A299 Does anybody have a list of the names of the 20 levels from lemmings.48gx, so I can skip some difficulty and boring levels? Ton van de Burgt You could probably find them with a little decompilation, but see http://www.hpcalc.org/hp49/games/arcade/lemcheat.zip -- which is for the HP49, but may help. ==== Subject: Re: [49] Warm Rebooting Hi Chad, You have probably a invalid libraray on your calc. Press (and hold) the backspace-key while \\booting\\. Then delete (not just DETACH!) the latest installed LIB from your calc. Hope this solves your problem Don't say \\bombs out\\ because this is exactly the opposite. It prevents bombing by trapping the error condition. (Bomb would be a warm start). My HP49 just solves this fine and finds P=1E12. If you already have a variable with some value (perhaps a complex one) then this will be used to evaluate P-R^(-N), which in case it gives a complex or undefined result for some value of P, just stops the solver. The behavior has to do with values that are already stored in the variables of the equation to solve. But not with the fact that you store numbers in scientific/engineering notation there. Nick. http://sourceforge.net/projects/hp48xgcc/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. as moment. Hello Yes you are right. A modest cost of $500000 USD. And that's a minimum. Not counting the time for such a task (around 18 months) including regulatory approval etc... Yeah, sure Jean-Yves Why did you use doublequotes here? or here? Are these supposed to imply usage of irony? Emphasis? Are you quoting someone? Now that ACO is dead, I think it's appropriate to evaluate somehow what ACO has accomplished. Obviously, I do not intend to write a complete report - just to mention some points and, hopefully, start some constructive discussion. OK, let's start at the beginning. The following paragraph is an excerpt of the 1997 HHUC Conference Report, included in the Nov/Dec 1997 issue of Datafile, written by Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz: \\Chris [Wallin, head of the new HP calculator operation] spoke with great enthusiasm about the past history of HP calculators, the many waves of innovation brought to calculators by them, and the occasional less \\ successful product. [...] Calculators have been left to one side lately, and HP \\ Australia wanted to take over, because of Australia's culture of innovation. He mentioned various technical innovations to come from Australia [...] and suggested that this gave his team in a special advantage in designing a new range of HP calculators while retaining their high quality. I think that at this point Chris lost some sympathy among some listeners - he seemed to be suggesting that the successful calculator team at Corvallis had somehow \\ lost the ability to innovate - whereas we all know that the team has actually \\ been the victim of changes and lack of interest by senior management. \\ Nevertheless, his statement that HP will continue to design and produce innovative calculators earned him a cheer.\\ Which innovations have been made? Aside from the excellent metakernel and the CAS, I'm afraid that... Flash ROM definitely couldn't be considered state of the art, and the \\successful\\ HP6S is anything but innovative - Can you believe that under NORMAL light conditions one cannot see the shifted key labels on the blue model? The 39G/40G are nice rebuildings of the wonderful HP38G - a true innovative model! I think that the 30S doesn't deserve much comment, and about the new HP10BII, well, fortunately the rubber hasn't been placed on the keys! As well as Xpander, I know that there were many more projects that were cancelled for different reasons. It would be enlightening to know more about them. What went so wrong? Did you know that some members of the Corvallis team are still working on handhelds ... for TI!!!? I'm sure many of them would be delighted to make the goose fly backwards again. Like Jake and Elwood rejoining the band :-) Just my two cents. Bye. Jordi Hidalgo johil@tv3mail.com - [blah blah snipped] Unfortunately, you talk with very few element of what has been done. The fact is, very little information has been released. ACO hasn't been closed due to performance, or lack of profit. But before I go into details, let see about what HP-ACO has achieved over the past 4 years: I will not talk about consolidating distribution channels, selling HP calculator in countries where it was not available before, creating education material etc... No, just pure hardware work Let's hope I won't get into trouble for this. But I honnestly don't care anymore. In order of appearance, some of them may have been released in the same amount of time: 1)HP48G+ 2)Morgan, project cancelled never released 3)HP12C, total redesign of the internals and CPU. A huge work, shit load of money 4)HP17BII, HP19BII: Internal redisgn (due to component obsolescence) 5)Total redisgn of the IR printer due to obsolescence of components 6)HP49G 7)Firmware Datalogger (financed by HP, hardware produced by HP) 8)HP6S 9)HP39G, HP40G 10)HP10BII 11)HP30S 12)Xpander: project cancelled, one month before released as big HP bosses decided that HP would NOT go into education anymore. Xpander was not just a calculator, it was a total new concept of educational tools. Huge disappointment within ACO. No more R&D on education and calculators, so it was decided that now ACO would handle the low-end PDA while APCD (in Singapore) would handle the Windows \ \\ CE one. A big movement for HP is to fully go ahead with Linux and their embedded Java VM: Chai So our first PDA had to be a Linux+Java platform. First PDA: Calypso (Jornada X25). StrongARM 133Mhz , touch-panel scree, MP3 player, looks bloody good Really nice device, a complete PDA for young people. Supposed to be \\ released in two weeks time. Didn't get the chance for it. But the product is almost finished. Hopefully it will be distributed one day Other PDA: Carbine, based on the same architecture as Calypso (software, hardware) but it's a very tiny PDA, looks like a mobile phone. It's the \\ best looking PDA I've ever seen in my life, and the screen supposed to be used was fantastic. Tiny, light, powerful, long battery life Other than these projects (all cancelled) ACO investigated how we could go into wireless, so I worked with many others for the past year on \\ developping a GPRS/GSM/EDGE plateform, result: the world first embedded single-chip \\ (not using a GSM module) Linux based GPRS mobile... (that's why at that time people were making comment on why I was the author of the port of a C library to Hitachi Super-SH architecture) The project one more time was cancelled and the prototype was working.. So the result is? Sure, few has been released. ACO's fault ? Don't think \\ so. In this division, I've seen some of the most talented people in my life. I've worked in various companies, but I had never seen such a level of competencies. ACO was profitable, and in fact, could finance itself just with the calculators sale (and it's not a small profit, ACO by itself would be a multi-million dollars company). Why did they close down ACO then ? that's a good question. But management the week before said: we had to cut our workforce by 4%. \\ It's more popular I guess to get rid of a small division, in a country far far away, a long time ago (oops that's Star Wars), than in the US ACO is a small division in HP organisation, and doesn't really fit into Carly's model where you have to be either first, or close second. Three words: profit, profit, profit. But don't worry, HP will continue to sell calculators. The one redesigned not so long ago. What about graphicals ? Well, there are stocks. Unfortunately, the Saturn is becoming obsolete this year, and nothing has been done to redisgn it, the bet was on Xpander. And redesigning a custom CPU cost over 1/2 million, too much in a market where short term profit is the key (even if analysis shows that big profit would have been made after one year only) As Forrest Gump would say: And that's all I have to say If now somebody ask me if I'm sad for not working for HP anymore? No, and the fact is : I'm relieved. The only problem is: it's not HP, HP is a great company with great product. Unfortunately, it's the way the world goes. Pt marketing people at the head of the most brilliant companies and see what happen: Q: What is this division doing? A: the sell the product X Q: Do they make profit ? A: Sure, they own 85% of the market Q: Are they growing over 16% to make our share-olders happy ? A: Sure they do for at least 2 years Q: What is this division doing? A: The do R&D and work on a replacement of product X. Q: Do they make profit ? A: Uh? No, it's a R&D facilities Q: Sure... So they don't make profit ? A: no Q: Well, our figures show that we could save $500 millions by reducing our workforce by 7000 people. We also need to increase our growth otherwise the share price will drop. Our CEO also needs to keep flying on his/her private plane with the private hairdresser. Let's close this department A: But what about in the future ? What will we sell? Q: Well, make sure you buy a lot of stock now, sell it next year. You won't have to work after that, so why care about the future of the company ? Jean-Yves terms: \\customer orientation\\, which is an euphemism for \\shareholder orientation\\, shareholder meaning someone who buys some stock and wants to sell it with profit in a short time, nothing similar to the traditional long-term shareholder who had more or less relation with the company. The CEO of RedHat said it; with the .com madness, many of their shareholders only knew the NASDAQ symbol of the company; they even didn't know the complete name. Anyway, I think many companies going into this nonsense will sooner \ \\ or later regret. I see that HP wants to go to a market which can offer high short-term profits (PCs) but in which you just have little possibilities of keeping some leadership. HP already abandoned instrumentation, a field in which they were one \ \\ of the leaders, and with an enormous barrier for any newcomer. Moreover, I don't think there may be a drop in the demand for biomedical instrumentation. However, PCs are more powerful with time. Is there a limit? When will users get as much power as they think they need? A new PC can perform huge tasks, such as encoding a movie in DivX, etc. If the power multiplies by 10, for example, will we find tasks to keep the computer busy so that the user wants to buy another? I think there will be a limit. And if that limit is reached, PC dealers won't be able to keep that growing figures stock market analysts like. Stock-market oriented strategy is not good; look at the UMTS fiasco \ \\ in Europe. European operators