News from Swiss Micros

[Eric Rechlin]

(05-31-2021 11:34 AM)Dave Britten Wrote:  My memory is a bit hazy, but isn't there a pure-Saturn version of the 49g/50g ROM for use with emulators?

The 50g ROM *is* pure Saturn, just with a few Saturn+ instructions patched into it (post compilation -- to make a 50g ROM you compile a pure Saturn ROM that can actually run on the original 49G, and then run a script to patch a few bytes here and there to swap in Saturn+ instructions and patch the checksums so it validates, to optimize it for the 50g's Saturnator, and then concatenate on the Saturnator/KinpoOS blob).

It might not make sense for a hypothetical "DM50" to simulate the 50g's hardware and run the whole 50g firmware including the Saturnator with KinpoOS, because that's additional overhead. Instead I think it would make more sense to just use a new Saturn emulator (perhaps even supporting the same Saturn+ instructions) that would run on the DM50 OS and emulate the 50g/49g+/48gII/49G.

I still see zero reason for SwissMicros to release a (presumably emulated) Saturn-based platform unless it is to recreate an RPL model, because for the RPN models, a much better user experience (faster operation and fewer quirks) would be provided by simply adapting code from either the WP 34S or Free42 to make a clean-slate simulation of any RPN model rather than trying to emulate an HP ROM, especially when there is no clear legal right to use an HP ROM. Also, I highly doubt that SwissMicros would be able to get through the bureaucracy of HP Legal (which is far more difficult than it used to be) to get a piece of paper that unambiguously says they have the right to use the HP ROM. The Saturn-based models (which for the most part means the Pioneer series) are not like the Voyager series where the ROM is not actually under any copyright, which is why they have no problem with the existing DM machines. And only for the RPL models does it seem like it might be worth it to have buyers go through the gymnastics of manually obtaining and installing a ROM.