Question: history of HP 41c tones

[Monte Dalrymple]

The biggest problem is the fact that the high or low time of the signal driving the piezo element has to be a multiple of the instruction cycle time. This cycle time is nominally 155.6uS. So, for example TONE 9 has a three-instruction low and high time, giving a frequency of 1071Hz. TONE 8 has a four-instruction low and high time, giving a frequency of 803Hz. TONE 7 has a five-instruction low and high time, giving a frequency of 643Hz. These tones are individually coded. The remainder of the tones use a common routine to save code space. This common routine is 6+n instruction time long (for each phase of the piezo drive). And n is set by the TONE number as follows: TONE 6 has n=2, TONE 5 has n=4, and so on, down to TONE 0 with n=14. So, you could get better control at the low end of the frequency range, but it would take more code space. I guess that what they came up with was a reasonable compromise.

For 41CL users, try loading YFNX and then executing "41CL" Is what I was trying to do recognizable?

Monte