have paid enormous amounts in the English and German auctions for the UMTS licenses, and now they are facing financial trouble. The market is almost saturated; they will *not* find new customers. And, are existing customers willing to pay more for the most advanced technology? I don't think so. Mobile telephony is already expensive, and there are market studies showing the maximum amount of money the average european is willing to pay for telephony, digital television, etc. I guess the people responsible for the bids in the UMTS auctions had \ \\ those studies in hand. However, they bidded as stupids. Why? Companies quitting the auctions saw they stock prices dropping, and nobody wants to see prices dropping. Something similar is happening in the computer industry. HP seems to \ \\ want to manufacture PCs and printers, and *only* PCs and printers. PCs are a product in which you have a very small margin to innovate and keep an edge over the competition; the main argument is price, and there are many asian manufacturers selling low-quality PCs, but *cheap*. And China (Popular Republic) has just entered the WTO.... Many high-tech (or former high-tech) companies are being ruled by executives who can rule a food company, they know absolutely nothing about the products they manufacture and sell. Take the example with Apple, for ecample. These executives only put numbers in their spreadsheets (which, curiously can sound similar to \\spreadsh*t\\). Borja. JY, thank you very much for this interesting summary and information. I would have loved to see some of these products coming out. Are you saying that 48G, 48GX and 49G are all not being made anymore? - Carsten Brave words, big opera.......;-) Hmmm, excellent? Well, according to the discussions here, with so much complaining and confusing, I would say: The parts of the built-in software of the HP49G are very good, but the integration of them (as Bhuvanesh correctly says, it should be an integrated environment) in a whole is less thoughtfully implemented. Overall physical quality has declined. The keys of my HP49G start losing color. Not to speak about the quality of finger power exercises when I (try to) press the keys. Many projects? YOu mean there were more of them? I only know about the Xpander. Can you tell us about other projects that were cancelled? Really? For TI? Hey, could it be that the next super calc will come from TI? Boy, I start thinking about assimilation of myself by the dark side, which after all might also be not so dark at all, now that the Jedis are there. Who are those guys? Perhaps two Jedis of the old kind infiltrating the dark side? ;-) To tell you the truth Jordi, I still dream about the HP58 but I see that the ship is sinking a little more every day. Nick. That's what he says. Steen Oh, now you're in for it, Jean-Yves, big time! I like it though :-)) product. head What happens then you say? Then we take over. Simple as that. Those HP \\ CEO's better have bought plenty of stock and sold it again - their business is over.... I guess it won't be hard to buy the Saturn transistor layout now, will it?.... Steen This makes me sad -- and angry. :( IMO there's something fundamentally wrong with the present computer industry. It's know-how and creativity draining out ... ACO's demise is just another example. The big companies have been cutting down expenses on R&D for quite some time now, and those elephant mergers sailing under the flag of globalization only make everything worse. \\Innovate\\??? Nah, it's \\Make Money Fast\\, on a grand \ \\ scale. Those marketdroids can only focus on their quaterly reports anyway, they have no idea what innovation means. The last century has been called the century of the scientists and engineers; now we apparently have the century of the managers. Let's see how long they can run the show. ;-) Anyway, JY, let me take the opportunity to thank you for all the good work you have done with ACO. I'm sure that with all your knowledge and talents you'll soon find a new challenge. :) Albert -- Dr. Albert Gr\\af Email: Dr.Graef@t-online.de, ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de WWW: http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag Hmm, for me it works quite well. Take an equation, simplify it in the EQW, copy the part you need, turn it into a function, make a graph, all with a few keystrokes. If I compare this to a PC - trying to work with both a symbolic software and a numerical package, and a visualization software can be quite a nightmare. I think that many of the problems people have with the 49G are actually due to the lack of decent bundled documentation, in particular, a tutorial on how you actually put this plethora of functions to work for concrete problems. Urroz' books can help there, but they still don't cover all the more advanced features (that'd probably take a 1000 pages \\ ;-). Albert -- Dr. Albert Gr\\af Email: Dr.Graef@t-online.de, ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de WWW: http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag (snip...) OK. *I'm* not ever going to buy another HP product -- an easy thing to say, since the company isn't going to produce anything what ACO has done and what it could have done. I really didn't know. comp.sys.hp48:142713 comp.sys.hp.misc:29113 comp.sys.handhelds:80306 \\ misc.forsale.non-computer:108842 The current bid is $102.00. I'd say that the last few bidders are brain dead. I own one and it is worth the original bid, $20.00. comp.sys.hp48:142725 comp.sys.hp.misc:29114 comp.sys.handhelds:80307 \\ misc.forsale.non-computer:108843 To each his own... Ben Myers Ben Myers Spirit of Performance, Inc. 73 Westcott Road Harvard, MA 01451 tel: 978-456-3889 eFax: 810-963-0412 Where can I find the hp49 version of Statpack? /Jon site. It's particularly those bugs reported receipt, but hand, if any bugs too, hpcalc.org the 49. advanced aplet my 20 get back! so I chip on glass (cog) vitrim tm series (SEIKO) slightly larger than HP49 display 70.7x51.4x2.2 dot 240x160 5 volts .225x.225 dot size $55 add backlight = $6.88 evaluation kit available to customize application ($199) anything better out there? http://www.mouser.com/products/detail.cfm?mpart=628-G241D01R&CustRef=&source\ \\ =search&CFID=12434869&CFTOKEN=93669410 http://www.mouser.com/products/detail.cfm?mpart=628-G8EVALKIT&CustRef=&sourc\ \\ e=search&CFID=12434869&CFTOKEN=93669410 A while back I was looking into potential new calc displays ( looked at the one you mention ). Did a lot of searching for various LCD manufacturers but I found that the Seiko/Epson devices were among the few that had the right combination of resolution + size. Of course, many companies will manufacture custom displays but then you're talking big $$$. :) Anyway, these might be of some interest to you : http://www.eea.epson.com/EEA/LCD/publicFiles/lcdmodule_e_0109.pdf ( Beware of line break - huge link ). http://www.electroniccomponents.globalsources.com/GeneralManager?&catalog_id\ \\ =2000000003868&design=clean&language=en&page=Browse&action=GetPoint&point_id\ =\\ 3000000149695&prod_id=17780 Digikey also has some displays but I think the only graphic type displays ( made by Optrex ) are too large: http://info.digikey.com/T013/V5/SectO.pdf ( page 13 ) and don't forget Yahoo :) : http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=lcd+manufacture ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. thank you for your input, i'll look them rigth away. the greatest source of info that i know is this (GOLD GOLD GOLD): http://204.243.31.39/eitd/index.htm try it, you won't belive it. i have their book, but the site is much faster \ \\ and has the links to websites (fast). if you are an EE, save it ;) right now, i am looking into keyboard mfgs and cost. I'm looking for Sylvain Gamot's FXMIT and MIDIPLAYER packages for the 48/49G. His site at http://www.multimania.com/sgamot/hp48/ seems to be gone and I couldn't find the software on hpcalc.org. Does anyone know where his page has gone, or where I can find that software? Or, better yet: Sylvain Gamot, if you read this it would be nice if you could drop TIA, Albert -- Dr. Albert Gr\\af Email: Dr.Graef@t-online.de, ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de WWW: http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag Bad style to follow up on one's own post, but anyway. Looks like these Never mind. Albert -- Dr. Albert Gr\\af Email: Dr.Graef@t-online.de, ag@muwiinfa.geschichte.uni-mainz.de WWW: http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag You probably got some invalid object saved in port 0. In order to recover the extra memory, press ON-A-F then select YES, after a few seconds you should be back to normal with the extra memory recovered. Hope that helps. Jean-Yves I would see the paper clip reset more like an On-C. I have never lost data when I was forced to do it when some weird game locked up my HP48GX so badly that it would not respond to an On-C reset. Of course, it would be interesting to receive an explanation by the ones who really know it. -- Georg Zotti e9126124@student.tuwien.ac.at What? Is memory recovery supposed to take a few seconds? You can actually fix this problem without clearing your memory (probably too late now ;). Here is a program by Robert Tiismus that does the trick : http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/utils/memory/p0fix.zip . Hope this helps... