Hewlett Packard-Computer

The HP-150 was a compact, powerful and innovative computer made by Hewlett-Packard in 1983. It was based on the Intel 8088 and was one of the worlds earliest commercialized touch screen computers. The machine was not IBM PC compatible, although it was MS-DOS compatible. Customized MS-DOS versions 2.01, 2.11 and 3.20 were available. Its 8088 CPU, rated at 8 MHz, was faster than the 4.77 MHz CPUs used by the IBM PC of that period. Using add-on cards, main memory could be increased from 256 KB (256 KiB) to 640 KB. However, its mainboard did not have a slot for the optional Intel 8087 math coprocessor due to space constraints. The HP-150 with an optional hard disk was called the Touchscreen MAX.

The screen was a 9 Sony CRT surrounded by infrared emitters and detectors which detected the position of any non-transparent object that touched the screen. In the original HP-150, these emitters & detectors were placed within small holes located in the inside of the monitors bezel (which resulted in the bottom series of holes sometimes filling with dust, causing the touch screen to fail until the dust was vacuumed from the holes).

Like the Macintosh, the computer was packaged with the CRT. Unlike the Mac, the 3½-inch disks were external. The HP-150 45611A sat atop the phone book sized 9121D dual 3½-inch floppy (76 mm high, 325 mm wide, 285 mm deep) or similarly sized hard disk devices, connected by HP-IB. The HP-120 45600A 2×Z80 CP/M machine also used the 9121 drives.

The HP-150II 45849A replaced the HP-150 in 1984. It was still called the Touchscreen, although the touch screen was no longer standard, but rather a rarely adopted option. The optional touch screen bezel was superior to the original bezel, in that the emitters and detectors were now located behind a solid infrared-transparent plastic; removing the need to regularly clean the holes found in the original model.

The HP-150II had the same footprint as the HP-150, but came in a larger housing to accommodate its 12 screen, but could no longer accommodate an internal printer. The HP-150II had four expansion slots available (as opposed to two), and could accommodate an optional 8087 co-processor board. There were some minor compatibility problems between the HP-150 and the HP-150II in the video subsystem.

In 1985 HP introduced the Vectra, which InfoWorld stated was the company responding to demands from its customers for full IBM PC compatibility. HP repositioned the 150 as a workstation for the HP 3000 minicomputer.

The Hewlett-Packard 9100A (hp 9100A) is an early programmable calculator (or computer), first appearing in 1968.
HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers computer gurus because it didnt look like an IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared.

The HP 9800 is a family of what were initially called programmable calculators and later desktop computers that were made by Hewlett-Packard, replacing their first HP 9100 calculator.
It is also named 98 line. The 9830 and its successors were true computers in the modern sense of the term, complete with a powerful BASIC language interpreter.

Introduced in 1972, was the top of the 9800 line, with the addition of a BASIC interpreter in read-only memory (ROM).
HP itself referred to it as a calculator.