About DM32

[pascal_meheut]

(05-25-2023 11:08 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  I think on the DM-42 some of the labels are too small (e.g. the numbers)

Recent DM42s have bigger labels.

[Joe Horn]

(05-25-2023 11:08 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  ... on the DM-32 they have overdone it with large characters plus bold.
Put e.g. a HP-35S besides these two - the printing on the HP looks more pleasant to me.

If I'm not mistaken, the larger and bolder keyboard font was adopted due to many requests from DM42 users over the years. The initial keyboard font for the DM42 was small and thin, but as time went by, it grew larger and bolder. Furthermore, the digits on the keys are exactly the same height (3mm) on the DM32 and HP 35s, and are a tad bolder on the HP 35s, not vice versa. The fonts on the HP 32SII also changed over time.

BTW, if anybody says that the displayed digits are too big on the DM32, please note that they are actually smaller than the displayed digits on the HP 32SII (5mm versus 6.5mm). Here's a single scan of all three models for comparison purposes.

[J-F Garnier]

(05-25-2023 09:19 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  BTW, if anybody says that the displayed digits are too big on the DM32, please note that they are actually smaller than the displayed digits on the HP 32SII (5mm versus 6.5mm).

I too was surprised by the size of the display digits on the DM32.
We are not used to see graphic display with such big digits.
On the contrary remember the numerous utilities to display 6,7 or more stack levels with tiny fonts on the 48 series.

Joe's 32SII model is not the best example for comparison of the keyboard, not only for of these purple/green labels, but for the painted keys.
Here is a comparison of the 32S with its small LCD, the 'classic' HP-32SII, and the latest 32SII with painted keys.
See the difference on the sqrt and e^x keys for instance:



Sorry, I don't have a DM32 for comparison but based on Joe's comments, the DM32 displayed digits may be close to the original 32S LCD.

Ah, the elegance of the 32S...

J-F

[Boub65]

I will buy the DM32 based on what is delivered and not on what it can maybe "one day" do...

SM did not prove that they are reliable in their announcements :
- DM41X has an annoying "multiline editor bug" for more than 2 years
- DM41X had absolutely no enhancements since it hit the market
- DM42 is not any more enhanced, although Free42 is
- DM43 (or was it WP43 ? I am lost) was announced, sold, and then retrieved from market timeline!!!
- DM1x/DM1xL still show OpCodes where other platforms on the market (also based on emulation) show alphanumeric instructions

So I am waiting so see exactly what is DM32 before buying. And today DM32 functionalities is just not worth buying.

If you want to :
1) confuse the market
2) loose the confidence of long time customers
You can't do better !
And when you loose the trust of long time customers, you need to re-evaluate your strategy!

[Martin Hepperle]

(05-25-2023 09:19 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  ...
If I'm not mistaken, the larger and bolder keyboard font was adopted due to many requests from DM42 users over the years. The initial keyboard font for the DM42 was small and thin, but as time went by, it grew larger and bolder. Furthermore, the digits on the keys are exactly the same height (3mm) on the DM32 and HP 35s, and are a tad bolder on the HP 35s, not vice versa. The fonts on the HP 32SII also changed over time.
...

You are right, it is more my visual impression which stems from the relation of font size to key size. The same font size on smaller keys looks a bit clumsy to me, but all this is, of course also a matter of taste.
More important is that the contrast of the lettering is good (infamous Prime orange on white color scheme) - this is surely no problem with the DMs.

[Eric Rechlin]

The version of the 32SII with the printed keys really does look terrible in comparison, much worse than the double-shot keys. But what surprises me is that is the original color scheme -- I had just assumed they switched to printed keys when they changed to the later (teal/lavender) color scheme, but clearly it was before then. Does anyone know the switchover date? For the 48GX it wasn't until about 1998 or 1999 (whenever production moved from Singapore to Indonesia, I believe), but I guess it must have been earlier for the 32SII.

[jonmoore]

Mine are as follows:

- 32S is from week 2 1989
- 32Sii is from week 4 1996
- 48GX is from week 1 1994

I believe all three key-sets use the same manufacturing process (but my eyes aren't trained to such matters).

