The never-released HP-72S / HP-74S - the successors of the HP-71B

[J-F Garnier]

(04-02-2021 08:04 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  Qucik Feedback#1 - Emu72/72S crashes when I do almost anything using 72S/1024 version. It initially comes on, displays the ">" prompt and the cursor blinks, so I shut off to add modules via the Port Config dialog. I add a 32K RAM module to port-0 and HP-IL (I assume using the standard HP-IL ROM) to port-6, then save config. When I then power-on, the prompt ">" appears, but no cursor; I must then press [ON] twice to get a blinking cursor.

From there, VER$ works, MEM shows 66092, but CAT crashes immediately, as does any activity which needs more than the 1st line of the LCD.

The 800x600 version seems to be more stable, however I see nothing in the 2nd line.

I'm testing on Win7-Pro x64.

I'll try some more tomorrow, but wanted to get you some feedback as early as possible. Please suggest some things to try that may reveal more about the issues.

I built emu72 with tools probably not as up-to-date as Christoph's tools, so emu72 may not be as stable as emu71 in all environments. However, I tested emu72 on my W2k dev machine and my every-day W10-64 bit laptop and they work fine, although I had a few crashes when switching kml scripts.
Please consider version 0.9 as a beta version for tests.

Keep in mind that when you first plug the HP-IL, you have to press ON a couple of times to recover the broken loop situation and do OFF IO or DISPLAY IS * to avoid the problem.
It was a bad choice to have the HP-IL display enabled by default and this is something I would like to improve in a possible HPIL 1C.

Also keep in mind the HP-72S 2-line LCD is actually one 44-character line folded into two parts, so you will see something on the 2nd line if the display exceeds 22 characters.
The HP-74S has a true 44-character line display.

(04-02-2021 09:46 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  So if a 71B KML is opened in EMU72 we get a 71B+?

Yes !

Quote:What happens if you load the 3eeee firmware into the SYSRAM of your FRAM71B?

The 3eeee ROM will work fine in HP-71 emulators and even in a real HP-71B, although the 2nd part of the LCD is not present, so you will have to do WINDOW 1,22 to limit the display. Also the 3eeee is missing the card reader code (to make room for all the improvements) but that's not a problem if you have the FRAM71 installed.
(3eeee is a test version and doesn't have the proper checksums yet)

J-F