[rescue] HP41 reminiscing

[Scott Newell]

Some of my nicest memories of the HP-41 days were regarding the user
community.  Remember how they had an official user group and magazine?  I
remember being so excited to see the new issues, what with all the new
product announcements, user submitted programs announcements, and fun stuff
people had built (Rubik's cube made from calc ads?).  

Programs submitted to the user group library were published for
distribution, and you not only got source code, but handwritten
documentation, theory of ops, and test cases.  Great stuff!  Once they came
out with the barcode wand, they'd use pages of barcode as a distribution
medium.  I was just a kid, but I remember scanning line after line to play
games like minehunt.

And then came the byte loader, synthetic programming, and making the goose
fly backwards.  Anyone else remember the controversy over whether or not to
allow synthetic programming to be used in submissions to the official
user's group?

Damn, those were the days...


newell