Hoppi 1.3.2 Release

[JDW]

Han,

Thank you for your tips. But I've been speaking with Oleg, creator of the 128k FRAM card, and we finally found a solution. Last night, I swapped C1 & C3 with 47uF SMD polarized caps, but in that condition, when I press ON with the FRAM card installed, the pixels on the screen look like they are exploding and then the screen goes blank and nothing happens. That remained true even after I restored C3 back to 4.7uF (while keeping C1 47uF). It could be that polarized caps won't work on memory cards, or maybe the calc simply could not supply the required inrush current for the 47uF cap.

Today, Oleg wrote me back saying he had found a solution. He used 10uF caps, but since I don't have that size on a non-polarized ceramic SMD cap, I stuck with the 4.7uF caps. But he told me to remove R3 entirely and then swap R4 for a 2kΩ resistor. I used a 1.8kΩ resistor, since that is close enough.

Here's a scan after the PCB changes:

https://cl.ly/3M3H462P3Y2X/FRAMcard_ResistorFix.jpg

The end result was that despite sticking with the stock I/O transfer settings (ASCII, etc.), all 2140 packets (131077 bytes) of MKRAM.KER finally transferred to my 48GX!

Yippee!

I of course transferred the "RECV.KER" (10 packets) first. After they both downloaded to the 48GX, I then typed 'MKRAM.KER' and pressed ENTER, then pressed the "RECV." softkey to install. About 10 seconds later it beeped and showed Meta Kernel Ver. 2.29 is installed!

When I press Right-Shift and VAR (MEMORY), I see META-KERNEL'S FILER and Port 0 with 121084 bytes free.

So it seems it was the FRAM card after all. Thankfully though, we got it fixed (it would seem). Now I can finally play with Meta Kernel! Probably after about a month of use I will compare with Speed UI to see if there are any benefits. But honestly, the main reason I was drawn to Meta Kernel was the fact that the Equation Writer is built-in, but Speed UI requires a third party EW that I've read has some bugs.

Anyway, thanks to one and all who helped.

Paul, I don't know if I should continued to use the special version of Hoppi you made for me, but it was that version I used to transfer Meta Kernel today!

James Wages

[pdo]

(01-13-2017 04:47 AM)JDW Wrote:  Paul, I don't know if I should continued to use the special version of Hoppi you made for me, but it was that version I used to transfer Meta Kernel today!

Glad to hear you fixed the problem!

My experiments with a ~65K file showed my 48GX slowing down to approximately 1 packet every 2 seconds towards the end, with occasional pauses of 5 or 6 seconds every now and then (presumably due to calculator GC).

To be on the safe side I'll probably release an updated version this weekend with a computer-side timeout of 20 seconds or so.

Paul

[JDW]

(01-13-2017 01:29 PM)pdo Wrote:  My experiments with a ~65K file showed my 48GX slowing down to approximately 1 packet every 2 seconds towards the end, with occasional pauses of 5 or 6 seconds every now and then (presumably due to calculator GC).

I wondered about that slowdown too. Transfers start off with the packets rolling by at rather high speed but then 50k or so into the transfer it's only 1 packet per second or less.

James

[JDW]

Well, it's been a few years since I did a transfer from my iMac (still running MacOS High Sierra) to my 48GX (with Meta Kernel) using my special USB cable (the same cable I used all throughout this thread) in conjunction with Hoppi version 1.3.4-T30. My cable was purchased from "myteknovo" in July 2016 for $39 (shipping included) and looks exactly like the one shown in this current EBAY auction (albeit, for a much higher price):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/182645376031

The problem is that I cannot get the transfer started. Hoppi shows this screen when the tab is set to "USB":

   

After pressing Right-Arrow & 1, I get this screen on my 48GX (with Meta Kernel):

   

Changing FMT to ASCII or Binary does nothing at all.

