(41cx) Mancala Board Game (42s, 35s)

[Dieter]

(05-10-2016 07:19 PM)brianddk Wrote:  BTW anyone ever try the DM41L (*want*)? Does that run at HP41 speeds, or closer to V41 speeds?

I can't say anything about DM41L, but you can safely assume that V41 in Turbo mode is waaaaayyyyy faster. The latter essentially is an emulation of the original Nut CPU code on today's hardware (i.e. something working with roughly 3 GHz).

If you want a fast RPN calculator, get resp. make yourself a WP34s. It's also in a class of its own in terms of precision, accuracy and its huge function set.

(05-10-2016 07:19 PM)brianddk Wrote:  Wow.. I just realized that '4.0' uses more program memory than '4'. That really surprised me. I'll need to start looking at how opcodes and constants are stored.

Well, a "4" or "4.0" does not store the value of this number, it stores exactly what you typed. On an HP41 each character takes one byte, so 4.0 uses three bytes and -3.5E-17 requires eight.

The 35s is somewhat different. Numeric constants can take up to 37 bytes, and they noticeably slow down the calculator. That's why I try to avoid this kind of constants in my 35s programs, e.g. by prestoring 1 and 2 in two registers as the program initializes (which also has the advantage of RCL-arithmetics: instead of "1 +" or "2 x" you can use RCL+A resp. RCLxB, which is much faster and requires less memory). Even replacing a simple 1 by "π SGN", a 2 by "e IP" or a 3 by "π IP" usually is a good idea.

While we're at it: why did you use 10 and y^x several times instead of the faster and shorter 10^x command?

(05-10-2016 07:19 PM)brianddk Wrote:  In the meantime, can anyone speak to the 35s emulator speed -vs- the actual HW? Where they well aligned?

I can't say how the emulator controls its execution speed, and in how far this varies with the hardware it is used on. But I can say that my emulator, which is running on an old 1,5 GHz machine, matches the speed of my hardware 35s quite well.

Dieter