What is it?
In short, a Hewlett-Packard designed and built programmable scientific calculator.
It had 98 program steps and 30 memories. It wasn’t card-programmable, which was a pity at the time, but it did have “Continuous Memory” so it remembered the program that you keyed in – even after you switched it off.
See the hpmuseum page for more details. There is also a Wikipedia page for the HP-29.
Where do I get one?
They were discontinued in 1979 so you can’t buy one from the manufacturer anymore. They do crop up on eBay so that’s a good starting place. However, in many cases it is easier to get a HP-29 emulator.
How do I use it?
The Sliderule Museum has a copy of the HP-29 Owners Handbook.
At some point I’ll add some HP-29 Programs.
There is also:
- HP-29 Format Convertor to convert between emulator file formats, key codes and memory image formats.
How does it work?
The following reference articles exist on the calculator internals:
– HP-29 Scan Codes
– HP-29 Program Codes (coming soon)
– HP-29 Internals
There is also more information in HP-29 articles.
