[Andrew Menadue] wrote in to let us know about the TULIP-DevBoard and TULIP-Module being developed on GitHub.
TULIP is short for “The Ultimate Intelligent Peripheral” and it’s an everything expansion board for the HP-41 line of handheld calculators sold by HP from 1979 to 1990. These particular calculators support Reverse Polish notation which seems to be one of those things, like the Dvorak keyboard, where once you get used to it you can never go back.
In doing the research for this article we came across the fan site hpcalc.org which has been online since 1997, although the Way Back Machine can only go back to late 1998. Still, we were impressed. It’s fun that the site still looks very much like it did 28 years ago!
The TULIP4041 is based around the RP2350 microcontroller which you might know as the heart of a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board. The video below the break is a talk about the present and future of the TULIP project, and the slides are here: TULIP4041 – The Next Chapter.pdf (PDF).
Thanks to [Andrew] for writing in. If you’re interested in hacking the HP-41 check out HP-41C, The Forth Edition and Nonpareil RPN HP-41 Calculator Build.
Bob Prosperi is a super nice guy and a member of the committee that puts on the annual HP Users Conference. Another committee member is Eric Rechlin, the creator and maintainer of the aforementioned hpcalc.org (see also literature.hpcalc.org for a treat). You can find out where the next conference will be by monitoring the conference website, https://hhuc.us or better yet by joining the mailing list: https://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-15514.html
From time to time I am thinking to do something like this for the HP48, a much better calculator like the HP41. (better screen, huge slot for additional hardware)
Things like this are easy to do if you are professional hardware developer and not a child anymore. :-D
However there are two question that stops me:
For what I would use this realy? It may be fun to develope, but after it?
A thing like a RP2040/2350 is horrible for the battery live of our old calculator.
Re battery life, this was already a concern for those who installed the 41CL processor board, and recently addressed by several folks with new, usb-c rechargeable 1200mAh Li-Po battery packs.