Have you used your calculator for something that was not really math related?

[Garth Wilson]

(03-09-2017 07:22 AM)pier4r Wrote:  Thanks for sharing, interesting read. One question though, has the 41cv got a busy wait to compute expired time, like the hp 50g? If yes, how do you limit the battery usage?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Originally I was getting a couple of years on a set of alkaline batteries, except when the 41 was being used for production testing all day every day. During that time, the batteries would last maybe a couple of months; and the program tested the low-battery flag at the beginning of each headset test and if it found the flag true (meaning the low-battery warning in the display was also on), it would beep and stop and tell the operator to change the batteries, and then would turn itself off after a few seconds to see the message. That way they couldn't just keep procrastinating until the batteries leaked. After I got the double extended memory module, the battery life dropped from two years of my regular usage to six or eight months.

Regardless, you could also have your program watch the run time if you wanted to limit it. The 41cx has the time module and extra time functions built in. It can also set multiple alarms of different types, which can turn the calc back on when it's time to do something. One of many things I've used that feature for was to test battery life. I set up eight or so batteries of different types (NiCd, alkaline, carbon-zinc, zinc chloride) with the typical load that one of our products presented, then have the calc wake itself up every half hour and read the voltage of each battery and print the line with all eight and the elapsed time, and put itself back to sleep. I let it run all weekend while I was gone. I could have still used the calc during that time, as long as its HPIL was still connected to the data-acquisition unit when the times came due to take the next set of readings.