Musings and comments about our common interest
I have been using during this Christmas period the back door HP 19bii. I had left it on my desk at home, and it was at hand when working from home.
As you all know, the main problem with the Charlemagne Clamshell HP calculators is that they fail always in the same weak spot: the battery door. The batteries make pressure to the door and, with the plastic getting brittle with the passing of years, it will eventually break. The cure is not easy, and never beautiful. It surprises me that this calculator model has never failed in my experience by the hinge that keeps together both parts of the clamshell - all moving parts are prone to fail. Nevertheless, a failure there is not so critical. Unless you program with the solver, you can live with just the right part of the calculator (someone could argue that the HP17bii is just the right part of the hp19bii!)
Sometime ago I found in a shop a Hp19bii that was not boxed, like the original ones, but in a blister, like the new ones. This packaging looked cheap, but within there was a calculator where the main problem had been solved: the battery door had been moved from the side to the back!
That wasn’t the only change. The plastic seems to be softer than the original one; the color is also more black than brown. The keys are alright. Screen contrast is like all old hp19 and hp17 - quite bad for current standards. Comparing a new 17bii+ with an old one is a joke when it comes to contrast.
If you’re used to the hp17bii, then you know how good its menu system is. They wanted to test a new menu model in the hp30b, but it wasn’t nearly as good. And if you’re used to the hp17bii solver, then you also have it there.
Common with the hp17bii is the fact that once you are at a menu level, you remain there until you press exit. You don’t need to start the whole menu excavating process for each new repeated calculation.
But the screen is so much better with three lines in sight (compared with the one in the hp17bii - and a much better font.
You need to factor in several other details:
You can find such Hp19b version (together with an English manual) here
There have been some messages in www.hpmuseum.org about the HP39gII and its collectability. Apparently, there is not a lot of effort put by HP on promoting this calculator in Europe. I was told at the beginning that this was a calculator specially designed for Asia - and in particular, mainland China. It had been designed while talking with the Chinese educations responsible officers. As such, it does not include CAS; but apart from that, is a quite economic quasi-clone of the mighty HP Prime.
It shares the programming system, and it has a quite good screen with 16 grey levels and good resolution. It cuts corners by not having a mobile phone battery, a tactile screen or color. On the other hand, is quite as fast as the prime, and it lasts longer than other calculators. A curiosity is that the batteries are connected in parallel, not in series: the voltage required to make it work is extremely low. In an emergency, it can even work with a single battery! It also has connectivity via USB, and therefore can be programmed off-calculator and run within it.
It is not as sexy as the Prime - but then the price is very different too - you can buy it for 60€, delivery included in most of Europe. And you get most of the features of the Prime, excluding CAS (which cannot be used in some countries’ schools anyway)
Key feel is good, while not at hp41c levels. You can find it here:
I have just received three more circuits for HP41cl (Monte, if you’re reading this, yes, this is how long it takes when using standard post services. Next time I’ll order UPS instead), and I have two available bodies to install them in, so one will have to wait for the time being…
If you’re reading this and don’t know what an HP41cl is, you must have been quite isolated during the last few years from calculator land. In short, it is everything you ever wanted the HP41c family to be: fast, with all modules built in, expandable (something the HP42s never was). It consists of a modern pcb circuit, completely back-compatible with the HP41cx firmware, but with much more memory than the HP41cx was ever able to manage, with all modules ever developed, many more functions, serial I/O, etc. This module is retrofittable to most “full nut” HP41c/cv/cx calculators. You can tell whether yours is a full nut by the square corners of the screen (while the half nut, more modern models, that have all logic in a single circuit, have a screen with rounded corners)
You will find more information about the HP41CL elsewhere in this website. It can easily be the last calculator you’ll ever need…
We have just included a number of additional hp41c items in the website:
In the next days we will include other items:
This way, we’ll populate the “HP41c corner” of our website. The old HP41c continues to be the most interesting calculator ever made!
We have discovered that the HP Prime (G8X92AA version) was not available for ordering, while we have a healthy stock in our shop. We don’t even know if that’s been the case for several days - but it is now back on line.
The same has happened to a couple of other products (for example, the bundle with the SmartStream 410 data logger was missing too. I hope no one was deterred from their purchase by this!