As I've mentioned previously, the 32S wins every time regarding visual clarity (although I wish it had an amber LCD). The photo has a bright light source from the left, so the 32Sii isn't looking its best, but I think it's better than DM32 mainly because the bold font on the DM32 has a soft smeared edge. The typography of the 32's and 48GX has crispness as well as weight. It's hard to tell if the soft typography on the DM32 is because of the printing process or font choice (maybe the photograph exaggerates the softness, as it's heavily processed).

The other thing that's worth mentioning is that the typographic colour scheme of the 48GX works really well with the overall design. And much as mine doesn't have the white LCD so many desire, it's still high contrast, and the green LCD works really well against the calculator industrial design (the colour scheme of the 48GX appears to be informed by the industrial design choice of the green LCD).

The design choices edge those of the 48S/SX, where the casing and LCD colours aren't as complimentary. IMO the 48GX is the best 'interface' design of the RPL series of calculators. I love the 50g faceplate, but it's the entry point to such a wide breadth of functionality (the CAS specifically), it suffers from "can't see the wood for the trees" syndrome. Not when you're using it daily, but at a glance after a break, it takes time to acclimatise. The 32Sii is just as busy, but the major difference is that in general you get what you see on the label (to paraphrase the Ronseal advertising). If the 48S/SX had an amber LCD (which were manufactured at the time), I'd probably prefer the design to the 48G/GX design, based purely on aesthetic criteria. The GX is that perfect balance between simplicity and complexity, it will always be my ultimate HP calculator.

The biggest problems with the 32Sii with the 48GX colour palette is that it's inconsiderate regarding the overall industrial design. Subtle differences can have major consequences.

Many in the thread are far closer to HP in the past and SwissMicros now than I. My options are based on my profession (I'm a creative/design strategist, or a UX professional in modern lingo) and they're just that - opinions. I don't have an agenda and will purchase a 43 or 47 when they're available (I like the ergonomic design choices of the 43, but I'm emotionally attracted to the 47 for a variety of reasons). And as I've mentioned elsewhere, a 48 on SwissMicros hardware is my ultimate desire.

[jonmoore]

I've just noticed that my 32Sii was built in 1996, but in Indonesia. So going by what Eric states, my 32Sii is of a lesser manufacturing quality. My 32S, by comparison, was built in the USA, and I've always read that USA manufacturing was best.

[J-F Garnier]

I'm reacting to a discussion started elsewhere, but since it's more about the history of the HP 32SII rather than the new DM32, I'm posting here:

rprosperi Wrote:

Aardwolf Wrote:Imho, if not a complex data type, at least just support the left-out functions the same way as now: it makes no sense that x^y is supported but e.g. x^2 is not.

It would totally not be feature creep to support it for inverse trig, hyperbolics and their inverses, sqrt, x^2, 10^x, log10(x), abs, etc..., if anything it feels more like feature creep to implement an error message for those instead of just returning x^2 if you already have x^y implemented, and have the user guess which ones are supported and which not (like, trig is supported but inverse trig not? why?)

The 32Sii was designed primarily for High School students, and although clearly usable for some college and even some working engineers, HP chose to not over-complicate the 32Sii's UI design by adding in 10-20 more functions; the keyboard and UI is already quite full. If a user needed such features, other models were available which offered richer feature sets like these.

(emphasis of mine)

Looking at the HP 32SII box of the time (1994), it's perfectly clear that HP was targetting technical professionals, with five times the word "engineering" on the box:





Indeed, the 32S and 32SII were my preferred tools at work, especially in the lab (I'm an EE).
The larger LCD was much more readable than the 42S, or the 48SX that I owned at the time too.

About the already "over-complicate the 32Sii's UI design", it was a deliberate choice of HP to introduce a 2nd shift key and a more complicate keyboard (relative to the 32S/42S), to increase the "perceived value".

Watch for instance the presentation by Eric Vogel: Reengineering the HP 32S, HHC 1991 who clearly explains it:
videos.hpcalc.org
with the same kind of discussion that we have 30 years later, between marketing (now SM) vs R&D (now, the 32SII users asking for more features

J-F

[DA74254]

(05-29-2023 02:05 PM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  ...
J-F

Quoting you only to get your attention.
This is the second post of you in this topic where you link to pictures from the domain "jeffcalc".
They don't show here, but a workaround is to quote your post and copy the image address directly and open in new tab/window.
I suspect linking to a site without https might be the reason this happens.

