ICON issue

[Tim Wessman]

And another note here, this is a side effect of the better files system underneath (the thing necessitating a format of the flash between last release and this one). Its tuned better for the flash chips, but apparently is a bit more aggressive with the optimizations to avoid writing as much.

Can you please report back if simply doing an on-off cycle resolves your problem?

[critor]

Thank you Cyrille (edit : and thank you Tim).

I've just tried :
- remove all programs
- reset
- load test01 to test05 programs
- turn off the calculator
- turn the calculator back on
- reset to clear the RAM
- press Shift+Mem (and wait)
- press Shift+Program
=> and I'm sorry but same problem : test02 to test05 programs get destroyed

So either I didn't process exactly like you, either you were lucky.

[Han]

What about turning the calc off prior to any reset? So remove all programs and turn off first. Then reset and load new programs.

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

Well, it definitely looks like I need to investiage further...

However, as was pointed earlier, ICON is definitely not the right tool for the job here... I would sugest using .jpeg files, it will be way more memory efficient and a much better fit for the system...
I assume that B&W jpeg would be the best from a memory standoint, but I might be wrong, PNG might be better.. you will have to investigate...

However, I wanted to point out that there is still a 2MB limit on app sizes. We might want to change this in the future. but 2MB of jpeg b&w can correspond to a lot of pages!

Cyrille

[critor]

Maybe I should open a new topic ?


I've got a huge problem now.
I was going on testing things with the latest firmware today.

So, I was transferring the same "test01.hpprgm" file shared some posts ago.
As soon as the tranfer did complete (so when the parsing starts?), this time my HP Prime turned off and I've been totally unable to turn it back on since then.
It looks completely dead...

I've tried removing the battery, using another battery, connecting the USB, holding the boot key combos (symb and F+C+O)...
Whatever I do, the screen remains off.

Did the random corruption this time affect some vital part of the NAND chip ?


Thanks.

[critor]

For information, I've managed to get a tiny little reaction from the calculator.

If I remove the battery, then when I connect the USB the screen turns on in white for less than a second, doesn't display anything, and then immediately turns back off.

From then, no other reaction by trying everyting already mentionned in the previous post.


Is there still anything than I can do for this calculator ?
Thank you very much.

[Terje Vallestad]

(04-26-2016 09:05 PM)critor Wrote:  For information, I've managed to get a tiny little reaction from the calculator.

If I remove the battery, then when I connect the USB the screen turns on in white for less than a second, doesn't display anything, and then immediately turns back off.

From then, no other reaction by trying everyting already mentionned in the previous post.


Is there still anything than I can do for this calculator ?
Thank you very much.

I thought I had bricked my calculator during the upgrade when it crashed 50% through.

Nothing seemed to get it back to life and I believe I tried all combinations I knew of and had read about at the forum. In the end by using the reset button through the hole at the back in combination with only the "Symb" button I got it into the "ready to update state". I had to try several times, holding the reset button for ten seconds etc. before it restarted.

You may have tried this as well, but just in case...

Cheers, Terje

[Tim Wessman]

(04-26-2016 09:05 PM)critor Wrote:  From then, no other reaction by trying everyting already mentionned in the previous post.

Hold down the SYMB button when connecting. Should put it in recovery mode. The start the connkit and it should be detected. As to how it might have happened - I don't know.

[critor]

Hi Tim and thank you for your reply.

I had already tried this in both previous posts.
Here is what I do :
- hold the reset button
- hold the Symb key
- release the reset button

The calculator doesn't turn on.

I've tried with and without the battery, and with and without the USB connected. No difference.

[critor]

So again, what can I do ?

I've never had a bricked calculator, I don't know who to contact.

If you don't understand at all what happened, maybe you'd like the calculator to be returned in a special way, in order to be able to check the NAND chip content, instead of it being immediately reflashed or destroyed depending upon your process.
That's why I'm asking here first.


Thanks for reading.