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. http://www.hpcc.org/hp39_40/lp.zip Useful links: http://www.hpcc.org/links.html#hp3940 Bye. Jordi Hidalgo HPCC member #1046 johil@tv3mail.com - There is a partial simulation of the HP-16C available from a programmer's calculator, but with more than the 16C has, eg Forth-like programming, balanced trinary arithmetic, etc. Maybe i should just start with a straight simulation of the 16C and go from there? Later... Jon jon AT purvis DOT co DOT nz I have been trying to unsuccessfully display a string on the screen in ML. Firstly I tried $5x7. No go. So I have tried using MINI_DISP. The following Code causes the screen to fill with rubbish then a warm boot. Can anybody tell me why? IT is getting quite annoying that it is not working. ASSEMBLE NIBASC \\\\HPHP49-C\\\\ RPL :: $ \\Test String\\ CODE GOSBVL =SAVPTR * SAVE RPL Pointers A=DAT1 A * Pointer to String D1=A * Point D1 to Address D1=D1+ 5 * Skip Prologue C=DAT1 A * Read Length C=C-CON A,5 * Remove Length field from size CSRB A * Divide by two for number of char D1=D1+ 5 * Skip length field GOVLNG =MINI_DISP * Display String GOSBVL =GETPTRLOOP * Reset RPL Pointers ENDCODE ( now freeze the screen, else you won't see anything ) SetDAsTemp ; Below is the documentation for the use of MINI_DISP. As you can see my program sets the following D1 = first char of string (after skipping prolog and length D0 = Top left hand corner of screen C = Number of characters determined directly from the length field ST11 should be set to 0 as default %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % MINI_DISP: Assembly function % purpose: Display a text on a 131*x screen in mini font % at a 4 pixels alligned position % Inputs: % D0: point on the screen where you want the chrs to % be displayed % D1:point on the first chr of the string % Ca: Number of chr to display % ST11: 0/1 normal mode/video inverce mode % Uses: % Cw, Carry, RSTK2, Aa % exit: % D0: pos on screen for next chr % D1: end of string % carry set %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Hello Can you make sure your entries are correctly resolved ? Also, change the GOVLNG MINI_DISP for a GOSBVL MINI_DISP, MINI_DISP is a sub-routine, so you have to call it with a GOSBVL except few instances \\ where you are already calling it from a sub-routine and want it to return directly. But in this case, it must be GOSBVL MINI_DISP Jean-Yves you should use GOSBVL =MINI_DISP and then GOVLNG =GETPTRLOOP Raymond BTW: in some older ROM revisions of the 49, =$5x7 didn't work (I think it was up to 1.13 something ) Hi! I need a second calc which must not be programmable, 'cause my 49G won«t be allowed in my exams. Is there one with RPN from HP? \ \\ It hasn`t to be an actual calc, an old one would do it, too. Waldemar -- Life is like a roll of toilet paper...when the end is near, we panic! Why would you even w-- oh. You have a HP48G? define \\hp code\\. define \\hp command\\. There are PC (and on-calc, but nevermind) development tools for ML and SysRPL -- and you can write UserRPL with any ascii editor (but why? *that* you can do fine on the calc). For UserRPL just get the HP49G debugger and restrict yourself to HP48 commands. It has a debugger in the PRG RUN menu that you can use. For ML and SysRPL... I dunno, but if you're seriously wanting to deal with those you ought to at least get a GX anyway. OK, forget ML (and probably also SysRPL). define \\'ROM' flash scenario\\. I guess by \\straight shell interpreted language\\ you mean UserRPL, which is funny because that's compiled on-the-fly to SysRPL, which is also a 'compiled' language, using a silly unix dichotomy. My considered answer: get a cable for your calculator and use an ascii editor. You could also just use a paper and pencil, like I did with my 48G. any feedback on TINI (as platform)? (from agilent calculators thread...) they have new and more powerfull TINIs comming out with the DS80C400 ($15) this are some interesting posts: http://lists.dalsemi.com/maillists/tini/2001-October/016890.html http://lists.dalsemi.com/maillists/tini/2001-November/017507.html http://lists.dalsemi.com/maillists/tini/2001-October/017015.html http://lists.dalsemi.com/maillists/tini/ On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 10:57:03 -0600, Jonathan Busby \\byte serial internally\\ I should say. It still has a 4-bit \\external\\ data bus. ( \\external\\ to the Saturn core but internal to the Yorke ;) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. Like Raymond said, there is no such thing as a \\permanent\\ solution. Eventually, no matter what processor you use, the gulf between its performance and the current status quo will eventually grow too wide. The key is in making sure it takes that a relatively long time to happen. For example, the 48GX was introduced in 1994 and at the time it was about 25 times slower (In terms of clock speed alone) than the high end PC processor (Pentium 100) and that was acceptable back then. Now it's about 500 (!) times slower than the current \\high end\\ ( in terms of Mhz - long live Athlon! ;) - the Pentium 4. It's been 7 years and now the Saturn speed is starting to slip past the borderline of acceptability ( some might say that happened long ago ;). A redesigned saturn on an FPGA might give us a speed increase of 25-50x. So, assuming Moore's Law is correct and processor speed doubles every 18 months then we'll be in this situation again in say, 7 years :D - coincidence? ;). ( assuming of course that by then we don't have single chip massive parallelism which is a distinct possibility ;) That's enough time to satisfy me :). And I guarantee that if HP + us designed a backward compatible calc that came anywhere near to that speed increase it would pacify all of our whining and ranting ( especially mine ;). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. Actually, It seems I was looking at the 68000 cycle times when its external data bus is operating in 8-bit mode ;). 16-bit mode levels the playing field somewhat. Keep in mind though, that the Saturn is able to operate on any nibble aligned field in a register that starts at the least significant bit ( and some other fields. The cycle time is roughly proportional to the field's nibble length. There are exceptions for some fields ). The 68000 can only operate on the fields listed below which necessitates multiple instructions for other fields ( making it slower than the Saturn ). Also, note that I've left out 64-bit operations on the Saturn. For example, it takes 11 cycles to do a 64-bit add. Here is a sampling... Operation: Saturn Cycles: MC68000 Cycles: binary ADD 8-bit 4.0 4.0 16-bit 5.0 4.0 32-bit 7.0 8.0 bitwise OR: 8-bit 5.75 4.0 16-bit 6.75 4.0 32-bit 8.75 8.0 register to register move: 8-bit 4.0 4.0 16-bit 5.0 4.0 32-bit 7.0 4.0 shift right ( 1 bit ): 8-bit 7.0 8.0 16-bit 8.0 8.0 32-bit 10.0 10.0 \\HP48GX cycle counts\\ by Mika Heiskanen and Dan Kirkland : http://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/cycles.zip \\M68000 8-16-32-Bit Microprocessors User's Manual\\ by Motorola Corporation : http://e-www.motorola.com/brdata/PDFDB/docs/MC68000UM.pdf NOTES: (1) All cycle counts use general purpose registers only. (2) All Saturn cycle counts assume the opcode is on an even address. On the calculator there will be a higher cycle count for odd addresses but this is not due to the Saturn but to the memory controllers in the Yorke ASIC. (3) Saturn only supports single bit or four bit shifts. The MC68000 does not have this limitation. I apologize for any inaccuracies in this post. Hope this helps... Jonathan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 10:57:03 -0600, Jonathan Busby Oops. This is if the 68000's external data bus is operating in 8-bit mode ;). For 16-bit mode the cycle counts would be 4 and 8 respectively. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 03:31:56 +0100, \\Raymond Hellstern\\ \\A=A+1 A\\ measured with CTIM of the Hack library on my 48GX-R takes around 5 cycles. Compare this with the 68000 which takes 8 cycles to do \\about\\ the same thing ( via an ADDQ.W #1, D0 say ). Although on the 68000 you're limited to 8, 16, or 32 bits and the 32-bit case takes even longer ( 12 cycles ). If you increased the internal data bus of the Saturn to 16 bits then this would probably be cut in half ( as all evidence points toward the Yorke Saturn being byte serial ). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. I was just assessing the hypothetical situation in which you would want to design an OS from scratch. You could of course use Linux since it's already been ported to ARM :). Ok. I thought you were talking about *converting* all of the sources from sys-rpl/ML to C ;). I agree. Anyway, the \\minor changes\\ I wanted to make were to the Saturn *architecture* not the actual Saturn as it is now. Who knows if HP was even using an HDL when they designed it. The current Saturn is a leveraged design from the Clarke, which was a leveraged design from the Lewis etc. Were HDL's even in widespread use in the mid to late 80's ? Even if they were I doubt whatever high level representation was used is amenable to the type of changes I want to make as they probably weren't thinking about the Saturn 15 years into the future ;). I wasn't saying ARM assembly is difficult ( I'm somewhat familiar with it ). I mean I used to program in x86 assembly and that is as convoluted as you can get ;). Anyhow, I was just trying to say that the ARM architecture is a whole lot more complex ( and consequently feature rich which makes it easier to deal with at the assembly level in many respects ) than the Saturn's. I meant it wouldn't be a walk in the park if we were implementing a CPU with ARM like features. :) A little self bashing is good for the health ;). Hehe. I wondered why that gate count was so high. Silly me ;). Ok. No one's planning on reimplementing the XScale on an FPGA ;). But I think the gate counts for the processors I mentioned are good estimates since they contain very little if any on board ram (besides the registers). At any rate, they certainly make putting a Saturn clone on an FPGA sound feasible. Well I don't have the prices right now for the XC2S30 but for the 100000 gate XC2S100 it costs around 10 USD in large quantities. The lower end ones are bound to cost significantly less. I know. Like previously I was just imagining the hypothetical situation in which you did have to write one from scratch. At any rate, even if you wanted to create a new compiled language a lot of the most difficult parts would have already been taken care of. This is because with GCC you can redo the front end (lexical analyzer, parser etc. which can be written with the help of lex and yacc so most of the grunt work is taken care of in those stages also ) and reuse the other more complicated parts ( optimization stages, code generation etc. ). Ok. But what I want to do wouldn't have anywhere near that much ram. It seems you want to design an \\engineering powerhouse\\ or a \\high end workstation\\ calculator. All I want is what we have now but better and faster in terms of hardware and software. Perhaps they'd be different enough to peacefully coexist within the market? ;) Jonathan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. I apparently read this too fast ;). On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 22:32:12 +0100, \\Steen Schmidt\\ Yes, it would be a matter of recompiling BUT... unless those entry points are emulated to the strictest degree it will involve major program redesign. Emulating user-rpl is the least difficult although I'm not implying it would be easy either. Now, when you enter sys-rpl land you get a lot closer to the innards of the OS and really it necessitates emulating (or in this case reimplementing - even worse ) a large portion of the higher level OS routines such as display management, libraries, directories and all the myriad of built in program helper routines. Obviously this is much more involved than the user-rpl case. For the ML case, well, really the only way you can provide true compatibility is to emulate the whole machine which really makes the former attempts at emulating the OS at a higher level pointless. A lot of ML programs delve into the depths of the system and if its behavior changed in the slightest bit it would be crash time :). Even an address change in ML can cause problems at the source level so as to make a \\straight recompile\\ impossible. I mean, porting stuff from the 48 to 49 is hard enough not to mention a system that only incompletely emulates these :). Well, considering that to have full compatibility you'd have to reimplement the entire OS ( and emulate the hardware ) so as to duplicate its behavior to the satisfaction of most programs, I'd have to say no. