Sparcom General Chemistry Application Pac

[mfelzien]

Hi everyone,

Still love the HP calculators I've purchased. I use to use an HP 48gx with the General chemistry pac from Sparcom. I loved the program, it was great for solving underspedificed chemistry problems that always come up. I find myself now aday using my 50g much more, it's just faster.

Does anyone know of the programming code is available, what happened to sparcom and their code? Would love to see this on the 50g. I know large parts may have been written in assembly langugage, but they really got that software RIGHT, and I miss it's functionality. Would it be possible to get the code and recompile on HP 50g?? I like the periodic table, (which was taken from the pac) for the new hp50g, but the solving of chemistry problems was great. Does anyone else have recollection of this, and have a working solution for a 50g. I keep thinking of perhaps using an equation solver, and inputing the under-defined equation sets to be solved. Anyone have contacts or people who might know where to obtain the code, or purchase?

Thanks everyone.

-M

[MattGreer]

You ever get an answer to this?

[Eric Rechlin]

Unfortunately, Sparcom is no more. It eventually was renamed to da Vinci, and then totally disappeared, and I have not seen any indication that its assets were acquired by any other company (though I welcome any corrections if I am wrong). The owner was Megha Shyam, who I just found out died recently. He was well into his 80s as I recall; I had the pleasure of meeting him at HHC 1999.

I don't know where their code is now. For the Chemistry pack (both Applications and Reference), I do have a scan of the manuals and downloads of the ROM images here, but no source code:

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1393

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1394

If someone is adventurous, maybe it could be reverse-engineered and ported to the 50g.

[jonmoore]

(06-05-2023 03:36 AM)Eric Rechlin Wrote:  Unfortunately, Sparcom is no more. It eventually was renamed to da Vinci, and then totally disappeared, and I have not seen any indication that its assets were acquired by any other company (though I welcome any corrections if I am wrong). The owner was Megha Shyam, who I just found out died recently. He was well into his 80s as I recall; I had the pleasure of meeting him at HHC 1999.

I don't know where their code is now. For the Chemistry pack (both Applications and Reference), I do have a scan of the manuals and downloads of the ROM images here, but no source code:

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1393

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/1394

If someone is adventurous, maybe it could be reverse-engineered and ported to the 50g.

Hi Eric, I hadn't realised that you have the associated ROM data with the documentation of products such as the Sparcom ROMs. Is this something that's relatively universal for all the data cards that are no longer available? If so, and this is just an idea, I don't know how achievable it is (of even if you've already done it). Would it be possible to create connections between the main hpcalc.org database and the literature database? That way the 48 enthusiast could more easily locate the data card listing via searches from both https://literature.hpcalc.org/ and https://www.hpcalc.org/hp48/.

Whatever the answer, your meticulous efforts to create a permanent history of (primarily) the 48 series, and the wider HP calculator software smorgasbord continues to amaze me. I really hope the God's of Calculator Engineering look favourably upon you, and ensure your proverbial crops grow well.

[gege]

If you are interested by other card for the HP48, I shared the ones I was able to recover with the documentation.
https://mega.nz/folder/c8N0wbzS#lTzpYl9ewyBSuIBjQq9v_w

And if you have one not listed feel free to share if you want.

[jonmoore]

(06-05-2023 08:42 AM)gege Wrote:  If you are interested by other card for the HP48, I shared the ones I was able to recover with the documentation.
https://mega.nz/folder/c8N0wbzS#lTzpYl9ewyBSuIBjQq9v_w

And if you have one not listed feel free to share if you want.

Thanks so much. That's a bountiful collection to explore.

[MattGreer]

(06-05-2023 08:42 AM)gege Wrote:  If you are interested by other card for the HP48, I shared the ones I was able to recover with the documentation.
https://mega.nz/folder/c8N0wbzS#lTzpYl9ewyBSuIBjQq9v_w

And if you have one not listed feel free to share if you want.

You are the real hero my friend. This is amazing. Thank you!!

[gege]

Thank you.
And a big Thank You to all those who sharing their cards, it's not easy to find new ones.

[acapde]

Hi,

I finally ported the old Sparcom General Chemistry App to run on HP50G.

This is a preliminary version, some more work is needed.

The libraries can be downloaded from here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao3jLWtpNA02gZcVdwKD...Q?e=OaobnM
The 4 libraries should be installed, I tested on port 2 but any port should work.

Some known issues I haven't had the chance to tackle yet:
1) When navigating the menus, the up/down arrow autorepeat feature is not working... you can still move by item or page. "Search" does work too.
2) When a line of text is too long to fit, it fails to add the ellipsis at the end (in normal size text), it works with the tiny font (regardless, to view the entire line you can use the [=] key (RS +/-))
3) Plotting with units doesn't work. This problem seems to be related to modifications done by HP to the original HP48 plotting routines when the HP49 was born, it looks like they messed up the handling of units. As a temporary workaround, you can easily remove units before plotting (in this case the app uses SI units).

I had to carry out several modifications to make it run, and it's very (I mean very) likely that I have broken things that were already working, so simply drop me a line if something is not behaving.

Best regards.