[Tim Wessman]

(04-27-2016 07:07 PM)critor Wrote:  If you don't understand at all what happened, maybe you'd like the calculator to be returned in a special way, in order to be able to check the NAND chip content, instead of it being immediately reflashed or destroyed depending upon your process.
That's why I'm asking here first.

Send an email. We would like to get it back to see what is going on. I sent you a pm.

[critor]

Thank you very much for your reply.
Here is a more comprehensive description.

Do you remember that when sending apps over 2MB with the previous 8151 firmware, the calculator was going crazy and triggering lots of menus or dialog boxes that I sometimes didn't know of ?
http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/archive/in...832-2.html (last post)
As if the rejected data over 2MB was directly written to the key buffer, or feeded to the CPU...
In this context the latest firmware doesn't seem to behave like this anymore, and just shows a memory error message, but it might be related to something below.

Before the last problem happened, I've experienced various strange behaviours last week with the latest firmware, when sending relatively small programs similar to the 'test01' shared some posts ago (so much less than 2MB).
When a program transfer did complete, the calculator would either :
- behave as expected (most of the times)
- freeze
- corrupt some programs like already described
- immediately turn off (but I could still turn it back on)
- start triggering random dialog boxes like above (but much fewer)
- immediately turn off, and being harder to turn back on (*)
- and on the last try with the 'test01' file which worked many times before that, turn off forever apparently

(*) This only time, when I turned the calculator back on, it showed me a blank screen and seemed frozen.
I triggered the reset, it then showed me a blank screen with a message like "Clearing memory" or something like this, and then did run the firmware properly but with all data lost.

About the context, which might be important.
I was putting the calculator either on the about screen, either on the applications screen.
On the very last try, I was simultaneously sending the 'test01' program file to two calculators.


I now can't see anything else that I could tell you about this problem context.
Does this at least help you better understanding what could have happened ?

Thanks.

[StephenG1CMZ]

(04-21-2016 07:01 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  

(04-21-2016 06:36 PM)debrouxl Wrote:  BTW, critor's initial tests of mViewer GX Creator with the latest firmware version are very disappointing. The results are worse than in the previous versions: not only the calculator is still very easily running out of memory (despite the memory leak fixes),

1. ICON was meant for bitmap data that should remain in memory constantly. Thus every time you send it to the device, it is parsed and *will remain in memory* until a complete boot. Thus the complaints about "bugs that HP hasn't fixed for years" when you run out of memory after sending MB worth of bitmaps over that will remain in memory.... it is working as designed. You may not like the design, but it is behaving in an expected manner.

The process works like this:

1. Message arrives over the USB.
2. It is decompressed.
3. Data is copied to disk files.
4. If program or app, it is parsed and objects are created.
5. Since ICON is in use, you've now stored a bitmap in RAM that will remain there until a fresh boot.

Is it any wonder you run out of memory with this? It is not leaking memory at all! You are asking the system to save that RAM with each ICON keyword.

I've tried explaining this now at least 4-5 times and nobody seems to listen.

Additionally, it is highly likely we will get rid of ICON either in the next release or the one after because we'll probably be switching to 888 color vs the 565 in use now, and it is *not* a portable format.

2. You have full support for PNG and JPG files with direct save and load. Can't get much more standard then that. Or memory efficient.

3. Make an .hpappdir folder. Stick in all your jpg/png. Stick in an empty .hpapp file of any kind. Stick your app program in there. Should be pretty easy to script no matter what the system.


If critor believes there are problems, have him send me his test files and I will look at it. All the files we had from your tool and tested with as part of our test plans worked just fine and never exhibited any of this behavior.

Re. Dropping ICON because you have full PNG/JPG support.
Don't forget that Android users cannot see PNG/JPG from the HP Prime App - without rooting it or adding 3rd-party file managers - I hope that capability will be coming before ICON is dropped.

Re: upgrading graphics to standard 888 format - great.
I don't expect an answer, but just to let you know... - I for one am hoping this might also be accompanied by a switch to standard VGA resolution screens.

