we go. Winner winner chicken dinner.

The really interesting thing is is that you can actually cursor up and down like this and then like type anywhere you want on the screen. That's rather unusual and frightening. So I'm actually rewinding the tape now and I still don't know if that's normal or not is Preston shift and they've got to rewind up here on this button and come back to you whether or not it's actually rewinding the tape and going to get to the end. Oh Give it a few minutes.

Nope. no joy on the cassette there. So I don't know what's actually going on. These are much faster than regular our cassette tapes of the day by the way.

and I Also said this had HP basic built in. That's not strictly correct. It's what's called a technical basic or it probably had some other name but official name, but it is a different basic used to in other HP calculators. This one apparently had even commands for doing adding you know, doing graphs and adding axes to graphs.

and you know things like that. It was really quite an advanced scientific machine. so I'll show you some of the advanced scientific graphing capability of this thing because it really wasn't advanced scientific analysis, data analysis tool, and things like that. Take this simple full line program here.

don't include the end. G Clear as graphics clear of course, so it clears the graphics cream screen twenty actually are. The scale command allows us to actually define the scale of our graph. In this case, the X axis goes from -10 to +10 the Y axis goes from minus 100 up to plus 100.

So we're going to do like a center graph like this with two different scales in it and then we can go X Axes start at zero and we can actually have a tick mark every at every one. So that's on the X so we should have our 10 or 20 total ticks across there. and the Y axis. We should have 20 total ticks across there We're going to have a tick every tenth axes.

so let's just run that, press our Run key or type in run and beautiful Look at that. It generates our graph with it All of our little tick marks. Fantastic. And if we wanted to have a tick mark every fifth one, then we could just go like that and run it and Bingo! It'll give us every 5.

Then if we press down, why shift copy key here? Bingo! It's going to print out our graph or whatever was on the screen at the time. Fantastic. All right. So let's actually plot a graph of something that you might be familiar with.

We'll start out with the G clear command here. that's graphics clear. that'll clear the graphics screen red. Of course.

we switch to radians mode and then we use the scale command to scale. We can include expressions in there like our PI for example. and then we'll scale our Y axes and our X axis and then we'll do a a for loop which eye goes right down to here and that just a goes up them from -4 2 Pi, blah blah blah step should be familiar with your route for command. and then if we're going to move the pointer to a certain location and then we're going to draw and you'll see why we're going to do this in a minute.

and then we move again and then we draw X comments. So an X on X you might be able to figure out what this one is going to do and then right at the end. just for kicks, we will use the label command and we'll move to 1 - 1 which is the it's not character position 1. it's graphics position 1/1 based on the scale function.

So it'll be somewhere here on the screen. but you'll see that when we draw our axes, we're going to have an axis down the middle and axes. here. it'll go slightly negative and it'll go equally negative and positive on the X axis and we'll just print that label on the screen.

So we're mixing graphics and string text here. Incredibly powerful and you can do this to label axes and do all sorts of stuff here. We're just going to label our function. So here we go.

Let's run it and it's going to take some time because remember, this only works at just over 600 kilohertz, but no one cared back in the day. But anyway, here's our axes that's automatically plotted all the the little tick marks and everything and you can probably see with this one's going to do. But the interesting part here is is that we're actually filling in instead of just drawing the graph. We could have just done that, but we added that extra command in there that by basically draws a line in there and then Just so you can see it drawing up like that.

So it draws the lines out so effectively. like fills it in like you're displaying the area under the curve for example. So that's really good and you can see this is your classic sign. X on X Function.

And yeah, other basic computers at the time could do this of course, but hey, this one was purposely designed with engineering and scientific functions and graphing sort of built in and there's our label. Bingo at 1/1 it started there. Look at that. Fantastic.

Love it. And then if we hit shift, copy it blinks out the display memory. I Don't know why it can't Do you know, have the display end there at the same time I Guess it can't read it. It's got to read back from that graphics display memory.

but we can print out that graph no worries whatsoever. And you'd include these in your report. Should actually like stick them in with tape or glue them into your physical reports. Hey, I was still doing that back into the mid-2000s at large companies Always working out, so don't laugh.

It's not like 1970s 1980s stuff. It was. Yeah, look at that. So bingo.

That's fantastic. Love it. That was the power of this thing and what made it so valuable back in the day to engineers and scientists. Not you know, because it was a real expensive machine at three and a half thousand dollars.

of course. and there were better home computers on the market. But for scientific and engineering stuff, this thing couldn't be beat. What time is it? It's HP eighty five time.

Let's do a program to display a good old-fashioned analogue clock. Shall we? There we go, There we go. So that's our program. I Won't go through the details, but let's list that.

Very simple. It'll draw an analog clock face and then it'll make us enter in the time and display it so let's run it. It's not particularly quick, but hey, this thing didn't have to be back in the day. The fact that you could do all this stuff.

it didn't matter how long the program execution took. Really, the fact that it uses you know, 600 something kilohertz clock. Nobody cared. the fact that you could do this stuff.

you know, for science and engineering calculations and things like that. Here we go. Let's go over five and it's sir. 30 now is it no dot? Oops I Wouldn't know what giving us a syntax error or something.

