50g stack font

[grsbanks]

OK, this one has me baffled. I don't seem to find anything in the system flags or in the hidden folder that stores the current choice of font.

If I'm developing something on a 50g I'm going to be getting plenty of lock-ups and resets because I'm not the kind to be content with UserRPL, so I have a small program on an SD card that re-establishes the settings that I normally use on a freshly reset calculator. One of my preferred settings is a slightly smaller than usual font (Ft7_0:SYSTEM 7) and I can't seem to find how to set that programmatically.

Any ideas?

[Joe Horn]

<< FONT7 →FONT >>

Store that little program as 'STARTUP', and it'll run automatically after a warmstart.

Suggestion: Explore the commands in menu 2269. Lots of goodies in there.

[grsbanks]

(07-20-2019 12:00 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  << FONT7 →FONT >>

That's one of the things I like about the 50g... Just when you dare think that you're beginning to know your way around it, you get put back in your place

Thanks for that, Joe. It solves the problem perfectly.

(07-20-2019 12:00 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  Suggestion: Explore the commands in menu 2269. Lots of goodies in there.

Indeed. I'm guessing this is one of those menus that you can't actually navigate to with the keyboard, right? The only way you can get to it is with the MENU command.

[DavidM]

(07-20-2019 12:00 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  << FONT7 →FONT >>

Store that little program as 'STARTUP', and it'll run automatically after a warmstart.

Just seconding Joe's suggestion about STARTUP. It's a great place to put your favorite "correct after a warmstart" settings. Mine sets a variety of things, including flag settings (which of course takes care of a lot of customization), KEYTIME, display contrast, and favorite key assignments.

[franz.b]

hi everyone, excuse the intrusion in this thread with a question on the edge of off-topic ...
is there any font for hp50 that looks like the standard one of 48? or is there a way to extract this font from a 48? also, is it possible that the 50 displays correctly such high fonts? (if I'm not mistaken those de 48 are 10 pixels high ... right?)
thank you very much

[grsbanks]

(07-20-2019 01:40 PM)DavidM Wrote:  Just seconding Joe's suggestion about STARTUP. It's a great place to put your favorite "correct after a warmstart" settings. Mine sets a variety of things, including flag settings (which of course takes care of a lot of customization), KEYTIME, display contrast, and favorite key assignments.

Great idea on the face of it but a lot of the time I end up with the calculator's RAM wiped, so no more STARTUP, unfortunately.

What I do do is store my small program that sets the flags (and also the font now, thanks Joe) in flash or on an SD card, navigate to it in the filer and EVAL it before doing anything else on the calculator. Problem solved

[DavidM]

(07-23-2019 10:20 AM)grsbanks Wrote:  Great idea on the face of it but a lot of the time I end up with the calculator's RAM wiped, so no more STARTUP, unfortunately.

Yes, for those crashes I have two specialty programs on the SD card. The first wipes out everything (clears ports 0-2 then does a cold start), the second loads my standard port contents, sets up main memory, then does a warmstart. I don't use those very often, but it's nice to know they're available when needed. Makes experimentation a much more comfortable experience, since I know I can easily get back to a stable configuration with little effort.

Nowadays I find that most of my 50g coding is done on a laptop with the emulator, so recovery is usually a simple matter of closing the emulator and reopening it. Port contents can still be screwed up on the emulator, but the same programs mentioned above work on the emulator if needed. My (real) 50g comes out mostly when I have to time something or try things that depend on the ARM environment.

[grsbanks]

(07-23-2019 01:33 PM)DavidM Wrote:  Yes, for those crashes I have two specialty programs on the SD card. The first wipes out everything (clears ports 0-2 then does a cold start), the second loads my standard port contents, sets up main memory, then does a warmstart.

OK, I'll bite. Coldstart and warmstart are easy enough to do with a couple of SysEvals (#26775h and #267E5h respectively) but how do you set the contrast programmatically? By storing a value in a specific nibble?

To be honest, all of my 50g units are set to a perfectly acceptable contrast value after a coldstart so this is just for my personal erudition FWIW I've looked through the various SysRPL and ASM documents that I have and not found anything relevant.

[DavidM]

(07-23-2019 05:52 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  but how do you set the contrast programmatically? By storing a value in a specific nibble?