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. On Sun, 11 Nov 2001 00:39:56 -0600, Jonathan Busby ... Another complication (among many) would be that if you're statically \\compiling\\ assembly programs into some other form, what is going to be done when the program decides to modify itself - directly or indirectly (as many do)? Clearly this is a major problem. Plain old all out emulation of the ROM would be easier ( ala EMU48 ) but slow. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. Obviously I'm having a little trouble with my usenet provider. ;) ( All the messages I sent in the last 3 days went to the bit bucket ) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. Many has. We need to optimize any existing OS for the XScale, or we go the other way, implementing an OS kernel ourselves. No, that would be a bit tideous :-) I'm not sure of that either - even though it was NEC ;-) Yeah :-) True. You think? ;-) LOL :-) No? ;-) Good estimates - I agree. That's pretty cheap too - we need to get started :-) Exactly. I hope and believe so :-) Steen But they are. We start at ML (fairly easy), then we compile each SysRPL mnemonic at ML level! Then we go by all the USerRPL words, this time at SysRPL level and ML where necessary. Pretty easy. about. We do not have to emulate the hardware anymore than taking it into consideration when transferring (recompiling with the GT-compiler (Great Thought compiler)) the ML words. Steen I see them, so I live in the bit bucket? Nooooooooooo.............. Steen Well, I took the cycle count information from SASM.DOC... So maybe CTIM is not exact, or not adjusted? Here's an excerpt: A=A+1 fs - Increment A --------- fs = A opcode: E4 cycles: 7 fs = (P,WP,XS,X,S,M,B,W) opcode: Ba4 cycles: 3 + d Increment the specified fs field of register A by one. Adjusts Carry. Raymond -------- On Mon, 12 Nov 2001 17:30:03 +0100, \\Raymond Hellstern\\ SASM.DOC is for the SX Saturn. Dave Arnett said it was redesigned in the GX to improve instruction execution time. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. On Mon, 12 Nov 2001 17:34:46 +0100, \\Steen Schmidt\\ Ok. But I thought this was supposed to be a \\clean room\\ implementation of RPL. If not, you'll have to license the source code from HP ( assuming it isn't GPL'd ). Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. Many ML programs access the hardware directly ( especially the display and associated registers ). Whatever you want to call it, it's still emulation. Although in this case it would be in a different form than say EMU48 since the assembly language would be pre-translated into native code. But even with full emulation, there are problems such as self modification. Really what you end up doing is implementing a \\full blown\\ emulator like EMU48 even if it doesn't look like it superficially. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ \\ ------ Remove the random permutation of \\HPRULES!\\ from my e-mail address before replying. I don't think we'll have time for that at first. I assume it is. If not, we're FUBAR anyway. I see every ML instruction look in a global jump table where the registers, that it needs to access, are located. Such a jump table is created whenever you enter RPL mode on the XScale device. Overhead won't be very noticable, but if it is, we could sacrifice a couple of kB Flash for such a static address table. Alright, you win this one ;-) Steen Sorry, the server wasn't available yesterday evening, so I wasn't able to test the URL. Here's the correct one http://tardyp.free.fr/emu48fm/download/emu48-0.6b.sit Christoph Entity Christoph Giesselink spoke thus: Now to figure out how it works... You're welcome Veli-Pekka. Can you give us some examples of the keywords (=commands ?) that you would like the HP49G to have? I'm greekking you again, Nick. I just downloaded the 39/40 ROM in my 49G, and I am wondering which program I should use to download aplets in my transformed machine: the 49G's or the 39G's? What's the name of the program to be used? By the way, I am happily surprised by that 39G. Still have my 48 though ... -- Thierry Morissette tmorissette@hotmail.com Tried it. Seems the 39G program is the one to use. -- Thierry Morissette tmorissette@hotmail.com pMcG7.26384$gR5.1851456@weber.videotron.net... program the ... dgeve: I think that his project and yours may be complementary works First and second section of \\Programming in sysRPL\\ by Eduardo Kalinowsky are a good start point. (Of course you know this book, do you?) Although it refers to HP48 models, many things, if not everithing at all, may be applied to HP49. Ciao, Marco Lo people ! I encourage Steen Schmidt in his great project, but a still have a newbie question ..... Can anyone tell me how to do text formatting on hp49 I want to put my phisics, math, and chemistry lessons in it, so i need to put equtions and etc ... The top notch would be to right the lessons on the PC then transfer them on the calc .... Thx in advance .... I use Lupa for that purpose, and works very good, the only remark is that you have to convert yor formulas in grobs for pretty print view. This is for the 48. On the 49 the ADISP GROB has always 64 rows. So you don' t have to resize it. X Haa - HP is finally *really* going back to it's roots: The measuring devices eg. Agilent is manifacturing the 12C CPU nowadays!!! Could this be true? Maybe they will make the future \\HP 5n GX\\ models, too??! Veli-Pekka, STARTing rumors again....what NEXT ? I think calculators can be a very valuable marketing asset for \\ Agilent. HP calculators have been the first contact with HP for engineering students, and I guess (this is only speculation) that it has had a strong influence on the preeminence of HP workstations (compared to Sun) in engineering shops. Of course, another factor is the excellent quality of HP instrumentation, now manufactured by Agilent. I think that Agilent would really benefit from the excellent brand \ \\ image HP calculators have or used to have. Borja. P.S: I am not a marketing professional, just a curious observer. Not that I abandoned hope, but with all critisism against calculators there are 2 things possible: 1) We wont see an HP calculator again. 2) HP is aleady working at some future model, which is going to be the absolute breaker. And they don't want anybody to even assume that the next thing is coming up. I dream about the second possibility. :-) Hmmm, perhaps they (HP) need some convincing (assimilating) arguments, to make the HP 5n GX. Should we send rcobo, assimilate them and convince them to do the right thing? Nick. (willing to join the rumors stream :-) ) Karagiaouroglou says... yes, yes, they need to believe. seeing is believing. they need to see the \ \\ making of the machine. they will be assimilated. I love RPN and quality HP calculators. I've never owned a TI that lasted more than a year before it went from an expensive toy to a cheap piece of shitty plastic with the worlds poorest keypads (not counting the HP-31/32/33/34 switches which were on a par with TI's). I've been an HP user since 1977. The raw computing power in a Pocket PC (even my $199.00 Jornada 525) so overwhelms the processor speed and memory capability of an HP-48GX or an HP-49G that I don't see a real need to have a dedicated piece of hardware called \\a calculator\\ in the future, though for sentimental reasons I'll continue to keep a 48GX at home, one in the office and back them up with my HP-15C, HP-42S, two HP-28Ss and when the enemy is finally at the gate and I'm too old to read the LCD screens, my HP-67 with its non-continuous memory and its bright little LEDs. After that, I'll fall back to my Post Versalog and my K&E Log Log Decitrig. :-) I expect that it will be a lot easier to have a killer calculator living next to WORD and EXCELL in a fast Pocket PC than in any other hardware form. This is not what I \\want\\, but it seems to make sense that it is the direction things are heading. This disassociation of hardware and \\calculator\\ may make the calculator world a frightenly powerful place to live. Just my $0.02 Jim Klein (snip) Other than disbanding ACO, what have they done? (snip) The ROM's future is uncertain right now. JYA has mentioned that he will try to see it GPL'd, and a lot of people have supported this with their voices here if nothing else. If the ROM goes GPL, it is basically freed for public use, modification, and redistribution; so a good hacker could fix a few bugs, add a few features, optimize a few routines, and release the hip new 20-x-jrf7Dec2001 ROM, and communicate his improvements. You could have patch sets, and development tools, and modular ROM distributions, and groups of people working on different parts of the ROM, and all *kinds* of such neatness. We'll have, basically, our own operating system to improve and play with on hardware we've bought with our peers. I think this would be tremendously cool. Have you heard of Linux? Anyway, I think you overestimate the place of the ROM; the 49G is pretty extendable any way you look at it, so it's not as if you are *doomed* if the ROM is static and opaque. Case in point: I notice that nobody has bothered to put a periodic table in ROM, yet! (and there's no graphical memory viewer, but just *look* at how many of those things people've made!) If you're a programmer, all existing code is a jumping point toward future improvement and developement and usefulness -- no matter what happens. Sure, in the year 2043 you may have to torture Steen for a few days -- but eventually he'll tell you how to crack his library, and you can add the feature you always wanted to it! (This is a joke, of course; by 2043 we will have wristcomps.) This is certainly a danger, and as time passes it is a certainty. When those braincomps and wristcomps come, my 49G use will certainly plummet. The community will shrink too -- and, relatively, it's already shrinking, been shrinking, and will only shrink faster; TI is sucking up more and more people and few will care to hunt for other calculators when they A) do not know