Remember that the beauty of the G8X92AA vs the older NW280AA is that the first one works seamlessly with the SmartStream 410 data logger and all Fourier probes; while the older version cannot. For the rest of standalone applications, there is no difference. We make sure that your unit is a G8X92AA.
Please remember to update yours with the new firmware (version 6975, available since 16.12.2014). You can find it in the HP sites - please revert to previous blog issues to see download sites and procedure.
The stability is greatly improved, and most of the previous bugs and inconsistent behavior have disappeared. I say “most” instead of “all” for the sake of not making an absolute statement, but there have been no problems whatsoever since I made the last update.
There are other items that we all expect in the new releases, but not so much centered in solving bugs, as to in extending capabilities.
Don Shepherd is a well known calculator expert that usually posts in hpmuseum.org. This forum is populated mainly by scientific calculator users, with a couple of exceptions that also have a little place in their heart for other types of calculators. Don is one of them. In particular, Don’s interests include the HP17bII, of which the HP17bII+ is the latest version. For me, it is the best current financial calculator; and fighting with the HP19bII for the “best ever” title. And it is incredibly flexible with its solver.
The reason of this blog issue is an article from Don that I have read while looking for additional solver programs. You can find it here:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=712
Some examples of what Don managed to extract from the programming capabilities of the HP17bII+:
This last one is below. A Zero result means the number is prime; any other number shows the first factor found.
fact = 0xL(j:0)+
if(mod(n:2)=0:2:sigma(i:3:sqrt(n):2:
if(mod(n:i)=0:if(g(j)=0:0xL(j:1)+i:0):0)))
I am now working with the new release of the hp Prime firmware. After a couple of hiccups installing it (due to my using an old operating system in my Parallels session in Macintosh), I finally did. Despite having made a back up of all files and programs, and all literature having warned that data would be lost, the machine still kept my programs when restarting.
Of course, I am not as experienced as other professors, so I am not pushing the device to its limits; and I could not tell a bug from a syntax error; but the machine feels more responsive, seems to scroll better, navigates better through menus, and is in general a better device. Does it feel like an iPhone? Er-no. But it is improving!
The unit that I updated is a G8X92AA, not one of the old NW280AA machines; but the updates are equally valid for both models. You don’t need to change your machine if you’re not going to make use of the Smartstream applications and devices.
The feeling is tha CAS continues to evolve and improve, with the help of Bernard Parisse. I look forward to go through more advanced maths together with my son, when the need comes (last week we had our first attempt to equation systems - a 2x2 very simple case. I don’t want the machine to solve the problems for him -Ci just want him to be able to check the results for now.)
The machine has not restarted a single time since the firmware change. I am now taking it to an extended trip instead of my 41cl. With the initial models and firmware, it crashed several times a day. Over time, it moved to once a week, and now the software seems much more stable.
I need to refer you to the HP site again. I will not keep the newest version in our site, since we cannot ensure that we have the latest software all the time; what we’ll try to guarantee is that the link to the newest firmware remains current.
For us Europeans, there are still things that can be improved. The programs are dependent on the separation character used when writing it. We in center Europe tend to use the decimal comma, and therefore the list and argument separator is the semicolon; but if the program has been written with decimal point, it won’t work and claim syntax error, even though you have been using it in the past. So let’s keep it at decimal point and stay with it. No big deal, but one has to be warned.
The problems existing in some solver apps when using number formats including thousand separators, even with spaces, have not appeared so far -or I haven’t been able to replicate them.
Every Prime user should be aware that there is a new version of firmware. The new version applies to both emulator and calculator itself. For what I can see so far, all the bugs that I knew of have been removed. And CAS features have greatly expanded. You can either download the frirmware upgrade through the update functions in the virtual calculator or the connectivity kit. alternatively, you can download it directly from here:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/calculators/Prime/
Here you can find the log of the changes:
Date Released: 2014/12/03
Firmware Version: 2014 12 03 (6975)
Virtual Calculator Version: 2014 12 03 (6975)
Connectivity Kit: 2014 12 03 (6975)
This release of the Prime Calculator firmware and associated PC software delivers significant new features and fixes outstanding issues. This document is not a complete list of all changes, but highlights specific items. All users of the HP Prime calculator are encouraged to upgrade for the best possible experience.
Primary focus in this release was enhancements to communication and wireless.
User interface refined and improved.
