Keyboard Builders' Digest / Keyboard Spotting
HP 9845
The HP 9845, Hewlett Packard's flagship from 1977, and the first "workstation".
Published April 8, 2022
First and foremost, the glorious HP 9845, depicted above, has a dedicated fan site (hp9845.net) – much of the info in this post comes from there.
So a blurry photo turned up on my Twitter timeline the other day, a screenshot from a '80s TV show, and I had to look up the model.
The Hewlett Packard 9845A (1977) was the effort of HP to design a system with whatever seemed to be technically possible at the time.
And with the HP 9845A they actually created the category "workstation".
The product sheet as sketched by Jack Walden in fact had been some kind of an engineer's wish list, and initially wasn't really directed to a special target group or usage.
The flagship of a new generation of HP models, the 9845, was introduced in 1977 as the "HP 9800 Series System 45" or later called just 9845A.
The development code name of the 9845A was "Qwert" (the name appears in the US4180854 patent in Fig. 141A) which was a reference to the QWERTY keyboard – this is only slightly strange since while earlier models like the 9830A personal computer or 9825A instrument controller seem to have alphanumeric keyboards, most other models (desktop calculators and instrument controllers) had only A-F or ABC + XYZ alphas (see the product line).
Comparing the HP 9845 to its contemporaries, the Apple II, PET and TRS-80:
The Apple II was made for the technically interested consumer, the PET for the technically skilled hobbyist, the TRS-80 for those somewhere in between who wanted to get the best compromise of features and price, and the HP 9845A was constructed from engineering professionals for engineering professionals.
Apple, PET and TRS-80 represented perfect examples for personal computers, but the HP 9845A really was a workstation.
The HP 9845A was followed by the improved 9845B (1980), the 9845C high end color system, and the high performance model 200 systems.
There was an expended HP9845B, the HP9845T, with two cartridge drives, and a thermal printer, 192KBytes of LPU R/W memory and also graphics support – the final version of the 9845 series.
The 9845C had a color screen and light pen facilities for design work:
Finally, about the source of the screenshot on the top: it is The Adventure Game broadcast on BBC (1980-86). There is a thread here with many more pictures from the show for retroheads.
Published on Fri 8th Apr 2022. Featured in KBD #73.
Related
Entertainment Computer System
A rare find posted by Dubis7.
Preh Commander AK 67
This Brüel & Kjær NP 0028 aka Preh Commander AK 67 was found by cdc_mkb in the attic of his employer.
Velotype Pro
Not the usual monoblock split: the Velotype Pro is actually a chorded keyboard.
Clueboard 2x1800 Toy edition
Clueboard 2x1800 Toy edition with Buger TH01 posted by Gracelberrypie.