enough to know what they lack, and B) are satisfied with this ignorance. And as you've seen and as you can see in yourself, a lot of people seem to be taking ACO's departure as a deathtoll for the 49G; some of these will leave the community and use other calculators. More may never come, when the word is spread about how the 49G is 'unsupported'. So, if your concern is with the 49G community, I hope I've properly fed your fears. Hey, just by having a calculator you are way in the minority! And do you have a computer? Whew! Better not instigate Fortunately, you have either practical or ... nonpractical use of your 48GX, and have some idea of what the 49G will mean to you. If a TI-92 or somesuch will fit your needs and your personality, and you think the benefits of support and community outweigh the advantages of flexibility, extendability, and a really astounding number of man-years and ingenuity that exist in the 49G: fine! Buy the TI-92 and be happy with it and never look back. I'd never do this, but I don't have time to add the little footnote explaining why. Maybe tomorrow. (snip) If all we want to do is add and subtract, we don't even need the raw \\ processing power of the HP48! Pocket PCs have their place. They have a nice front end for a majority of users. They can do more things out of the box. But that is also their limitation. In order to be as user friendly as possible, developers must try \ \\ to think of everything everyone might want, so that each person can use the \\ few things they need personally. The rest of the \\features\\ are unused, \\ wasting storage space, memory and sometimes processing power. It is this overhead that makes the Jornada 548 barely able to emulate the \ \\ 4Mhz Saturn processor at normal HP48 speed. Perhaps rather than calling it a calculator, we should start referring to it \ \\ as a \\personal graphics device\\ or something like that. A device with a \\ basic front end for the average user, with access to a powerful lower level \\ language and also directly to the machine instruction set, enables users of varying capablilities to take full advantage of the units abilities. As to whether or not such a device is necessary, that will depend on what \ \\ it CAN do, not on what it DOES do. And how impressively it does it. If you described PONG to someone 25 years ago, no one would have bought it. (\\I \ \\ saw this great game. It's like tennis, only you spin a knob to hit the ball \\ back and forth. ) It was only when you played it that you had to have one :) Similarly the HP48 once wowed, now it takes a bit of knowledge of history to \ \\ do so. A device with great potential, sold at low cost, and released among a large number creative and talented people, will sell itself exponentially. And \\ make its developers very rich. Whatever this thing does, it must make everyone \ \\ who sees it go WOW! Then they will buy it. Some will try to use it, some will \ \\ learn to use it, some will do amazing things with it. But it will sell! Dennis Personally I do not want anything else that runs using any Microsoft software and it's bloated code. I do not need another computer that crashes. I have two already and that is enough. The reason we need faster processors and larger hard drives and more memory is that software developers have no incentive to design efficient code. If you read the latest issue of PC Magazine; faster processors have not really gotten us a far as they could, because of this factor. At least the designers of the 48 and 49 had the memory limitations to force them to become more efficient in their coding. I am afraid the lure of faster processor and more memory in a new HP calculator will lead to the same problems, especially if HP uses a Windows derived OS as a shortcut to get the calculator to market faster and does not write its own independent and optimized OS. I do not need a PDA since I have no need for spread sheets on the run and I do not go to meetings. For the most important people I know, I have either memorized their phone numbers or have them on my Timex watch. I see no need in having the numbers of 100 or more people on a PDA when I might call them once every two years. For that I use what is called a phone book. Harold A. Climer Dept. of Physics,Geology and Astronomy U. Tennessee at Chattanooga X Only the Saturn CPU chip Yorke (along with the display pixel count) It's the software that counts. A new ROM 1.19-7 will appear AND in the meanwhile this group will find an answer withe or without HP's help !!! There will be new HP calculators from the new division in USA and the TI/HP are both good calculators. Suggestion: Kepp your HP 48GX (if you already own one) AND buy the 49G and you will have it all !!! (like I do) New division in USA? New calculators? Are you talking about new hp12 machines? Seeing hp39/40 math diferences between USA and Europe, I don't expect much mathematical power from USA HP products... J.Manrique CdU de la ETSIG Spending $18.4 billion to purchase Compaq when HP is already facing shrinking revenues for one. It actually makes me wonder if HP will go the way of DEC... (marginalized until someone who doesn't understand the value buys them out) That would be an excellent development of course! That is a great way to continue the evolution of the platform and to make the HP49 stay competetive. However, if my read of this is correct (that the hardware will cease to be manufactured at some point?) then it doesn't do a lot of good. People's HP49's will eventually break, wear out, get lost, etc. and without the ability to replace them, they'll have to revert to something like TI. Of course (I've been a Debian developer for years). There is a difference though: Linux runs on present-day hardware. Actually, I was not at all concerned about the ROM. I was concerned about the hardware platform. Seeing things like Java on my HP48GX I know how expandable the system is without even modifying the ROM. I am quite sure that the HP49G will more adequately fit my needs. The concern is this: if indeed the HP49G has now become a dead end as far as HP is concerned (this much even seems uncertain), everyone is going to be forced over to someone else sooner or later. How soon? I don't know. If HP stops selling graphing calculators tomorrow, I would suspect that even if the ROM is GPL'd and all the old hats stay around, there won't be a lot of work done. If HP continues selling the 49G for three or four years, then I'd buy one in an instant. I don't know what their plans are though. -- John Just to remind you that HP aren't spending any money at all on buying Compaq since it is an all share offer. The \\money\\ comes from issuing new share-capital which means that all existing shareholders see their shares diluted in value by a fraction that is roughly equal to $18.4bn divided by the total number of HP shares currently issued. -- Bruce Horrocks Hampshire England bh@granby.demon.co.uk ==== Subject: Re: Alternatives to HP48/49? The theory of such purchases is that the shares of the buyer are not diluted. After the purchase, there are more shares in the combined company, but the post-acquisition per-share value is comparable to the pre-acquisition value since the assets are now those of the combined company. Remember that at least in theory, the acquired company's assets are valuable and wind up owned by the acquiring company. In practice, the acquiring company often manages to screw up the acquired company and wind up with little value. For instance, just about every acquisition that AT&T ever did. Or Compaq's acquisition of DEC. Sorry if you read this post for the second time. I have to repost it because of an unidentified problem :-( Le 2 Nov 2001 02:41:09 -0800, gtsiros@yahoo.com (George Tsiros) a \\216crit : gx. Hello Georges ! It is a great idea, but you are not the only one who have this project. There is 3 french projects like this one : - ShellOS was a multitasking OS for the HP48Gx. There is a demo available (I think you can find it on hpcalc.org). Unfortunately it seems that the authors can't work on this project anymore, and that thay have lost the sources :-( - SOS (Saturn Operating System) was a project started by myself. It is a multitasking OS. It was designed for the HP49G but could easily be adapted to the HP48. Actually there is only a little part of the kernel done (and sorry, the documentation is in french, but it could be translated), so there is no demo available. You can download the sources here : http://clement.pillias.free.fr/hp/SOS.zip or here : http://clement.pillias.free.fr/hp/SOS.tgz Actualy I don't work on this project since I want to finish Doom first. - WinSOS is a project similar to SOS, started by Yves Brisseaud (the one who did the MASD mode for emacs recently). The project also include a graphical user interface made by someone else (sorry I don't remember his name :-( ). This project is not more advanced than SOS, and can be found here : http://www.winsos.cjb.net Since WinSOS take some parts from SOS, the two projects will probably merge in a near future, at least to have a common kernel. Well, it could be funny to merge your project with this two ones ;-) Sorry for my poor english. Bye. Cl\\216ment Pillias (HpFool). Has anyone else experienced difficulty in obtaining these books: Science and Engineering Mathematics on the HP49G Vol1 and Vol2? According to the web site (BookSurge), all books ship within 48 hours. I ordered these books over three weeks ago. I can't get much of a response to my inquiries. Can these books be ordered somewhere else. Pat Moran On 7 Nov 2001 07:14:58 -0800, moranpl@springmail.com (Patrick L. I ordered mine on the thirtieth and got a message on Friday, after an inquiry, from a fellow named Rick Jones rickjones@greatunpublished.com, who said it was to be shipped on Friday the 2nd. Does anyone know where the books are really shipped from? I think I remember when I bought one of Dr. Urroz's books for the 48, that it came from North Carolinas. Any comments? Harold A. Climer Physics/Astronomy Lab Instructor U. Tennessee At Chattanooga with all the commotion going on about creating the next best super powerful calculator I can't refrain to at least speak my mind. We have to acknowledge that the entire industry is shifting and for a reason. I'm not saying that it is a good or bad decision and I'm happy to see initiative and creative thinking to look for alternatives from users that do not want to settle with the corporate decision making process. What I do not understand is why everyone thinks that the power has to come from the unit at hand. I read many debates about which CPU to use, at how many Hz it should run and different compromises to conserve power. There is a lot computing power around us and