There you go. Five thirty and let's take a look at some old brochures of this baby back in the day. Personal Computer Personal Computation. It was the personal computer for professionals because that's what who it was marketed at.

So they got to talk about the graphics and the extensive data capability and the portability and all that sort of stuff and look eyes used in the lab? Look at that, there isn't There's an old HP scope in the background. look Oh Fantastic! Whoa. Complete computer system in one small package. Dual mode display does graphics and text printing are good like Aa sign X on X Beautiful Graphics is standard, not an add-on building display.

typewriter like keyboard none of that Chiclets or little dinky tactile dome rubbish or membrane keyboard no siree. Bob's got a real keyboard on there for professionals. Oh, it's got basic building application packs, whisper-quiet printer, absolutely whisper quiet and sophisticated computing at your fingertips. So there's the advanced graphics has going on about and you can mix graphics and text and all sorts of stuff.

Design for today and tomorrow. I Wonder what the usable life of this thing was? But because it was bought by professionals used in labs and things like that, it probably would have been used for a lot longer than a regular consumer would have had their home computer, for example. So um, anyone out there? I'm sure there's a lot out there who had one of these babies? Let us know, um, how long what she used it for, how long you used for? look at this, How many specify the dynamic range? How many personal computers specify the dynamic range in the digit accuracy? But hey, that's what HP were known for for their calculators and you could trust the results from this thing. Unlike a you know, a trash eighty or something like that, whoo knows what you're going to get out of that thing.

Anyway, the good thing about this is that there's tons of websites and info available on this. No problems whatsoever about getting like the original owners, menu and programming guide. 342 pages thank you very much. They don't make it like that anymore, do they? Ah no.

This. and it's actually you know they're all beautifully scanned in and everything. Unfortunately, the photos didn't you know come out too well. but there's tons of examples.

You go right to the end down here and check it out. Look, they'll have like problems in there and then give you solutions to programs and flowcharts and all sorts of stuff. so you could, really, you know, got to remember people back then buying this. This might have been their first introduction to having a computer to using a computer, to using basic, for example.

It wasn't a given that people knew how to use it. Now the other fantastic thing about this? Look at the service manual 239 pages thank you very much and it's got absolutely everything that you could possibly want in this thing. I mean how to take it apart, how it works, block diagrams and yes, and theory of operation servicing, what you know, troubleshooting guides, all sorts of stuff. and if we go right to the end yes, we even get the full schematics.

They were like a three size. They would have been and so they were up scanned in in halves and it's all their full service manual. Beautiful! I Love looking through and the Bill of Materials everything. It's just fantastic.

So service in these things is an absolute dream. And look, here's an original Bite article at the Bite Review or initial First Impressions review from March 1980 Christopher Morgan Editor in Chief and a question often heard in personal computer circles is when is your Parker going to bring out a personal computer The question has been answered. A new HP 85 computer is quite a system. There you go now, which reviews these days apart from mine and other bloggers.

I'm actually take things up, but look, they show you the internals in the original review. Fantastic! and I do have a teardown video if you want to look at all the gory details. but let's have a look down the bottom here and what's their evaluation? We were impressed with the performance, the graphics alone this making an attractive Al Biet not inexpensive no kidding alternative to existing small systems on the market, and many of its features are unique. although Hewlett-packard is pinning his hopes on heavy sales to the Professional Marketplace Yeah, I Don't think they sold almost any of these to the regular Joe in the street I Don't think so.

Um, yep, and computer experimenters and hackers will want this machine because yeah, it's it's all open. It's ready to be expanded. There you go and future is your boat. We'll evaluate it in greater depth.

There you go. Beautiful! And of course you get a like it came with like a pocket guide which they're scanned in. Now that's all you needed. You know you would keep that by your side.

You wouldn't keep the full manual. You just always keep the pocket guide there because it have all the basic commands and everything else and that's you know. ASCII tables and that's basically exactly what you wanted I spent many a year doing that. Anyway, there's tons of stuff available on HP museum net.

All these PDFs you can download as a ton of it and it came with a whole bunch of them of course. analysts and analytical packs, engineering scientific packs, program packs, roms that can do all sorts of stuff so that you put them in the ROM drawer as we saw. and there's got a list here. but yeah, it had linear programming, general statistics, math, surveying, busy Calc.

Plus there you go: the AC Circuit analysis, waveform analysis, regression analysis you know, a science learning one and two. Electrical engineering, math, numerical or probability. All sorts of stuff you get these program packs Fantastic! This is an awesome, awesome machine and it was pretty groundbreaking back in the day and I lusted after it but never got a chance to use one now. I've got one! Fantastic anyway.

I hope you enjoyed that video In the rather long a fanboy ramble of the HP 85 You want to discuss it? Forum links down below YouTube comments website comments all that sort of jazz. Hope you liked it. Catch you Next time here we go. Let's try and lift the case off now.

Fantastic! Oh, we're in like Flynn Look at that Beautiful! Ah, nice and clean - love it. Wow Check out the nickel screening on this thing and look as somebody signed it. Is that I don't know, is that the person who assembled it personally checked it I am Not Sure, but good on you.