Normally, with the NAME field selected, I just need to press the "CHOOS" soft-menu to initiate the transfer. But now when I do that it just times out after a minute or so of trying. And during that time, I can see an indicator in the upper right of my 48GX display flash something on/off quickly, and when that happens, I see a RED LED flash on/off quickly on the USB cable (my special cable attached to my 48GX and to my iMac). That means the cable is indeed connected properly and the calculator is trying to send something to the iMac. It's just that Hoppi is not accepting the incoming data. I have tried connecting the cable directly to the iMac and via my USB Hub, to no avail.

I just tried "Hoppi-1.4-Intel", but it has the same problem. Not sure what the difference is between the Intel and Mojave versions, but despite the fact I am running High Sierra, I tried to the Mojave version too but it has the same exact problem.

By the way, when I click the "Serial" tab inside Hoppi, it only shows "/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port" in the popup, and then when I switch back to USB, Hoppi says:

"Serial device closed"

And of course that popup is grayed out and inaccessible.

UPDATE: Problem solved by myself. For some reason, the Serial-to-USB driver had been removed from my iMac. Luckily, I was able to find that my cable uses Silicon Labs chip, and the latest drivers can be downloaded here. Hoppi is hopping along quite nicely now!

Just to let you know, you must use the "Serial" tab, NOT USB. Also, within the popup under the Serial Tab you must see the following (if you don't, it's a missing driver issue):

/dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART

Paul, I still would appreciate knowing what the difference is between your INTEL version and the Mojave and Catalina versions. That is not described either in the README or "Hoppi Mac Application.pdf"

[pdo]

Hi James,

Glad to see you solved your problem.

(11-13-2020 01:48 AM)JDW Wrote:  Just to let you know, you must use the "Serial" tab, NOT USB.

Yes, this is mentioned in the documentation: the USB/Serial button refers to the port on the calculator.

(11-13-2020 01:48 AM)JDW Wrote:  Paul, I still would appreciate knowing what the difference is between your INTEL version and the Mojave and Catalina versions. That is not described either in the README or "Hoppi Mac Application.pdf"

Well, Hoppi was written in Clozure Common Lisp which had some compatibility issues moving to Mojave and then to Catalina. So Hoppi had to be rebuilt with an updated CCL each time, hence the new releases. The source code, however, remained the same.

I say "was written" because now there is Hoppi 2, a complete rewrite of Hoppi in the Swift programming language using the Xcode IDE. This is something I've been working on (slowly) for the past few months and have just now released the initial version. I did this because (a) I wanted to be sure Hoppi had a future in a world of Big Sur and Apple Silicon, and (b) I wanted to learn Swift :-)

So if anyone is interested, and is running at least Catalina, hop over to cloudycat.com and follow the links. All bug reports welcome.

Note that I was going to hold off on the announcement until I'd done some more testing, but hey, might as well get some early feedback now. I haven't yet tried Big Sur though, not sure what will happen there.

Also note, functionality (and appearance) should be the same as Hoppi 1.4. I have plans for another feature I want to add soon, but it's not there yet.

Paul

[JDW]

That’s great news, Paul!

Is there any reason why the new version it won’t run under High Sierra? (Swift code will work under older versions of Mac OS X.)

[pdo]

(11-15-2020 01:33 AM)JDW Wrote:  Is there any reason why the new version it won’t run under High Sierra? (Swift code will work under older versions of Mac OS X.)

Not particularly, it was just the default Xcode setup.

I'll investigate how to support older versions of macOS when I do the next release, which will incorporate a feature I call a "Transfer Pad" which allows copy/paste of RPL code on the computer direct to/from the calculator stack.

Paul

[cdmackay]

(11-16-2020 04:17 PM)pdo Wrote:  I'll investigate how to support older versions of macOS when I do the next release, which will incorporate a feature I call a "Transfer Pad" which allows copy/paste of RPL code on the computer direct to/from the calculator stack.

that sounds fun, look forward to that, thanks Paul.

Will that include character translation, for the "special" chars?

[pdo]

(11-16-2020 07:00 PM)cdmackay Wrote:  Will that include character translation, for the "special" chars?

Yes, the mapping to/from Unicode characters is given in the user guide.

Paul

[cdmackay]

thanks Paul.