TICKS incorrect on my 48SX?

[jbhp55]

My HP48SX never returns a number over 4096 for TICKS. However, the clock time and date are fine. Is there a setting, or is this a sign something is wrong? Has anyone seen this before? The serial nr is 3109S00371.

[Brad Barton]

I've never had this problem, but TICKS is supposed to return a rather large binary integer equal to the system time. Are you using the command available in the TIME menu, or are you typing out the command?

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Check your word size. RCWS probably will return 12. Change it to 16 or greater, up to 64:

16 STWS

[Brad Barton]

This is a great tip Gerson. I like how changing the word size automatically updates the results in the stack. They must be stored somewhere in full precision, because it up-samples values recorded under smaller word size settings.

It also makes elapsed time calculations much simpler. Thanks!

Brad

[jbhp55]

Thank You, Gerson!

This had solved my problem. I suspected it might be something like this, but there are clearly many more settings than are selected by flags.
I'm gladit wasn't a problem in the hardware.

Best regards,

Jaap.

[Dave Britten]

(03-13-2016 04:02 PM)Brad Barton Wrote:  This is a great tip Gerson. I like how changing the word size automatically updates the results in the stack. They must be stored somewhere in full precision, because it up-samples values recorded under smaller word size settings.

It also makes elapsed time calculations much simpler. Thanks!

Brad

The word size is mostly just a display setting, though I believe it may affect the behavior of shift/rotate operations, and interpretation of negative numbers.

Contrast this with the 16C, where numbers are only stored and manipulated with as many bits as specified.

[jbhp55]

In my case the elapsed time calculations went wrong, as soon as the elapsed time was more than 0.5 s. It seems the conversion B->R uses only the number in the stack, so if wordsize is 12, the resulting real is also never bigger than 4096. The stopwatch from the One Minute Marvels, for instance, does not work in that case.
I wonder why the previous owner had set the wordsize to 12.