50g Random Turn ON

[Joe Horn]

This whole issue of the 50g turning itself on periodically was covered by Bill Wickes on page 622 of his book "HP 48 Insights, Part II". Pertinent excerpt from there:

Bill Wickes Wrote:The current time is encoded in HP 48 memory by means of a 52-bit RAM register and a 32-bit electronic counter. ... With 32 bits for the counter, the longest that the HP 48 can go without a time event is 2^31 ticks, slightly more than 3 days. That occurs when the HP 48 is turned off, and no alarms are scheduled within that time -- then the calculator wakes itself up just long enough to reschedule the next event time. Usually, all of this processing happens so fast that it is not noticeable.

Bottom line: Every HP 48/49/50 which is not awakened by something else will wake itself up every 3 days, 49 minutes, and 4 seconds, and then turn itself right back off. [Maybe the HP 28 too?]