Memory is a weird thing. I could have recalled one million things from my life and not remembered the moon rocket landing game on the HP-65. However, within the first paragraph of your article, I was right back to twelve years old and being obsessed with this game on Mr. Pomerantz’s (my junior high math teacher) funky, chunky new calculator. I remember the strip. I remember plugging in numbers to see what would happen. I remember having fun. I remember thinking that the calculator was so really cool.
That memory made me think of the HP plotter that teacher had. We used to draw “race tracks” on the plotter paper and then three or four people could have a “race” by each controlling the input of a different colored pen. A couple of years later I arrived at high school where they had a general purpose computer with a tape reader and a bank of toggle switches that had to be flipped in a certain order to load the OS. Eventually I got a degree in computer science and ended up at Apple working on their OS. Starting out with something like the HP-65 is how many of us ended up sliding into the computer industry.
Thanks for reminding me of a little drop of my life.
My father also was a big fan of the HPs, and he had the HP-67 which was a lot like the HP-65. He actually wrote programs for the thing, and he subscribed to a programmable HP calculator users' group newsletter, the name of which escapes me now. We played the moonlander game on that machine. (In fact, through that newsletter we learned how to break into the calculator's hidden registers by flicking a piece of metal across the batter contacts. You could create crazy animations, like the one I remember that imitated a ping pong game.)
(He eventually retired from his job as an engineer and did database programming for the rest of his working life.)
And when he moved up to the HP-41c, he passed the HP-67 along to me. I really got into it. I was never more than a primitive programmer, but I loved the simple programming of the HP-67 and I spent weeks learning it.
Eventually I wrote a simple game that imitated a drag race -- by pressing certain keys, you could accelerate and brake, and the readout would display your speed and the distance to the finish line. The tricky part was stopping before you hit the wall a certain distance past the finish line. I titled it '67 Mustang Drag Race and submitted it to the newsletter where it was later published. My one and only game development.
Eventually the card reader stopped working, the batteries no longer charged (though it ran on its wall charger), and I sold it on eBay. But to this day I much prefer RPN calculators, and our household calculator in a drawer upstairs is an HP.
Love the latest iteration of The Magnet—always something fun in there.
The HP-65 brought back some fun memories. RPN—ha!
The lunar lander program reminded me of a toy I worked on at Mattel in the late 70’s: The Children’s Discovery System. Back then Mattel wanted to offer educational electronic toys and I was chosen to design the “content.” The toy had a LCD screen with a b&w grid of 16 x 28 square pixels. Looks stone age today--but a big deal back then! Plug-in game carts and special keyboard overlays transformed the function of the toy for each different subject: spelling, math, geography, music, art, etc.
I created an expanded version of a landing program that was part of the Science 1 game cartridge. You could "weigh yourself" on different moons and planets, take quizzes, and play a lander game. You could choose which planet to land on (each with different gravity) and you’d play in real time! Don’t take too long to enter your next burn amount—the spacecraft is moving! There were other game variations, like land with the fewest number of “burns” or using the least amount of fuel, or lowest landing velocity. Animation and sound effects. Great, if nerdy, fun!
The whole CDS program was unbelievably popular in research with the kids who played with one. In fact, Mattel offered a total refund to parents if their kids didn’t like it--with the marketing slogan ‘Get a Smarter Kid—or Your Money Back!’ featuring the Smothers Brothers as pitchmen. (I guess Tommy was the dumber kid?)
Great aesthetic triumph and rave reviews—but a total financial flop! Educational games?—no thanks. Most kids flocked to Atari VCS.
Memory is a weird thing. I could have recalled one million things from my life and not remembered the moon rocket landing game on the HP-65. However, within the first paragraph of your article, I was right back to twelve years old and being obsessed with this game on Mr. Pomerantz’s (my junior high math teacher) funky, chunky new calculator. I remember the strip. I remember plugging in numbers to see what would happen. I remember having fun. I remember thinking that the calculator was so really cool.
That memory made me think of the HP plotter that teacher had. We used to draw “race tracks” on the plotter paper and then three or four people could have a “race” by each controlling the input of a different colored pen. A couple of years later I arrived at high school where they had a general purpose computer with a tape reader and a bank of toggle switches that had to be flipped in a certain order to load the OS. Eventually I got a degree in computer science and ended up at Apple working on their OS. Starting out with something like the HP-65 is how many of us ended up sliding into the computer industry.
Thanks for reminding me of a little drop of my life.
My father also was a big fan of the HPs, and he had the HP-67 which was a lot like the HP-65. He actually wrote programs for the thing, and he subscribed to a programmable HP calculator users' group newsletter, the name of which escapes me now. We played the moonlander game on that machine. (In fact, through that newsletter we learned how to break into the calculator's hidden registers by flicking a piece of metal across the batter contacts. You could create crazy animations, like the one I remember that imitated a ping pong game.)
(He eventually retired from his job as an engineer and did database programming for the rest of his working life.)
And when he moved up to the HP-41c, he passed the HP-67 along to me. I really got into it. I was never more than a primitive programmer, but I loved the simple programming of the HP-67 and I spent weeks learning it.
Eventually I wrote a simple game that imitated a drag race -- by pressing certain keys, you could accelerate and brake, and the readout would display your speed and the distance to the finish line. The tricky part was stopping before you hit the wall a certain distance past the finish line. I titled it '67 Mustang Drag Race and submitted it to the newsletter where it was later published. My one and only game development.
Eventually the card reader stopped working, the batteries no longer charged (though it ran on its wall charger), and I sold it on eBay. But to this day I much prefer RPN calculators, and our household calculator in a drawer upstairs is an HP.
Love the latest iteration of The Magnet—always something fun in there.
The HP-65 brought back some fun memories. RPN—ha!
The lunar lander program reminded me of a toy I worked on at Mattel in the late 70’s: The Children’s Discovery System. Back then Mattel wanted to offer educational electronic toys and I was chosen to design the “content.” The toy had a LCD screen with a b&w grid of 16 x 28 square pixels. Looks stone age today--but a big deal back then! Plug-in game carts and special keyboard overlays transformed the function of the toy for each different subject: spelling, math, geography, music, art, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXSH60XQRs0&feature=youtu.be
I created an expanded version of a landing program that was part of the Science 1 game cartridge. You could "weigh yourself" on different moons and planets, take quizzes, and play a lander game. You could choose which planet to land on (each with different gravity) and you’d play in real time! Don’t take too long to enter your next burn amount—the spacecraft is moving! There were other game variations, like land with the fewest number of “burns” or using the least amount of fuel, or lowest landing velocity. Animation and sound effects. Great, if nerdy, fun!
The whole CDS program was unbelievably popular in research with the kids who played with one. In fact, Mattel offered a total refund to parents if their kids didn’t like it--with the marketing slogan ‘Get a Smarter Kid—or Your Money Back!’ featuring the Smothers Brothers as pitchmen. (I guess Tommy was the dumber kid?)
Great aesthetic triumph and rave reviews—but a total financial flop! Educational games?—no thanks. Most kids flocked to Atari VCS.
Mattel returned to making Barbies and He-Man.