[StephenG1CMZ]

(04-21-2016 07:01 PM)Tim Wessman Wrote:  

(04-21-2016 06:36 PM)debrouxl Wrote:  BTW, critor's initial tests of mViewer GX Creator with the latest firmware version are very disappointing. The results are worse than in the previous versions: not only the calculator is still very easily running out of memory (despite the memory leak fixes),

1. ICON was meant for bitmap data that should remain in memory constantly. Thus every time you send it to the device, it is parsed and *will remain in memory* until a complete boot. Thus the complaints about "bugs that HP hasn't fixed for years" when you run out of memory after sending MB worth of bitmaps over that will remain in memory.... it is working as designed. You may not like the design, but it is behaving in an expected manner.

The process works like this:

1. Message arrives over the USB.
2. It is decompressed.
3. Data is copied to disk files.
4. If program or app, it is parsed and objects are created.
5. Since ICON is in use, you've now stored a bitmap in RAM that will remain there until a fresh boot.

Is it any wonder you run out of memory with this? It is not leaking memory at all! You are asking the system to save that RAM with each ICON keyword.

I've tried explaining this now at least 4-5 times and nobody seems to listen.

Additionally, it is highly likely we will get rid of ICON either in the next release or the one after because we'll probably be switching to 888 color vs the 565 in use now, and it is *not* a portable format.

2. You have full support for PNG and JPG files with direct save and load. Can't get much more standard then that. Or memory efficient.

3. Make an .hpappdir folder. Stick in all your jpg/png. Stick in an empty .hpapp file of any kind. Stick your app program in there. Should be pretty easy to script no matter what the system.


If critor believes there are problems, have him send me his test files and I will look at it. All the files we had from your tool and tested with as part of our test plans worked just fine and never exhibited any of this behavior.

Where should .png be placed on the Android (your point 3), and what tool can you recommend to do so?
On the Android one cannot even see a folder for the calculator.

Alternatively, how can a .png be turned into an ICON?
I thought i read somewhere that the formats were similar, but when I downloaded a .png and renamed it as .txt, it was not an ASCII file: it was full of unprintable binary codes that I am sure wouldnt work well in an ICON.

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

I would recomand not turning a png into an ICON.
a png is a file that takes little to no memory in the calculator. an ICON takes a LOT of ram :-( and can not be offloaded...

Cyrille

[StephenG1CMZ]

(05-19-2016 05:41 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  Hello,

I would recomand not turning a png into an ICON.
a png is a file that takes little to no memory in the calculator. an ICON takes a LOT of ram :-( and can not be offloaded...

Cyrille

The key advantage of the ICON for me is that it uses readable hex - something I thought I could easily cut and paste. And on the Android at least, I hope the RAM constraint might be less of an issue.

Unfortunately, when I tried to convert a PNG to an ICON, I discovered that my PNG file seems to be a binary file, not readable hex - I have not tried it yet, but am sure it will not cut and paste into an ICON.

I have written an accessibility fingerspelling program - but the users must provide their own .png/.jpg files

[chromos]

Sorry for off topic, but it would be nice to know if user accessible folder or something in that regard is on to do list for android device or if android emulator is in its final state. :-(

[Tim Wessman]

(05-19-2016 01:46 PM)chromos Wrote:  Sorry for off topic, but it would be nice to know if user accessible folder or something in that regard is on to do list for android device or if android emulator is in its final state. :-(

It is on the list of potential items to be worked on. That is not a promise when/if it will appear, but it is a known issue on our side.

There is a reason the connkit now has an "IP Networking" checkbox in the preferences... ;-)

[chromos]

Thank you for your answer, Tim, even your slashed if doesn't give much of hope.

[Kevin Ouellet]

As long as we cannot send HP applications as zip files or as 1 single file, I don't think ICON should be removed. Sending applications then getting them to work properly without having to reboot your calc 3 times or so is a major PITA compared to just sending 1 .hpprgm file.

Let's get application transfer 100% functional before starting removing features that currently works.