PS: GC manual can be found here https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ao3jLWtpNA02gZcW7jaB...w?e=IvmMlU

[Hiwi]

Hi,
i found as a download a collection of many cards for the HP48. Sparcom, Calculus and others.

The libs and the manuals are included.

It was possible to install the libs for testing in emu48.

Some cards, that is the HP41 emulator, the Hackers rom etc. have no libs but an rom image as bin file.

The HP41 emulator pack includes a version for a GX.

The doc says it was made with CARDUPL. I tried to upload the bins with CARDWW on a real HP48 to #2. And to emu48 prior converting it with ROM2EMU.EXE, attaching the bin to port 2.

The result is always the same:

After downloading to a real HP48 or starting the emu48 i have a boot loop. I have to reset (take out the batteries) the HP.

So how can I install the bin rom images?

Ralf

[acapde]

Hi Ralph,

Regarding the pacs with *.bin libraries, with the emulator I load (Edit -> Load Object) the file(s) corresponding to the pac to the stack and then do 0 (or the port number you wish) STO, finally ON-C to attach the library (with the emulator running on a PC, I press Esc and F3 key at the sane time). You can do one library at the time (if the pacs is composed of several libraries) or, I assume, all at once.

As for the ROM images, I had to use a more elaborated approach that I can't remember exactly off the top of my head right know, but I'll try it later and post it here if I can repeat it... or maybe someone else knows a simple way to accomplish it.

Hope this helps.

[acapde]

This is what I did with the Celestial Navigation Pac that was a ROM image, I wrote a simple BASIC program that modifies the original file, it separates each byte in two nibbles (of course, you can use whatever language you feel comfortable with)

Code:


REM This is a QB64 routine that changes HP48 dump format, from usual two nibbles/byte to one nibble/byte
REM Example: 62 2b b0 -> 02 06 0b 02 00 0b
REM the source should be called nav.bin, the destination nav2.bin or change the names and length below.   


Dim A%%, B%%
Open "nav.bin" For Binary As #1
Open "nav2.bin" For Binary As #2
For n = 1 To 131072
    Get #1, , A%%
    B%% = A%% And &H0F
    Put #2, , B%%
    A%% = (A%% And &HF0) / &H10   REM: shift original byte one nibble to the right
    Put #2, , A%%
Next n
Close 1, 2

Then you should go to the emulator (file/settings/memory) and point port2 file to your converted file, probably it shouldn't matter but I'd mark it nonwritable. Finally do a ON-C to attach.

Hope it works for you.

[Hiwi]

Hi,
yes this was helpful.
Installing bins with hp or lib suffix is also possible with drag and drop.

Now the Hackers Rom and others could be installed without any problems.
Ataching the bin file trough settinngs / memory works.

Before, the bin file must be expanded. Yes your script does it. In Chritoph Giesslinks package CARDUPL there is the ROM2EMU.exe included which does exactly the same.

The HP41CV emulation bin files do not work. There must be something different or they are corrupt.

You can find the link to the collection here and try it out:

https://tiplanet.org/forum/search.php?au...6&sr=posts

Ralf

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(08-16-2023 07:43 AM)Hiwi Wrote:  You can find the link to the collection here and try it out:

https://tiplanet.org/forum/search.php?au...6&sr=posts

Ralf

Ahem...

[gege]

Hello,

(08-13-2023 05:37 PM)acapde Wrote:  I finally ported the old Sparcom General Chemistry App to run on HP50G.

@acapde, can I add it to my shared rom collection?

[acapde]

(08-16-2023 07:43 AM)Hiwi Wrote:  In Chritoph Giesslinks package CARDUPL there is the ROM2EMU.exe included which does exactly the same.

Ralf

Hi Ralf,

Glad it helped! I had missed the ROM2EMU.exe utility already included, I will use it from now on.
Thank you for the pac collection link as well.

Best regards.

[acapde]

(08-16-2023 08:30 AM)gege Wrote:  Hello,

@acapde, can I add it to my shared rom collection?

Of course, that will be nice. I'm already working on some improvements regarding plotting with units. Hope I have a new version soon.

In case you are interested, I had improved the Celestial Navigation Pac, it runs error free on HP49/50 now. This is the link: https://www.hpcalc.org/details/9406

Thank you! Have a good day.

[Eric Rechlin]

(08-16-2023 07:43 AM)Hiwi Wrote:  The HP41CV emulation bin files do not work. There must be something different or they are corrupt.

Is the file here corrupt too? Or is this the one you were using?

https://literature.hpcalc.org/items/485

[acapde]

Hi Eric,

I personally don't see any corrupted file, both .bin files work on the emulated HP48SX (port 2) and none run on the HP48GX (port 2). I found this old post (from 18 years ago!) https://comp.sys.hp48.narkive.com/0iKT7U...ulator-rom that indicates that, on the GX, it must be installed on port 1.

BTW, nice scanned manual!

[Hiwi]

Hi,
the files for the HP41CV emulator are not corrupt, they work as expected. Use #2 or #1 CARDWW on HP48SX and #1 CARDWW on a GX. (Thanks to acapde)
On the PC I send the files with TeraTerm using XModem.
Ralf