[rprosperi]

Ok, ok, I give!!!!! A little.

Sure, the HP packaging says all that, but by the time the 32SII was introduced, many far superior machines (28C, 28S, 42S, 48SX) had been for sale for some time, in some cases for years, most of which included the mentioned additional features.

The 32Sii came out (Mar '91) exactly when calculator usage was exploding in schools, and despite the packaging, etc. I've always been convinced the real target was schools, though too early for core positioning it that way. At the time, I worked at Sharp in the group that did calculators and PDA's, etc. and I can assure you it was carried by all the educational distributors (who typically are ahead of the manufacturers about demand) and sold in those markets (often criticized as "too pricey").

Most Engineers I knew at the time would be getting the highest end machines available, not a mid-range, but it surely is true that some folks have budget constraints, more modest needs, etc. I never considered getting a lower end machine for a more readable LCD - a point I've overlooked - but I suspect most buyers were not as well-informed.

And I agree about the UI - HP un-buried the well thought-out menu structure of the 32S to deliberately make the 32Sii look more fuller featured (this after complaints from their sales guys that competitor's models "looked more powerful and a better value" due to their busier keyboard designs). With the philosophy of all Fns being directly accessible, there's simply no room left on the keyboard, though of course some of those mentioned are simply over-loading existing Fn labels for Complex use.

Anyhow, I think the points still stand - If you need high power, then buy a high-powered (and not coincidentally more expensive) model. It does not seem confusing to me, nor a mistake. HP was doing this to make money, the fact that we all became fan boys is a (nice) side-effect, and leads to endless "why didn't they also include this or that?" discussions, even 30+ years later...

[Steve Simpkin]

On a similar feature request, since this is a re-write with new code, I am hoping the Equation Solver on the DM32 will be a bit less complicated to use than the one on the HP 32SII. As an example, the HP 32SII solver can use two initial guesses provided by the user to help solve an equation. For these two guesses the solver uses the current value in the X register and the current value of the unknown variable. In many of the solvers for other HP models, these guesses are often optional. In some very simple cases on the HP 32SII, *both* guesses are mandatory or the solver will fail immediately with a math error. For example, try to solve the following equation for X.

Y=1÷X

If you do not supply a non-zero value in the X register *and* in the variable X (two guesses), the solver will immediately return a "DIVIDE BY 0" error with no results from the solver. The solvers in many other HP models that have an equation solver (HP-48, HP-27S, HP 35S, etc) will solve this problem correctly with no guesses at all. I realize the ROM space in the HP 32SII may have been too limited to make the solver more robust and less reliant on guesses but this rewrite has the capacity to do better.

[ijabbott]

(05-29-2023 04:29 PM)DA74254 Wrote:  

(05-29-2023 02:05 PM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  ...
J-F

Quoting you only to get your attention.
This is the second post of you in this topic where you link to pictures from the domain "jeffcalc".
They don't show here, but a workaround is to quote your post and copy the image address directly and open in new tab/window.

A workaround in Google Chrome (at least on my Linux system) is to right click on the broken image and select the "Open image in new tab" option.

Quote:I suspect linking to a site without https might be the reason this happens.

Agreed. Another option may be to use an image proxy service such as https://wsrv.nl/

Testing:



EDIT:

Yet another option would be for Jeff to his site up to use free SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt on his site.

[Steve Simpkin]

Over on the SwissMicros DM32 forum area, rawi posted a speed test of the DM32 compared to the DM42. It is pretty impressive how fast the DM32 is. He used the following test program (DM42 version shown).

01 LBL "TEST"
02 0
03 STO 00
04 STO 01
05 LBL 01
06 SIN
07 E^X
08 STO+ 00
09 1
10 STO+ 01
11 7200
12 RCL 01
13 X<Y?
14 GTO 01
15 RCL 00
16 RTN

The details and results are in his post at the following link.
https://forum.swissmicros.com/viewtopic....336#p27336

[Steve Simpkin]

(06-09-2023 01:22 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Over on the SwissMicros DM32 forum area, rawi posted a speed test of the DM32 compared to the DM42. It is pretty impressive how fast the DM32 is. He used the following test program (DM42 version shown).

