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Ran out of HP41CV

I have now sold our last HP41CV. While this is a very old calculator, it is surprising how well they hold their own. Most of the half-nut machines that I have seen are still in working order. Half-nut is another story, but then these offer the possibility of conversion into HP41cl - a different animal.

I am seeing again and again the same profile: a person that had used it in the past, lost/destroyed/got stolen his calculator (with a big percentage of the latter factor), and now want to revive the joy of using it.

Probably the best keyboard action belongs to the Pioneer series, although this is debatable; but the HP41c was much more covetable than any other calculator of the time. Maybe the 67 experienced similar status in past years - but at the time, I was still using a humble 33c and in my father’s office they were using HP97s as secondary desktop computers (the main ones were the HP9815 machines, also RPN-based but that could hold 2kb of program. It was amazing seeing it driving a plotter) - so there was no way for a young student to even see a 67.

Despite being the HP41c a vintage calculator now, I can’t take out of my mind the “modern” sticker that it got in my mind. And it was modern in comparison with everything else, including my hp33c or the then top hp34c. It lived together with other calculators that had true “dot matrix” LCD screens. However, the contrast and visibility of those was minimal. And the upgradeability of the HP41c made it the dream of every engineer, even if they could not afford the additional bits at the time…

Well, now these engineers CAN afford these bits. These are the customers that are buying old HP41cv, or even the powerful HP41CL(of which there are two ready, with the latest circuit version). And if they knew that they could link it with an HP-Il multimeter like the HP3468A, they would probably do it too.

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