More about math, calculators, RPN and programming

[walter b]

Since my most favourite super moderator told me today (in his irresistibly open way of communication*) I wrote too less about said topics, please allow me to point to

1. this,
2. this,
3. this, and
4. this (a total of over 800 pages), as well as
5. nearly 40 attachments on this forum, downloaded more than 10 300 times by the community so far.
   

I must admit I can hardly compete with him. Luckily I don't have to.

d:-)

* We observe a conflict management which, as an intelligent former US-American boss of me used to say decades ago, is "management by seagulls" (he meant something different to what you find in Wikipedia about a similar term now). Such methods were unseen in the old forum.

[robert rozee]

take a deep breath everyone, and think of your happy places!

i've actually been following the 43S thread with interest, and the lamenting of the lack of progress. here seems as good a place as any to put forward a few ideas.

we've seen a credit-card sized HP-25 emulator built using quite minimal hardware, and swiss micros are shipping their tiny HP-41 reinterpretation. the level of interest in both on the forums suggests to me that perhaps the time is ripe to look at someone doing a run of 'homebrew' HP-42S calculators.

the same keyboard solution as used on Chris Chung's "HP-25C Eumulator". a standard 1602 LCD module for the display (16x2 characters, HD44780 based). 2xAA cells for power directly to processor and LCD module. a PIC32MX170F256B (28-pin DIP package) to run it all, with 256k flash and 64k RAM on board. and running Free-42 as the calculator firmware.

i reckon that minimal additional components would be required beyond PIC32, display module, and keyboard switches. the processor has it's own on-board clock generation and around 20 spare I/O pins to connect to everything. the keyboard could be charlieplexed if needsbe to save pins.

comments?

cheers,
rob :-)

[walter b]

Hmmh, I wonder whether you wanted to post that in the "43s status" thread instead? Looks more fitting IMHO.

d:-?

[robert rozee]

no, no... the posting was made to the intended place. it was a quite deliberate attempt at distraction to defuse any reactions from 'others' to your posting and shift the subject to something non-contentious.

rob :-)