we don't use it. Nevertheless, we want to have the most powerful number crunching machine close to us. For the most part I like to agree, I'm a performance freak myself. However, this paradigm is NOT practical. At least not now that communication technologies abound. I believe that the next best calculator (or any portable computing device for that matter) should take advantage of that and run as a dummy terminal. In fact I'm creating a web-based wrapper that sends commands to the Mathematica 4.0 Kernel and sends back the answer in HTML format. In essence, everywhere I have an internet device I can access the power of a robust tool that is sitting on my home machine doing nothing most already have that, why do I need to worry about how much power I can squeeze from a 4 Mhz Saturn CPU, StrongARM or any other microcontroller? They can not compete. Therefore, we should we worrying about how we can harness that power and make it accessible. PDA’s with internet access are great for displaying information, they have nice big LCD’s (plots converted to gif’s, formulas, etc on a browser). The port of the wrapper could easily be done for Maple, MathCAD or any other of your favorite applications. I realize that you still need to have a powerful math application, an expensive PDA with web access, have your computer set-up as a web server always connected via cable-modem or other connections. But that is why the industry is shifting, in the near future this will not be an issue, just like cell phones are today (that’s another idea, how about accessing MAPLE with your phone). This is just a prototype and in the future could serve hundreds of users (license issues may have to be resolved). Business could offer the service and charge small fees for its use, via a monthly payment or a one time subscription, so user don’t have to worry about having the latest most powerful calculator gadget on the block using valuable real state on your pocket. Anyone with a small HTML capable device with a connection will enjoy the same capabilities, no matter if you paid $600 for your color LCD PDA or the simplest most featureless internet capable organizer. This is just for consideration, it has its limitations and problems but I believe it is a legitimate alternative that more people should start looking into. The corollary of all this is that application development should focus on robust OO languages available for PC platforms (like the C++ CAS being developed by B. Parisse for example) under GPL licenses and then create ways to access its power with web-based devices. Of course, this alternative would be out of the question for exams like the EIT, PE, GRE, SAT, etc, but this is more for everyday work/education on mathematics, engineering, physics, etc. You would still have to study for you exams !!!!!! J Do not discard this too soon, give it some though, you’ll realize it make a lot of sense. At least it does to me. On the other hand, who am I. J Just a graduate foreign engineering student at the University of Florida. Go GATORS! BTW. I’m a proud owner of an HP49. Sorry, I totally disagree. I am an engineer and allthough building sites are getting pretty sofisticated I doubt there'll be an Internet Connection on the 10th floor when the concrete hasen't even been poured. My meetings also rarely have computers or IP connections though the developers are usually flashing the latest PDA's and phones. Actually I have a little snigger when the money men hold up the meetings for 5 minutes to enter the next meeting time in their calander. Paper is still best for somethings. As for wireless technology a lot of remote sites don't even have Mobile Phone reception. When I'm out of the office 90% of the time all I want to do are simple back of envelope type calcs so something small with instant On is a must. I don't take my laptop to meetings or site since it's bulky, fragile and to slow to boot up. Anything that needs a laptop is probably to complex to be giving quick answers away from the office. I find that with the HP49 I am using spreadsheets a lot less. Spreadsheets have an inherent flaw that they hide how a result was derived leading to errors that aren't caught. The laptop is being used for detailed design runs, 2D/3D analysis, correspodence, comminication.......... I've crossposted from alt.lang.basic for the writer. Please reply to me jwwed@supanet.com ----------------------------- Original post ----------------------------- how do I write an HP48 emulator in dos How 2 do it? PS: i've not crossposted to comp.sys.hp(?)because i don't have access to it. -- ICQ: 127036017 && 126735906 mIRC on #Win9x na Brasnet e #Novocanal da Dalnet, al\\216m de irc.via-rs.com.br no canal #chatcity. AIm: Renan Birck ComVC:1127268 Would there be a chance for an HP-16C? A computer programmer calculator on the palm! Hello Week ago I bought myself HP49G. Well, I can't say that I'm too happy to \\ read all this stuff about ACO and such, but what should I say. I know why I bought it, and I'm wery pleased with it. I have few questions. When I try to transfer some programs from friend's 48 to my 49, both calculators report invalid syntax, and stop the transfer. What could be the cause, and how can I fix that. Is there any program for 49, that can calculate specific heat capacity. In both calculators use ASCII transfer In the 49G: [MODE] [F3] [DOWN-ARROW] [DOWN-ARROW] Check the Approx Mode by pressing [F3] [F6] [F6] Now your 49G is in the \\48G Compatibility Mode\\ I hope this helped! Veli-Pekka PS: you're not related to O. BLaden, are you? ;-) read 48 Hewlett Family Opposes Support of Compaq Deal: Hewlett Family, Packard Heir Oppose Compaq Merger: Ok. I have tried to use this method to display characters on the screen. But it does not seem to work. Anyone know what is wrong with the following code? ASSEMBLE NIBASC \\\\HPHP49-C\\\\ RPL :: CODE GOSBVL =SAVPTR * Save RPL pointers GOSUB ASCII NIBHEX 6464 ASCII C=RSTK D1=C LC(5) 00022 D=C A B=0 A LC(5) 00004 GOSBVL =$5x7 GOVLNG =GETPTRLOOP * return to System RPL ENDCODE ; Hello Here is thedocumentation for the entry $5x7: ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** ** *A Name: $5x7 - Write 5x7 pxl data for string at Ith char in Row ** ** Category: DSPUTL ** ** Abstract: Writes 5x7 bit patterns for given character string ** starting at specified address (S) offset by a character ** position index (I). Data for subsequent pixel rows of ** each character is offset by (W) nibs from the preceding. ** ** ** D0:S (Start of \\row\\) ** B[A]: I (Chr Pos'n (0 - ..)) ** C[A]: N (String Length) ** D[A]: W (Row Width in nibs) ** ** Exit: 5x7 Bit Pattern for string written. ** XM: Font Table Flag (0=5x7, 1=5x9) ** CC iff next chr is at \\even\\ location. ** ** Alters: CPU - A[A],B[A],C[S,A]; D0,D1; P, CARRY, SB,XM ** ** Calls: PtBits(0), sub8/10(0), Set8/10(0) ** ** Stack Levels: 4 (RSTK=C GOSUB go?Covered CON(5) =cPt2Bits) ** ** Notes: ** (1). The 5x7 font for Chr Pixels is at =PIX5X7, 16 bytes/chr ** The 5x9 font for Chr Pixels is at =PIX5X9, 20 bytes/chr ** -------------------------------------------------------------- ** (2). Generally, the starting address S is the start of ** pixel data for a \\row\\ of the display. I is an ** option base 0 index specifying where the pixel data for ** the 1st character will start in the given row. The ** address X where the 1st character will start is: ** ** X := S + 1.5*I (each char takes 6 bits = 1.5 nibs) ** ** The width W is the number of nibs that must be added to ** X to obtain the address where the 2nd row of pixel data ** for the 1st char should be written. ** -------------------------------------------------------------- ** (3). Applications - Writing string pixel data: ** ** a) Into a grob. ** ** Implied by (a) is \\substring\\ replacement operations. ** ie; ability to replace a specified number of \\characters\\ ** in a grob with others. ** -------------------------------------------------------------- ** D0:S (Start of \\row\\) ** B[A]: I (Chr Pos'n (0 - ..)) ** C[A]: N (String Length) ** D[A]: W (Row Width in nibs) As you can see, your WIDTH is incorrectly set, it should be zero if you \\ want to display at the beginning of the screen (cf the documentation Jean-Yves ==== Subject: Re: HP Tools \\CSTRING\\ This is what I'd do (tested, but not in Jazz syntax): ASSEMBLE NIBASC \\\\HPHP49-C\\\\ RPL :: CODE GOSBVL =SAVPTR GOSUB ascii NIBHEX 6464 * NIBASC \\\\FF\\\\ should also work ascii C=RSTK D1=C LC(5) #22 * 22h = 34d nibbles D=C A B=0 A LC(5) #2 * FF is only two characters GOSBVL =$5x7 GOVLNG =GETPTRLOOP ENDCODE ( now freeze the screen, else you won't see anything ) SetDAsTemp ; Thomas -- Thomas Rast \\If you cannot convince them, t.rast@iname.com confuse them.\\ ICQ# 103670088 -- Harry S. Truman APIs) Hey Jean-Yves, In case this documentation does not exist for the public in such a thorough form, is there a chance we could get a copy of it? This would be wondereful! Rgds, -Al -- -Al Arduengo ------------ \\If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.\\ -- -Al Arduengo ------------ \\The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.\\ -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietsche Hello Al Well, that's the information you find in the source code itself jean-yves APIs) snip -- -Al Arduengo ------------ \\Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.\\ -- Sigmund Freud -- -Al Arduengo ------------ \\He who laughs last thinks slowest!