Base Conversion & Logical Operations: Prime vs. 28S/28GX/50g on EASE OF USE

[Dave Britten]

(08-17-2018 09:08 AM)Didier Lachieze Wrote:  The Prime is not a RPL calculator, so number entry and manipulation is quite different but here is how you can do the same operations as in the video on the Prime (assuming default base in settings is Hex):

• Enter hexa FE: press [Shift][3] [Alpha][F] [Alpha][E] [ENTER] => you get #FEh in the history
• Now select it and press [Shift][Base], you see the number in different bases : hex, dec, binary, you can manipulate this integer number (shift left, shift right ..) and choose the output base format
• Enter bin 11101: press [Shift][3] 11101 [Alpha][Shift][b] [ENTER] => you get #11101b in the history
• Select it and with [Shift][Base], you can convert it to hex for example
• to do an XOR with these two numbers, press the toolbox key, select [Catlg] and press [B] [I] [T] to go the list of Bitwise functions, select BITXOR (next time you open the catalog you’ll go back to these functions)
• double press on #FEh in the history, press [,], double press #11101b in the history and press enter, you get the result in the default base: #E3h
• Now that we have these different integer numbers in the history we can convert them easily, for example press on #11101b on the left side of the screen, press [Shift][Base] and press on the Base soft key and OK, the number in the history is now in octal
• do the same with the #11101b on the right side of the screen and convert it to hex
• and you can also convert the XOR result to binary in the same way
  
  

So the Prime Base support is pretty extensive, the interaction is different from the RPL models but it’s quite powerful. Try it and get accustomed with the way the Prime works. The [Shift][Base] is good for number exploration in different bases as it shows different representations of the same number in different bases on the same screen which could be good for students learning how numbers are represented in different bases.

(note: post edited to add more than the 5 attachments allowed on the forum and fix typos)

For the sake of comparison, here's how you do it on an old Casio fx-6300g, one of the early "no menus, everything is on the keyboard" models:

• Switch to Base-n, hex mode: [Mode] [-] [Hex] [EXE]
• Enter 0xFE: FE [EXE]
• Convert to decimal: [Dec] [EXE] ...Or octal: [Oct] [EXE] ...Or binary: [Bin] [EXE]
• Switch to binary mode, enter 0b11101: [Bin] [EXE] 11101
• Convert to Hex: [Hex] [EXE]
• Xor the result with 0xFE: [Shift] [xor] FE [EXE]
  

It has a certain elegant simplicity to it. When working with other number bases, these are all basic operations, and I don't want to have to go digging through menus for them any more than I would y^x or log in standard decimal math mode. They shouldn't be any more than just a shift key away, and I definitely don't like systems that require you to put a special prefix/suffix on every numeric entry (#, in the case of the Prime and the 48).