43s status

[Bill (Smithville NJ)]

(08-25-2015 07:58 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(08-25-2015 02:06 AM)John Smitherman Wrote:  The 43s should follow Thomas Okken's lead with Free 42 - run the software on hardware that others provide.

This is OK in addition to hardware intended for the original 43S concept, but certainly not instead of.

Many of us will hang in there...

Hi Bob,

Well, it's been a long long long time of "Hanging in there". The 43S was mentioned back in a 2005 post and the feature set and keyboard layout has been hashed to death.

I will repeat what I have previously posted:

From Sept 2014:

Quote:Well, I've been waiting since Nov 2005. I'll believe in it, if and when I ever see an emulator for it. Forget waiting for the hardware. Just give me an emulator for it and I'll be happy.

Meanwhile, I'll use what I actually have and not worry about what might be someday.

From Dec 2014:

Quote:I have been following this project as well as others for some time.

It seems to me that the main reason most of these projects never materialize is that they are hung up on how to produce the proper platform - this being a piece of hardware with keys and screens.

I always wonder why the other approach was not taken. Start with an existing platform (namely the cell phone), create an emulator of the desired product, debug it on the emulator and move it to a "proper" hardware platform when it becomes feasible to do so in the future. It would have the benefit of having created something now as opposed to only dreaming about it.

I realize that this is an outrageous idea for many people.

But many hardware/software projects in the past have been bootstrapped in this way. I have read where some of the minicomputers were developed/debugged with software emulators long before there was any hardware for the software. That way the software was ready to implement when the hardware did become available.

In my view, a working cell phone version that I can use today will always beat out a vaporware, pie in the sky version that I might be able to use in xxx years, if ever.

Just one man's opinion.

From January 2015:

Quote:For goodness sake, just pick a keyboard layout and move on with the design.

And one other item - when will there be an emulator so that we can start playing around with the actual code that will execute whenever a key is pressed on this "perfect" and "optimum" keyboard? To me executable code is the most important part. An "optimum" keyboard without any code is pretty useless.

So the question is: Does the calculator software ONLY get written after the hardware is settled, or has the software already been written and is waiting on the hardware?

Sounds like the "Which came first: the Chicken or the Egg?"

I do NOT feel that having an emulated version of the 43S in any way distracts from a future hardware version. In fact, it might enhance the finished hardware project since any problem areas can be worked out before placing it in hardware.

And, for the few of us that don't mind emulations, we can be enjoying the feature set and providing feed back to the developers.

Bill
Smithville, NJ