\\ What should I see? At the moment, all I can see is a smudge in the top left hand corner of the screen. Do I need to adjust settings etc. on the 49 to \\see\\ the string? Confused Now. I am compiling under HP Tools. Timothy Ney Yep, you are right about speed. I still wonder though, what speed could be reached if the hardware would be a little more modern. Hmmm, and is it as easy to use? I mean is it: buy it, get it out of the box and use it? I have the (perhaps wrong) impression that PocketPC and GPL software are not as easy to get them running. Or do I live in the past (again)? Now, *that* is a good idea! I hope that all people from the scientific/technology world can stand together, to give the companies reason for making a \\math-PDA\\ at last. :-) Well, if everything is pre-installed and works before delivery then it would be fine. But it would be not so good to expect from the user to be a PC expert to install and configure everything. Yes, yes, yes. :-) I meant something that doesn't need a \\standard\\ OS (windows -yacks!!!) for other software to run. Something that has its own (easy) OS and doesn't need 100 configuration files, only to tell you then that program A can't run because file B is not there. (While you see that file B is there ;-) ) What is Maxima? Math-software? Yes, and a very strong touch, it seems. Do you think that the Jedis will return? What do you think it would be like? I guess it would be more in the direction of the question, is A.I a living thing or not? If it knows that it is there, it is a living thing? Take care, Nick. Hello Eveyrone! I've been asking lots of questions here lately, mainly because I'm still in the process of configuring my Calc to suit my needs as an engineering student. My intention is to post most of my config here, and maybe get some new ideas and feedback from you! (Before commenting the names of my dirs and variables, keep in mind that it's \\just names\\ that fits my taste... I'm sure everybody would come up with something different.) OK, about my Calc: It's a HP48GX with the newest Rom and a 512 Kb memory card. Hmm, anything else? I don't think so, let's get on with it! - INSTALLED LIBRARIES - Port0: (68K Free) 257: UFL (full version) 787: Kernel (Erable) 905: QPI 1081: GxTools 5.1 1696: AllMem Port2: (104K Free) 769: Tetris (yeah!) 807: TicTacToe 1111: Sokoban 1213: Lemmings Port3: (56K Free) 744: SymVector 909: Alg48 4.2 911: SpecFun (Alg48) 913: InteGr (Alg48) 1494: NeoPoly 6.5 Port4: (57K Free) 788: Erable v. 3.117 789: Arit (Erable) 790: Geom (Erable) 791: Prep (Erable) 792: LinAlg (Erable) Port5: (123K Free) System Backup - HOME DIRECTORY STRUCTURE - First, I have 6 subdirectories for CST-menu: Numeric, Games, Utilities, Applications, Computer, Conversion Numeric is equivalent to the Calc's MTH menu, just more advanced, and with the commands I use (more about that later). Games is for entertainment! :-) Utilities is for extensions to the calc, not found in the MTH menu (e.g. Limits, Diff. Equations, Integrals etc.). Applications is for specific programs (none installed yet). Computer contains user units from bit to Tbit and byte to Tbyte. Conversion contain radian, binary and HMS conversion commands. Next is 4 subdirs for customization: Formulas, Functions, Text, Libraries Formulas is for custom equations from textbooks, which can be solved with the equation solver. Functions is where I store my custom programs (mainly vector/complex commands, and my RD10 program). Text is for storing small messages and ToDo notes - nice and handy. Libraries is primarily for storage of downloaded/uninstalled libraries but currently I only have a backup copy of Keys and Flags there. Then there's 2 variables EQ and VX, and the user units byte/bit-Tbyte/bit. And of course CST-menu and parameter files. - USER KEYS - OK, now it gets interesting. The very first custom element is, that the keys A-F have shift-assignments. This is virtually 12 free user keys, as I very rarely use shifted menus (and if I must, I can turn off user). For my basic config, these 6 have the letters A-F left-assigned, and X,Y,Z,N,T and my function dir ({HOME Functions}) right-assigned. Next up, alpha-right H and J is assigned to \\-OO\\ and \\+OO\\ (that's infinity). Then right-[STO] is STEQ and left-[<-] is AllMem; right-[EVAL] is QPI and [EVAL] is my RD10 function, which converts to numeric, and rounds the answer to 10 digits (QPI can still convert correctly to symbolic). For alpha keyboard, right-V, right-W and right-X is assigned to their normal functions (root, y^x and 1/x), so you can use them while in alpha mode. The [ENTER] key has DUP assigned to the left and EVAL assigned to the right (I rarely use Equation/Matrix), these commands are more handy for programming purposes... Finally, right-[DEL] has array to list conversion, and right-[BS] has array (2D) to complex conversion. In addition, the 9 number keys have some key bindings in user mode, for instance 6 (units) have unit factorization (left) and SI-unit conversion (right). In some cases I have to turn off the user keys if I want to enter the standard applications, but I prefer command line operations all the way. - CUSTOM MENU - Finally, there's the custom menu. Apart from the basic commands mentioned in the dir section, there are some more submenus in the Numeric and Utility parts. The Numeric menu contains 6 submenus so far: Vector, Matrix, Polynomial, Algebra, Real, Complex The first 4 are special, since when you enter these menus, part of the keyboard is also remapped. Vector and Matrix has commands from Alg48 assigned to the +, -, *, / and 1/x buttons. Besides, the right-[ENTER] is now the Erable command EXPAND instead of EVAL. Polynomial has commands from NeoPoly assigned to the equivalent buttons (y^x instead of 1/x), and Algebra returns the keyboard to normal. The Utility menu contains 4 submenus, namely: Simplify, Limits, Integration, Diff. Equations. Here I've put different Erable commands for these subjects... For instance, my integration menu is: - FINAL REMARKS - For the custom menu, I've made GROB's to represent: 1: The 4 first labels in the Numeric menu, because programs are executed. 2: The first label in every \\dir-menu\\, so that you can tell CST-menu from VAR's (the first tab is slighty longer). I would like to enhance my configuration even more, but I still need to do some of the menus... I've also thought about installing EQSTK, it's my impression it will work well with this config. But please, if you have any comments, do not hesitate to respond, I'm interested in your feedback! -- . Artur Meinild . . . . . : . \\232lge R ud\\237r . . . ___________________________________________________ Eámail : 6paq@messages.to : Wámail : 6paq@go.to Eásite : 6paq.messages.to : Wásite : 6paq.go.to I just got the 49G and the instructions are horrible that came with it. I was wondering how I would go about doing the sample program the \\ instructions give on page 10-2? I type it all out on the main line but when I push STO the words come out instead of the arrow. Am I supposed to be in some special mode? Also How would I use an equation written in pretty type and put that into the program? Is there a site with a better manual? X Yeah !!! X Ofcourse an ASIC will cost greekly more than FPGA BUT I think it's worth it ! Veli-Pekka The Marketing Manager of the Virtual Platform(TM) OS ;-) The specs that have been suggested here for a new, much-improved 'better-than-HP' calculator included things like a nice low-power ARM processor, lots of memory, smaler physical size ... perhaps we'd all end up with something like this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/22699.html (No, this is not intended as a serious suggestion for choosing a base for such a product - but perhaps lessons can be learned, ideas borrowed, from this device.) // Christian Hmm, I haven't seen this before, but I can comment a bit on similarities: Pogo \\Virtual Platform\\ ;-) CPU: 75 MHz ARM 1 GHz ARM Interface: Stylus Keyboard MP3: Yes Yes Screen; Resol.: 320x240 320x240 Colour: Yes No (grayscale) Backl. No Yes Batterylife; On: 5-6 h 250 h Std.by: 100 h 3 years+ USD: 435 150-250 Steen So you want to design a \\Jupiter\\ A next generation of Saturn with HW multiplication, etc... Veli-Pekka X OK! For the third generation that is! 1) Make Saturn XP = X=10=#Ah timers the P=Power eg. new process & lower voltage 2) Make Jupiter, a HW enhanced Saturn XP 3) Go to Xscale-II for an emulated or simulated RPL-OS backwards compatible with 1) & 2) Correct? Veli-Pekka X -------- X X But there is no HW floating point support (yet) :-( PS: I will still bet on the XScale-50MHz as the future 3G-calc-OS running Virtual Platform Great! Bye, Mario That's very cool!!! .vic X Could I conVince you, Vince, about the benefits of a new design of the calculators OS, implemented on an Xscale CPU. I would like to call it: Virtual Platform like in, say \\VP-58GX\\ (nothing to do with Vincent Poy or Veli-Pekka ;-) [VPN] $1h1$1@news.kolumbus.fi: Not a bad idea... hehe ;) Vince And maybe even Vassilis Prevelakis vprev@vp.com.gr from http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=12064 would like that name? [VPN] X Paul Vollbracht paul.vollbracht@toyota.be from http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=12321 might ask for a coin toss - once again !!! Will the history repeat itself !!! For the Xscale version (third generation) OS: Virtual Platform eg. VP-58GX Could you, please, give some examples how many clock cycles it takes for Saturn to execute typical commands binary commands and the size of the \ \\ operand ? Jack operand ? http://ca-on.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/cycles.zip Note the nibbling of the 64-bit accumulators during a full-width operation. Also: No HW multiply, divide, etc.. [VPN] Hmm... how did you guess that ;-) Why wouldn't I join? Sorry, I don't have $100,000 yet :-) Bhuvanesh. I think that full Sys-RPL support should exist, or do plan on rewriting a whole mathematical software suite for the new system? Yes, i believe the machine and it's OS should be totally new, and written for portability and high-level programming, however, i think that the \\mathematical\\ part of the software should be sys-rpl as an interpreted language, much like it is now, because it would still evolve, if it hadn't reached the maximum capability out of the hardware. Steve Sousa No, we use commas. I see... I didn't realize that. Cool! :-) Bhuvanesh. going CAS First Emulated, later native. We can keep the emulator. 1) Saturn XP = Saturn in, say 0.25 micron process & lower voltage 2) Jupiter = greatly enhanced Saturn with 32-bit addressing, HW*/ etc. 3) XScale implementation of the Virtual Platform, runnning RPL-emulator with compiler So it be... [VPN] but it's already available in the debug2 program... Jean-Yves new (and it 150 is bit XScale 600-1200 that As if I need another Hp calculator, but the BullS*** we get from the upper management at Hp is horrendous. At least we as a group can tell when they lie to us. Just watch for their lips to move. The following answer is pat and sounds good, but now for the reality. Look around. All the major outlet stores are clearing out inventories of their Hp stock of calculators (aside from the new junk ie 10BII) That is all I find if I find Hp. I cannot find Hp32s, 20s, or 48G's anymore. I know that a few stores still carry old stock, but Target, K-mart, Walmart, Officemax and Staples only carry the 10Bii. Therefore the message below doesn't ring all that true to me. Therefore, my query, aside from a few vendors on the WEB, where do you go to buy Hp scientific calculators. If there is no major outlet, the message above is truly BS of the first order. And since I suspected as such before I posted, I can't/won't believe much from Hp upper management until refuted and proved otherwise. I await such proof, and will gladly humble myself and apologize for my skeptism. Until then however, I say: \\Carly Foirna and her lacky sidekick Iain Morris are two Jerk CEO's that have contributed to Hp's withdrawal of a Market that Hp used to RULE. Poor marketing and follow the leader (Ti) mentality have put Hp in the backseat on a downhill skid that probably no one can stop.