Yes, though the value actually takes up 5 bits instead of 4 (the allowable values are 0-31). The low-order 4 bits of the contrast value are stored at location 00101h and the high-order bit of the contrast value is stored in the low-order bit of address 00102h. The high-order 3 bits of address 00102h should be left alone, as they are dedicated to display status and shouldn't be changed.

[grsbanks]

Perfect, thanks. I'll see if I can knock something together in ASM today.

[rprosperi]

(07-24-2019 04:04 AM)DavidM Wrote:  

(07-23-2019 05:52 PM)grsbanks Wrote:  but how do you set the contrast programmatically? By storing a value in a specific nibble?

Yes, though the value actually takes up 5 bits instead of 4 (the allowable values are 0-31). The low-order 4 bits of the contrast value are stored at location 00101h and the high-order bit of the contrast value is stored in the low-order bit of address 00102h. The high-order 3 bits of address 00102h should be left alone, as they are dedicated to display status and shouldn't be changed.

@DavidM - Though the contrast on all my 50g's are fine and I hope to never need this, I am curious where you were able to find such details? And thanks for posting this interesting reply.

[DavidM]

(07-24-2019 12:48 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  @DavidM - Though the contrast on all my 50g's are fine and I hope to never need this, I am curious where you were able to find such details? And thanks for posting this interesting reply.

This topic came up in another thread some time ago... this one I believe. On page 4 or so of that thread a discussion started about setting the contrast programmatically. I had run across some information in the comp.sys.hp48 archives that led me to believe that those memory locations no longer worked for contrast, but then subsequently discovered that method was still valid as of some unknown update in the firmware.

IIRC, there's also some references to the addresses in various memory map documents available from hpcalc.org.

I guess I'm either unlucky or overly picky (more likely) about the contrast settings in my calculators, because none of my 48-50 calculators seem to default to optimal settings (I believe 14 is the firmware default setting). While I'm fortunate to have acquired a black screen 48GX that appears to have had very little use by the original owner, its display is almost unreadable at the default contrast setting (which might explain why it has had such little use). Adjusting the contrast on that unit is absolutely required any time a warm (or cold) -start has occurred. I just wish there was a reliable way I could identify that unit programmatically so that my standard routine could automatically determine it was running on that machine. The ARM systems have a "soft" serial number that can be referenced, but the 48-series doesn't.

[rprosperi]

(07-24-2019 02:30 PM)DavidM Wrote:  

(07-24-2019 12:48 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  @DavidM - Though the contrast on all my 50g's are fine and I hope to never need this, I am curious where you were able to find such details? And thanks for posting this interesting reply.

This topic came up in another thread some time ago... this one I believe. On page 4 or so of that thread a discussion started about setting the contrast programmatically. I had run across some information in the comp.sys.hp48 archives that led me to believe that those memory locations no longer worked for contrast, but then subsequently discovered that method was still valid as of some unknown update in the firmware.

IIRC, there's also some references to the addresses in various memory map documents available from hpcalc.org.

I guess I'm either unlucky or overly picky (more likely) about the contrast settings in my calculators, because none of my 48-50 calculators seem to default to optimal settings (I believe 14 is the firmware default setting). While I'm fortunate to have acquired a black screen 48GX that appears to have had very little use by the original owner, its display is almost unreadable at the default contrast setting (which might explain why it has had such little use). Adjusting the contrast on that unit is absolutely required any time a warm (or cold) -start has occurred. I just wish there was a reliable way I could identify that unit programmatically so that my standard routine could automatically determine it was running on that machine. The ARM systems have a "soft" serial number that can be referenced, but the 48-series doesn't.

Thanks very much. Of course the answer to where the incredibly gory details come from is Hrast! Between Hrast, Joe Horn and John Meyer, I think they account for about 95% of the 'obscure detail' questions that have ever been answered.

All of my 50g's seem excellent from reset, but it has been a lonnng time since some were reset, so maybe my memory is off. For 48's some of my blue-LCD GX's and one of my SX have poor power-on contrast, but all of my black-LCD GX's are excellent. Maybe I'm just lucky.

For folks that want code to adjust the contrast, the linked thread includes a program from Hrast which can be easily decompiled/disassembled, and he has allowed community use.