Talk:HP 2640

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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Redundant category

The 2640 is a Category:Block-oriented terminal and a Category:Character-oriented terminal. Adding Category:Computer terminals back makes it redundant. Tedickey (talk) 21:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It is not the purpose of the category system to meet strict requirements about redundancy, but rather to help people find articles. The HP 2640 series are unquestionably "computer terminals", are they not? A little bit of redundancy is not necessarily something to be avoided, particularly when it helps people find things. Jeh (talk) 03:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

However, the category is used for (a) instances of terminals, (b) general discussion of terminals. It would make it easier to find things if there were not so much clutter. Tedickey (talk) 09:56, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

bear in mind that there's no point in singling out the relatively unknown 2640 - either the whole, cluttered list should go back, or an improved categorization is the way to go. The remaining instances of terminals are hardcopy and graphics - and in reviewing the list, it's apparent that the list itself is more/less random, unrelated to the notability of the instances. Filling it out (to make it more systematic) would probably increase the list by 2-3 times, accentuating the existing clutter Tedickey (talk) 10:00, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Need refs

Add, references to significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject into this article. Significant coverage - References that are about the subject – at least one lengthy paragraph, preferably more. Not passing mentions, directory listings, not just any old thing that happens to have the name in it. Several of them – not just one. It must be notable. Reliable sources - Something that is generally trusted to tell the truth. A major newspaper, a factual, widely-published book, high-quality mainstream publications with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Not blogs, MySpace, Facebook, forum/Usenet posts, fansites, or Twitter. It must be verifiable. Independent - Nothing written by the subject, paid for by the subject, or affiliated with the subject. Not their website, and not a press-release. It must be independent. LES 953 (talk) 06:09, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Spec table / section

Given the wide variety of models, it might be useful to put in a simple table showing the differences between each, as well as the common bulleted/sectioned list used for a lot of other computer and terminal families... rather than the fairly random and inhospitable bullet list of apparently notable models tucked away right down at the bottom.

It's not even clear at the moment where the transition from the (short lived and not hugely useful or engineer/programmer friendly) i8008 to the (much more "conventional" to modern eyes, and the basis for the Z80 and x86) i8080 happened, or if as is hinted in the lede and on at least one other article (for TinyBASIC), some or all of the family actually sported both processors for some reason... despite their otherwise not really all that compatible comparitive architectures. BASIC, or at least TinyBASIC, doesn't seem to have ever got an i8008 port (same as it never got an i4004 or i4040 one... the chips just aren't powerful enough and can't address enough memory to make the language useful), so that would suggest it, and probably a lot of other more software coded for the i8080 (or Z80), is only operable on a certain subset of the HP 264X range (also dependent on memory space, ability to run local code from RAM or a ROM cartridge, etc), and it'd be a useful thing for the article to indicate what that is. 146.199.60.36 (talk) 21:27, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, this article could use a lot of work. I've expanded the History section, at least, with more information on when the specific 264X models were introduced, what their basic capability was, what microprocessors they were based on, and when they were retired. It's not a surprise that the 8008 was only used for the early, less powerful models, but the 8008-powered 2640B, a refinement of the original 2640A, remained in production until 1981, since some customers only wanted a relatively simple terminal that didn't need to handle speeds of more than 2400 baud. By the way, only the two programmable graphics terminal models, the 2647A and 2647F, came with BASIC, and those used the 8080A and the 8085A, respectively.

Incidentally, even though the 8008 was mostly passed over for microcomputer designs, it still had a longer career than you might think; Intel continued to list it in its component catalogs through 1979, and as I said HP continued to use it for their 2640B terminals until 1981. Some chip collectors have 8008 examples made by Intel with production date codes as late as 1984. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 23:55, 6 March 2020 (UTC)