The H.P. Touch Computer (1983)  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2014, 10:48:17 am
content: I remember those. Slow and very poor resolution on the touchscreen. Kind of the early version of the current tablet, but just totally inconvenient and difficult to use. Wrong form factor and position of the screen in a traditional desktop, would have been better as an arcade style integrated into a desk surface.

author: SL4P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2014, 12:36:02 pm
content: There were a few ideas around that time.Judging from the fat bezel - I'd guess it's using a matrix of IR LEDs and photo transistors to detect an obstruction (finger) in a fixed column/row arrangement.This was common for around 5 years as touch screens found their feet.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2014, 03:55:41 pm
content: IIRC it was a 15 by 15 matrix, almost usable on a 40 column by 24 row screen to select an area, but it was a pain, with you always having a CRT with smudges and grease on it, and it was incredibly sensitive to dirt. It did not work using a standard ball point pen rear as a pointer either, it needed a little larger diameter to work reliably. Wrap the pen back in a few layers of magic tape to make it a little thicker and it worked well as a pointer with less problems than the finger. A touch screen with a stylus, and of course if you had 2 fingers or a thumb there it went crazy.

author: retrolefty
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2014, 04:43:03 pm
content: H.P. in those day made and sold some very advance equipment. Tare down anything made by them in that time frame and you would see it was head and shoulders above most any other company. The problem is that they were never price competitive in the consumer market so could never capture much market share to keep any given product long lived. Their calculator products were probably an exception to this as they keep that product line going for almost forever, but again in total calculator market share not that impressive.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 05:23:53 am
content: Looks a bit like the touchscreen on a Tektronix waveform monitor we had back in the mid 1990s.The function seemed to have been tossed in as an after thought,as the thing had normal controls as well.The first time I had anything to do with it,I pointed out a problem with the field group signal by touching the screen in the normal way.The thing of course,changed to line rate,leaving me looking like an idiot.I very much doubt if anyone ever used the touch facility---they just kept their fingers way from it!

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 05:43:26 am
content: I remember seeing a comic strip in an electronic magazine regarding the HP touch computers back in the day, where the demo girl was changing into a medieval armor before going to the demo booth because the caption on her demo stand said "feel free to touch anything".I can't find a google image of it, but it was in Spain so it could have been the local magazine's cartoonist.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 05:44:54 am
content: I used those at nokia in finland in 1989 to drive test equipment. They were motorola 68k based. Later they made a 8086 based one that could run DOS.Finny thing was the co puter was actually built inside the monitor. At the top back, if you had the large screen 17 inch one you could have an inkjet printer as well.They used HIL To connect keyboard and mouse. Besides a centronics and two serial ports there was a gpib port standard. The floppy drives connected through gpib. So did optional harddisk modules.We ran rocky mountain basic on em. Very easy to control test equipment. Rmb had graphics linraries that made ot very easy to create charts , pie diagrams, 3d waterfall plots etc , much like excel, from an array of data in basic. Hit printscreen and you got a hardcopy to either printer or plotter. Not a single line of code needed.They were very useful machines.

author: AG6QR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 05:45:19 am
content: I remember those. I was tempted to buy one, but they were too expensive for me at the time. The touch screen was implemented via a matrix of IR LEDs and IR sensors, as already stated. It was very low resolution. But this was before the mouse was widespread, and ANY graphical pointing ability put HP ahead of most of the competition, which usually had no pointing ability.It reminded me of the PLATO IV terminals I had used during college, right down to the array of holes on the side of the screen to house the IR LEDs and sensors. The resolution was very similar, as well.http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/touch_screen.html

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 01:10:46 pm
content: Yeah the 150 was the first real pro computer i ever saw in 1984 when one of my classmates in highschool showed one of in the classroom. His father was an independent computerseller selling HP computers.I remember the impact it made. It might not look much now but back then the touchscreen and userfriendly operating were pure scifi becoming reality right there and then.Beautifull machine but the price of a decent car made it only available for businesses.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2014, 01:51:54 pm
content: Exactly. Now it may not look impressive but back in the pre-pc days it was either a commodore64 or this....

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2014, 09:40:37 pm
content: Quote from: SL4P on June 08, 2014, 12:36:02 pmExactly right! I collect old computers and I still have several HP 150s. The last one that I picked up came from the State of Florida's Department of Law Enforcement State Crime Lab in xxxxx. They were still using it to run some of their analytical equipment up until about five years ago. They were pretty secretive about what kind of equipment they were connected to but a good guess would HP Gas Chromatographs. When they replaced the -150 they gave me the entire system including all the computers, disk drives, printers, cables, software, and manuals. :-) The HP 150s weren't very good computers but they all had HP-IB interfaces built-in standard so they made GREAT instrument controllers. The problem with them as far as being a computer was that even though they were MS-DOS compatible they weren't 100% IBM PC compatible.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2014, 10:11:14 pm
content: Quote from: Free Electron on June 25, 2014, 09:40:37 pmGet off my handle !

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2014, 10:59:36 pm
content: Oh wow look at those micro floppy's, state of the art stuff

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2014, 12:09:24 am
content: You should have seen the 8 inch drives! About 17" wide x 24" deep x 5" tall and weighed about 50 pounds for asingledrive!

author: GeoffS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 26, 2014, 02:17:51 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on June 25, 2014, 10:11:14 pmAwaiting response from user 'Free Electron' as to change of screen name.

author: echen1024
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 26, 2014, 05:07:31 pm
content: Quote from: GeoffS on June 26, 2014, 02:17:51 amIt's now "Stray Electron"