HP 38G: Bug List Definitive - 4 Bugs in Total

[Gerald H]

Edit: To cut a long story short, here are the in total four bugs found:

1 Programme Editor

The top programme in the Programme Catalog is AA & a programme EDO appears lower down in the list of programmes.
You decide to make a new programme EDO in the New Program input form, which then asks "Replace existing program EDO?". On answering "YES" the text of AA appears. After deleting this text & entering the new programme, you will find EDO is now blank & AA contains the new programme.

2 Implicit Multiplication

The calculator enjoys the facility of implicit multiplication, eg KLM is accepted for K*L*M, 3M for 3*M.
Questionable behaviour occurs with SIN, interpreted as S*I*N & SIN(X), understood as sine function of X.
The bug appears on multiplying two conformable lists or matrices or complex numbers, eg M1*M2 is calculated correctly but M1M2 becomes M*1*M2, Z1Z2Z3 becomes Z*1*Z*2*Z3.

Of interest to followers of HP's history - These two bugs remain in the 40G & 40gs but NOT in the 39gii.

3 Arc-cotangent

Whatever the mode setting for "Angular Measure" may be (Degrees, Radians or Grads) the arc-cotangent function ACOT returns the angle in radians.

4 Sequence Aplet Numeric Big

In Sequence Aplet numeric view set "BIG" display mode. If you then scroll down one entry the value displayed in column k > 1 will be Uk(1).

On scrolling down further you will see correct values, with the error rising on the screen. After the error rolls of the top of the screen, 4 up scrolls will make the CORRECT sequence number appear.

The error appears after every recalculation, eg jump (not scroll) to the 1000th row & then scroll down discovers Uk(1).


There now follows the original thread for your interest:


Does the 38G have any actual bugs?

The calculator itself is a collection of inconveniencies, but I don't know of any actual bugs. It could easily be that most users were so put off by the machine that they never got as far as finding a bug.

I ask as I use the 38G in my classes (mostly for sequence questions) as I invested some years ago in a heap of that model.

Students find the 38G ugly & old-fashioned but are somewhat consoled that more elegant calculators, eg the Prime, have less capability (notably in sequence app) & tons of bugs.

I'd be pleased to put together a list of reported bugs.