Much more reliable and capable communication.
Multiple antennas supported for wireless communication.
Progress bars are now shown for individual units during transfer data transfer.
Much nicer “firmware update” window - adds support for detection of multiple units and more ways to receive prompts for updating units.
Now possible to send a single item from one unit to everyone in the class in a single step.
Improvements to screen monitoring.
Added lower/upper optional inputs in cumulative probability functions. Binomial arguments now consistently ordered.
Add ability to mix and edit CAS functions inline as part of larger programs - #cas to start a block, and #end to end it.
New variables Notes and Programs created to allow programatic access.
Geometry variables Instruction and DelInstruction provide programatic access to geometry constructions.
Much faster scrolling in large notes, programs and equations.
There is now an “Info” menu key in the memory manager. It reports free ram and available storage.
VARS menu now has a “system” group which contains general system variables.
TOff variable introduced. It is a millisecond value with minimum of 5s.
TIME was renamed to TEVAL to avoid confusion with Time variable. Also now shows up in the catalog.
SERIAL and VERSION commands introduced.
Added an implicit_diff command to simplify implicit differentiation steps.
Improved help throughout system and connected it in more places.
Japanese user interface turned on for menus.
There is now an “Info” menu key in the memory manager. It reports used ram and available storage.
I have been discussing how to help our children in number theory with the hp41cl and helped with powerful packages like Sandmath. However, no matter how much I like it, I can agree that it is not a reasonable idea to lend a 41cl to your son - even if he’s 40 already. That’s what student calculators are made for.
So I started to try to do the same things with the HP Prime. It also has the advantage of color and tactile screen, which always helps when working with children.
Here are some of the functions that were helpful in my children’s homework:
Idivis(integer): gives a list of all the divisors of an integer. Can be also applied to lists!
Idivis(24)= [1,2,3,4,6,8,12,24]
Ifactor(integer): gives a decomposition of an integer in prime numbers.
Ifactor(24)= [23*3]
Ifactors is very similar, but returns a list with the prime factors followed by their frequency. This one admits a list as argument, while the former doesn’t!
Ifactors(24)= [2,3,3,1]
Then, the typical problems they’re doing during this term involve finding the greatest common divisor and the lowest common multiple:
Gcd(24,36)= 12
Lcm(24,36)= 72
There are others related to prime numbers (shouldn’t prime numbers be the forte of the Prime calculator?): isprime(), nextprime(), prevprime(), ithprime() (which returns the nth prime below 10.000). Good enough for you children to check all their results in number theory!
Miscellaneous comments HP41CL - initialization and basic problem solving.
For all HP41CL users: travel may affect your calculator. The HP41CL circuit is quite sensitive to small loses of power, and when being hit while traveling, it may lost part of the programming.
I have used extensively two different HP41CL units. Both of them were sensitive to hits. The faults that could appear were basically two:
The unit would not recognize plugged ROMs. In this case, the solution wasn’t to plug it again, since it wouldn’t work; it was enough to re-enable the memory management using the HP41CL command MMUEN. Then you would find that everything was still where you left it.
The unit would not work well, and get stuck in a strange display. This display would not follow the same pattern always. This was a worse kind of failure, and it always implied to leave the calculator without its batteries for at least 15 minutes, plug the batteries without starting it for another 15 minutes, and then re-start it with backspace-on. You would get a “memory lost” message, and all your programming and configuration would be lost. It will work as a plain HP41CL, but none of the features you bought would be available. You need to re-initialize it. I am sorry for that!
My standard initialization procedure follows here (and this is how my customers receive their calculators):
First clear the memory management unit with the following command:
XEQ Alpha MMUCLR Alpha
Then start loading necessary modules:
Alpha YFNZ Alpha XEQ Alpha PLUG1L Alpha - loading the YFNZ version of the utilities in the lower part of port 1
Alpha PWRL Alpha XEQ Alpha PLUG1U Alpha - loading the PWRL version of the utilities in the upper part of port 1
Alpha 804040–8120 Alpha XEQ Alpha YPOKE Alpha - loading the Library #4
Then, the system is ready to receive any ROM module, including those that use the Library#4 (Basically most of the modules created by Angel Martín)
Then, I usually enter just the Advantage Pac and the latest version of Sandmath that I have in my CL - currently SM33, Sandmath 3x3.