> Authenticatic hardware shipping with some bespoke and defective firmware seems even less likely than simple counterfeiting.
It's not as unlikely as you would think. Electronic counterfeiters are often just ghost shifts at contract manufacturers. If a single company is handling the injection molding, PCB, and assembly, they can run a secret shift that makes units for them to sell themselves. Even if they can't get ahold of all the surplus parts they need, they can design their own.
Since the firmware is different, HP could have also outsourced production maintenance too (i.e. updating firmware if a chip reaches end of life and needs to be replaced with something that's not exactly compatible) which isn't unheard of for legacy products that no one wants to deal with.
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> Authenticatic hardware shipping with some bespoke and defective firmware seems even less likely than simple counterfeiting.
It's not as unlikely as you would think. Electronic counterfeiters are often just ghost shifts at contract manufacturers. If a single company is handling the injection molding, PCB, and assembly, they can run a secret shift that makes units for them to sell themselves. Even if they can't get ahold of all the surplus parts they need, they can design their own.
Since the firmware is different, HP could have also outsourced production maintenance too (i.e. updating firmware if a chip reaches end of life and needs to be replaced with something that's not exactly compatible) which isn't unheard of for legacy products that no one wants to deal with.
Wikipedia says There were at least nine hardware revisions of the HP-12C since 1981 (including one special issue)
Wikipedia has a lot of info. I'd like to know the serial numbers of the defective units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-12C