"Joerg" wrote in message
et...
I guess those can't be re-flashed, or can they?

The 35s, no -- it's a mask ROM (basically the non-graphing calculators are
masked ROMs and the graphing machines are flash these days). However,
historically HP has been willing to exchange the entire calculator if you ran
into significant bugs; this is what happened 35 years ago when the original HP
35 came out (from http://www.hpmuseum.org/hp35.htm):

---

The HP-35 had numerical algorithms that exceeded the precision of most
mainframe computers at the time. During development, Dave Cochran, who was in
charge of the algorithms, tried to use a Burroughs B5500 to validate the
results of the HP-35 but instead found too little precision in the former to
continue. IBM mainframes also didn't measure up. This forced time-consuming
manual comparisons of results to mathematical tables. A few bugs got through
this process. For example: 2.02 ln ex resulted in 2 rather than 2.02. When the
bug was discovered, HP had already sold 25,000 units which was a huge volume
for the company. In a meeting, Dave Packard asked what they were going to do
about the units already in the field and someone in the crowd said "Don't
tell?" At this Packard's pencil snapped and he said: "Who said that? We're
going to tell everyone and offer them, a replacement. It would be better to
never make a dime of profit than to have a product out there with a problem".
It turns out that less than a quarter of the units were returned. Most people
preferred to keep their buggy calculator and the notice from HP offering the
replacement.

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We'll see how the "new HP" responds...

---Joel