\\ No, I don't have the answers either, but I feel that Hp's abandonment of this area will cost the company prestige and market aligience in the future. My first Hp product was an Hp15c that is still with me to this day (I used and abused this calculator for nearly 10 years, prior to that I went through a Ti every year). This calculator introduced me to a whole world of instrumentation and controls as well as Pc's and printers. oh well... I await anyone to refute my comments and negative ramblings. So they can keep their highly inflated and undeserved salaries and put people like JYA and the other members of the ACO out of work. I have always wondered why company CEOS still get bonuses when the company is losing money and downsizing thousands of people. Seems like the people that do the real work are always the first fired. Pardon me I am just venting. Harold A. Climer Dept. of Physics,Geology and Astronomy U. Tennessee at Chattanooga Bonjour! I'm still a HP calculatrice fanatic Veli-Pekka PS: Your face will never fade of our v'ger's memory... That's why the stock market is in trouble...Not because of the terrorist attack...Alot of companies have been running on a thin profit margin... Terrorist attack was an excuse for alot of companies...The days the newspapers that HP and alot of big companies in Silicon Valley were having a hard time attracting people for jobs.... Jas /(&%\\#!Û&% I took for real... [VPN] PS: You ASSUMEable rref-er to: \\...continue as a good business for HP for a long time.\\ BUT I'm still not laughing? Calculators. in calculator Oh, that's Great News! Aside from Vger's firmware, I don't like anything made by ACO. Well, \\ perhaps I do like a couple of things, but I mean that the level reached at \\ Corvallis has not been improved at all. I know they were wizards, but I'm sure it \\ could happen again - after all, they are still alive, I hope! ;-) I hope HP can find the right place and the right people again for the real 48's successor. Please, no hurries! By the way, why has the new HP-12C version (that with one CR2032 batt) engraved the word Agilent on its CPU? Bye. Jordi Hidalgo johil@tv3mail.com - ==== Subject: Re: You can make a difference Well, perhaps at Corvallis sure it could I suspect that's in the natural order of things. When they designed the 48SX they were doing something new. The features came from the designer's imaginations. Probably no-one else knew eough about the possibilities to interfere. But when they were working on the 48GX the marketers and executives already had a working model and had already probably heard a million ideas and probably all had their favorites and did what they could to see that they were implemented. The designers must have had less control with that never having been stated. With the 49G they also had some TI successes to compete with and that influenced the list of features, too. Less and less control by the designers. I'm just guessing at all of this. I have no slightest idea what went on at HP. But I've led programming projects that were totally new ideas and no-one really understood the possibilities and I know how I got left alone. If I wanted a suggestion I had to ask for it. Then, doing the second version of those same projects, everyone had ideas. The users and the VPs they worked for. My boss. His boss. His secretary. They all had suggestions. Some I could ignore. Some I couldn't. The second version might have been more useful and more tailored to the user's needs, but it was always less graceful, more confused, less coherent and more trouble to maintain. It's just how things work in business. The designer has a lot more ability to express his own ideas in his own way in the first edition of something very new than at any other time. Of course business has developed a partial cure for the designer's imagination in the first edition. It's called a prototype. :) Barry http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! Check out our new Unlimited Server. No Download or Time Limits! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! ==----- As there is so much talk at the moment about new directions I'd like to \\ ask: Just what is the perfect calculator each of us expects? If somebody uses this for market research then great I'll have a replacement for my 49 in a few years. If you assume it's going to be 2-3 years before a new calculator gets to \\ the market we can assume that the PDA's will by then be fully functional \\ windows devices. You'll able to run apps lick Mathcad, Maple etc with the only restrictions being screen real estate and hardware interface (touch screen limited keys. Any new calculator would have to compete with these and be sufficiently different in functionality to compete. So here is my stab at the basics: Size: Pocketable, smaller than HP49, size of HP42 if possible. The 48/49's are \ \\ to big to be carried anywhere in your pocket. Whats acchievable will depend on interface and screen. One option could be pull out or flip out screen that retracted displays single line of result like a cheap calculator. Power: Uses standard batteries say 2xAAA. Batteries life of 2 months minimum. Screen: HP49 seems reasonable but higher resolution. 2 colour to keep cost and \\ power down. User Interface: Has to use a keyboard for rapid input of calcs. RPN of course but \\ Algebraic will be needed since RPN will have even less of a profile than now. 48 and 49 seem to have it about right for an advanced calculator. You \\ can't get away from the need for a numeric keypad plus extra's for command functions, advanced features and menu. Touch screen just won't cut it as I don't want to stop to pull out a stylus in the middle of a calc. Memory: 1.5 Mb in the 49 seems to be heaps. With memory so cheap just give it access to memory flash cards or a heap of internal memory. CPU and OS Can't comment except it should be capable of emulating the HP48/49 functionality with improved speed. A dream would be to have the capability to run the same apps as your \\ Desktop unit but the size and display of a calculator unit that I'm thinking of would make interacting with an App thats designed for a 15\\ and a mouse \\ very arkward. Cost of calculator would be much greater. External I/O USB would seem to be the most common cable connection with plenty of speed for a calculator. Some kind of cable-less connection would be nice. X to be X 2*AA, can be operated on NiMH cells, too. [VPN] Maybe a shrunken Xpander? Raymond ==== Subject: Re: Your perfect Calculator expectations gets to the functional windows the only (touch screen these and be I have Derive, Mathcad and Matlab for my HP 200lx. The version of Derive I have was designed with the lx in mind. I'm not sure about the others but they work just fine. I don't have any need for these and my math is limited so I can't judge how they compare to the HP49. But they are certainly available in an HP49 size package with a screen about 3 times the size of the 49 screen and a QWERTY keyboard with a numeric keypad. (too small for touch typing). And good old HP sturdiness and reliability. The 200lx is almost exactly the same size as the 49G. It will fit (snugly) in the HP48 soft case. It's a PC that uses 2 AA batteries and gets about 40 hours from them and weighs 11 ounces including batteries. Rechargebles are fine. There is a recharger built in. It only knows how to charge standard Nicads but there is free software downloadble to control the charging in various ways. It can recharge the 1600 mah NIMH just fine. It also has Lotus 123 version 2.4 (complete) in rom, along with a lot of PDA apps, more powerful ones than are available in newer PDAs. Dos 5.0 is in ROM. Also Quicken, CC:Mail and an HP bussiness calculator (which talks to Lotus). Several full sets of internet software are available. Some free, some not. Several cards for wireless access are avaliable, as are modem cards. It has infra-red. A group of users are now looking into the possibity of Bluetooth. The power supplied to the PCMCIA port is limited so this may or may not work. With a Parallel port PCMCIA card it works fine with a Zip drive. It also runs Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0, Word Perfect 5.1, dBase 3+, Paradox, most older compilers of most languages and a world of commercial games. All that and it fit's in my pocket. It also has a PCMCIA slot. I have a 160 meg flash card. It's my A: drive. They don't make them anymore but they're available all over the place and they supply seems to be increasing as time goes by. Barry http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! Check out our new Unlimited Server. No Download or Time Limits! -----== Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 19 Different Servers! ==----- it sounds great! now, if i could put my maple7 (o mathematica) in it... may be, the next HP49G will come with a crusoe chip :) oh yeah, and running linux too BTW: HP49G still rules!!!!!!!!! \\when you take the thought of others, reality becomes ready made\\ O. y Gasset to I can easily fit a HP49G in the pocket inside my jacket. be And it'll be cheap quality too. Fold lines destroy cables. Duracell AA MN1500 are 2450 mAh, so two months on two of these will allow your device to use 116 mW @ 5 volts (\\continous use\\; 106 hours a month). Built-in Lithium Ion will be better though, both for the environment and \\ for your wallet. power It'll have to be a little larger, so you won't have to use a magnifying glass to see on it. Else you could use a video camera display - 2\\ & maybe 400x300 pixels. Steen Yes, but with fewer mAh's than NiCd. Lithium Ion does have more advantages too. Steen You seem to have big pockets;-) A 15C or 42S has the maximum weight I want to carry, aside from their nicer form factor. result Maybe. But the 28 (Clamshell) series use kind of flip where only a minimum of torsion happens to the contact stripe. Never heard of an 28 with bad left-hand keyboard;-) Hmm...do we end up with kinda Turbo-28SX? Raymond The weather in Oz is to good to be wearing jackets. Even in winter only wear them on bad days. :) I want something for a shirt pocket, HP49 is to big. Be thankfull I \\ haven't asked for a Calc suitable for the back pocket of pants when wearing a T-shirt, flexible so you can sit on it. I'm looking for a convenient advaced calculator not a PDA with calculator functions. are result for http://ca-on.hpcalc.org/hp48/docs/programming/ VPN have you checked www.hpcalc.org? Raymond \\ lLMpPE$&3gN~s9=X<5=NF`%ngs&:+56-YTDgK[XGX%1El.]DWi(Uii4XTO@cGM5&qn`f=,$g}QPk\ Y\\ 8 Yes, I have. AFAICT, its docs are all \\here's how to do