The HP28C had an infrared output, e.g. For printers, but no input. a friend of mine published a book explaining how to connect an IR diode to trigger some unconnected keyboard lines in the calculator. That made it possible to upload programs to the calculator faster. Of course you also needed the matching hack on a PC to send programs. The 48 had IR in both directions.
That reminded me of something - maybe not really a hack per se, but some creative problem solving. I was at a Mac User Group meeting around 2000 or so, and somebody was supposed to do a presentation. Unfortunately, the presentation was on one laptop, and the projector was on another. Now, in many cases over many years, this is basically a non-issue - there are usually several ways to transfer files. Unfortunately, because of the laptops involved (maybe a PowerBook 5300 and a PowerBook G3?), the options were
And another not-exactly-a-hack-but-problem-solving-nonetheless...
When I was doing my Master's research, I wrote a program to do some optimization for me. I didn't have the forethought to allow it to save its progress, or to have it tell me how much progress it had made. Often when I ran the program, it would finish in a day or two. But one of the runs I did took well over a month to complete. It had already been running for 20 or 30 days, and the lease was expiring on my apartment. I didn't want to start th
Nice. A friend of mine moved and wasn't going to get Internet service for like a week. He drove around with his TiVo and UPS in his car until he found somebody with unsecured WiFi to have it download the channel listings and program info for his new house.
HP28C infrared input (Score:4, Interesting)
The HP28C had an infrared output, e.g. For printers, but no input. a friend of mine published a book explaining how to connect an IR diode to trigger some unconnected keyboard lines in the calculator. That made it possible to upload programs to the calculator faster. Of course you also needed the matching hack on a PC to send programs. The 48 had IR in both directions.
Re: (Score:3)
That reminded me of something - maybe not really a hack per se, but some creative problem solving. I was at a Mac User Group meeting around 2000 or so, and somebody was supposed to do a presentation. Unfortunately, the presentation was on one laptop, and the projector was on another. Now, in many cases over many years, this is basically a non-issue - there are usually several ways to transfer files. Unfortunately, because of the laptops involved (maybe a PowerBook 5300 and a PowerBook G3?), the options were
Re: (Score:2)
And another not-exactly-a-hack-but-problem-solving-nonetheless...
When I was doing my Master's research, I wrote a program to do some optimization for me. I didn't have the forethought to allow it to save its progress, or to have it tell me how much progress it had made. Often when I ran the program, it would finish in a day or two. But one of the runs I did took well over a month to complete. It had already been running for 20 or 30 days, and the lease was expiring on my apartment. I didn't want to start th
Re:HP28C infrared input (Score:2)
Nice. A friend of mine moved and wasn't going to get Internet service for like a week. He drove around with his TiVo and UPS in his car until he found somebody with unsecured WiFi to have it download the channel listings and program info for his new house.