01 LBL "TEST"
02 0
03 STO 00
04 STO 01
05 LBL 01
06 SIN
07 E^X
08 STO+ 00
09 1
10 STO+ 01
11 7200
12 RCL 01
13 X<Y?
14 GTO 01
15 RCL 00
16 RTN

The details and results are in his post at the following link.
https://forum.swissmicros.com/viewtopic....336#p27336

The DM32 takes about 8 seconds to run this test (on battery or USB power).
The DM42 takes about 25 seconds on battery or 10 seconds on USB power.

For reference, a real HP-32SII takes a bit over 15 minutes for this test.

It took my HP 35S 138 seconds to reach a count of 720. So the full count of 7200 for this test would take approximately 1380 seconds or about 23 minutes to complete. That 6502 CPU core on the HP 35S was really working hard for this test

[Valentin Albillo]

(06-09-2023 11:29 PM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  [quote='Steve Simpkin' pid='173745' dateline='1686273733']
[...]
08 STO+ 00
09 1
10 STO+ 01
11 7200
[...]
It took my HP 35S 138 seconds to reach a count of 720. So the full count of 7200 for this test would take approximately 1380 seconds or about 23 minutes to complete. [...]

The HP35S treats literal constants in programs as equations, which are parsed anew every time they're encountered while running the loop, which will be slow as molasses. Simply store them constants in, say, register 05 and 06 before running the test and change the program steps to 09 RCL 05 and 11 RCL 06 and the test should run appreciably faster.

You know, this is but one more "endearing feature", among many other such imbecilities. A very very flawed calc which could and should have been awesome

V.

[Steve Simpkin]

Valentin,
Making that change reduced the time of my HP 35S test from 138 seconds to 82 seconds for a count of 720. This would make the full 7200 count take about 13.67 minutes instead of 23. A huge improvement!
Thank you for that insight, Valentin

Edit: After additional testing I believe the improved time I recorded above was not quite as good as I thought. The best I can now achieve with the HP 35S is 100 seconds for a count of 720 or approximately 16.67 minutes for the full count of 7200. This is slightly faster than a HP-32SII. Here is the final test code that I used for the HP 35S.

Setup:
1
STO C
7200
STO D

Code:
T001▸LBL T
T002 0
T003 STO A
T004 STO B
T005▸SIN
T006 E↑X
T007 STO+ A
T008 RCL C
T009 STO+ B
T010 RCL D
T011 RCL B
T012 X<Y?
T013 GTO T005
T014 RCL A
T015 RTN

[TI89]

The DM32 does calculate wrong
1/3+5/6=1 1/3
It is solved with current firmware update.

[Hans S.]

(05-26-2023 11:39 AM)Boub65 Wrote:  If you want to :
2) loose the confidence of long time customers
You can't do better !

Let this not be about slaughtering Swiss-Micros. But I can only second the tendency of this post.
The good thing about Swiss-Micros: The DM 42 was my first RPN machine. DM 10 L, 11 L, 15 L and 41 L followed. The 10 L is dying of screen death right now. The 41 L is almost unusable because of the Voyager case. Meanwhile, the prices at Swiss Micros are such that I don't want to follow. A positive thing about Swiss Micros is that it made me aware of Hewlett-Packard's classic calculators. I won't buy anything from Swiss Micros anymore. Above all, what? In the meantime, they seem to feed mainly on handicraft projects.

So it came as it had to come, I now own some of the originals, starting with the HP 45, then HP 28 S, via HP 32 s and Hp 42 s to hp 48 SX, 48 Gm 48 G+, 49, up to two 50g (which I still got for about USD). Three Prime also belong to the herd. One 15 C CE I ordered, and one 12 C Platinum is also still there. And my conclusion is: No matter what gymnastics Swiss Micros will still do, the keyboards remain miles behind the originals. And unfortunately I have to say, for me this is a very significant difference that, apart from the reasons mentioned, will keep me from buying any new Swiss Micros product.

Best regards,

Hans

[Joe Horn]

(07-16-2023 10:28 AM)TI89 Wrote:  The DM32 does calculate wrong
1/3+5/6=1 1/3
It is solved with current firmware update.

I strongly suspect that you had /c set to 3 and didn't know it, because I cannot replicate that error using any firmware version. If you're sure that it was a firmware bug, please share the firmware version number which contained that bug so that it can be verified.