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Claudio L. · 08-11-2018, 06:07 PM

(08-11-2018 05:01 AM)The Shadow Wrote: I tried downgrading to 1089, but I'm getting the same crash. I think I see the problem - one of my libraries has become corrupted, and appears as DIRObj in the Libraries menu.

I'm not sure how to fix the problem, though, since in the absence of being able to enter letters or numbers, I can't revert to one of my backups.

EDIT: I managed to wipe the memory by taking the batteries out, then using SDRESTORE.

Incidentally, the option under ON-A-F to wipe the memory doesn't seem to work.

First, the crash:
Whenever you type a letter, newRPL asks every single library for suggestions, if your library wasn't there it could very well cause a crash. It shouldn't be that way, though. I'll investigate and add more robust protections so a bad library doesn't make the system unstable.
The fact your library appeared as a DIRobj means yes, somehow it got corrupted (since we couldn't read its name), I don't exactly know how or why that would happen, but the system should be able to remove the bad apple and keep the system working. I'll work on that.
Did you try a Warmstart first? A warmstart would reattach all libraries, so it could resolve the problem.

Last: On-A-F requires ALL 3 shift keys to be pressed simultaneously when you choose the "nuclear" option to wipe all memory. It's a feature that can save you a lot of grief.

The Shadow · 08-11-2018, 10:44 PM

I warmstarted several times before trying the nuclear option, yes.

Holding the three shift keys down should be documented in the wiki.

Claudio L. · 08-13-2018, 04:39 PM

(08-11-2018 10:44 PM)The Shadow Wrote: I warmstarted several times before trying the nuclear option, yes.

Holding the three shift keys down should be documented in the wiki.

I added that to the wiki.

pier4r · 09-05-2018, 12:15 PM

Checking around things I stumble on messages that shows how recurring are some topics.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys...Y_3t9u-K8J

Claudio

Quote:Some time ago I wrote an expression evaluator that creates and manages a
dependency tree for a set of formulas. In the end it works like a
spreadsheet. I've been using it for a while for my work and it seems to be
reasonably stable.
Basically, I wrote a special STO function, that whenever you store a formula
into a variable, it stores the formula in a separate directory, evaluates
the formula end stores the result in the variable.
At the same time, it analyzes the formula and creates a dependency tree.

It is nice to see, if Internet doesn't forget, the progress of thoughts in actual implementations and solutions. Now the same idea is in newRPL.
It is also nice to see that the author of a solution had the need for long time and this need pushed for improved solutions.

Claudio L. · 09-05-2018, 10:05 PM

All unofficial ROMs updated to build 1105.

See changes in the first post.

acoto · 09-06-2018, 12:34 AM

Hello Claudio -

https://newrpl.wiki.hpgcc3.org/doku.php?...essorspeed

Question: how expensive in term of CPU cycles is the CPU speed change, and the program monitoring to trigger a speed change?

I think it may be interesting to always speed up when starting a calculation, no matter if simple or complex, calculator may feel faster, and always return to low speed when finish and returning to UI.

Then as newRPL evolves, it may be interesting to run different applications at different speeds, for instance a Equation writer may requite higher base speed than UI or than a Matrix Writer.

Claudio L. · 09-06-2018, 02:07 PM

(09-06-2018 12:34 AM)acoto Wrote: Hello Claudio -

https://newrpl.wiki.hpgcc3.org/doku.php?...essorspeed

Question: how expensive in term of CPU cycles is the CPU speed change, and the program monitoring to trigger a speed change?

There's no "program" monitoring the speed, simply a timer that runs out in 500 ms (or 300ms, can't recall exactly). When newRPL is waiting idle for a key to be pressed, it simply keeps resetting the timer, and slowing down the clock if needed.
When you run a program, the timer isn't reset and ends up expiring, triggering a hardware interrupt that changes the clock to the maximum speed.
So there's a little overhead in the clock switch, and the only other overhead is when the CPU is idle, not when it's busy.

(09-06-2018 12:34 AM)acoto Wrote: I think it may be interesting to always speed up when starting a calculation, no matter if simple or complex, calculator may feel faster, and always return to low speed when finish and returning to UI.

The calculator UI feels pretty quick as it is. Most simple calculations are instantaneous, and speeding up the clock makes them feel instantaneous just the same, but burning more battery.
The idea with the clock switch is that only when a computation is taking long enough to be annoying to the user we'll run at full power. The 300 ms (or 500ms) feels fine. Perhaps we can have a user setting to tune that timer from 50ms to 500 ms, so the user can control how "responsive" their calculator feels.

(09-06-2018 12:34 AM)acoto Wrote: Then as newRPL evolves, it may be interesting to run different applications at different speeds, for instance a Equation writer may requite higher base speed than UI or than a Matrix Writer.

Nothing that's UI related should require the faster clock. Besides, the UI is subject to the same timer so if anything takes more than 300 ms the faster clock will kick in just as it does when you run a program.

acoto · 09-06-2018, 09:35 PM

Sound and Clear, thank you Claudio!

Claudio L. · 09-13-2018, 02:26 PM

I haven't posted an update in a while, so here's the newRPL status report:

After the last ROM update, I decided to explore the possibility of building "newRPL Mobile". To my surprise, after adding just 3 lines to the main project files and dealing with some dependency issues (Android system doesn't provide libusb so I had to build locally and supply our own), newRPL Desktop was built as an .APK package and running in an Android simulator, without changing a single line of code!

Then, the issues revealed themselves:
* The horizontal layout in newRPL wasn't useful for phones, so I had to change a few things here and there to make it a more flexible (responsive?) portrait format, which will stretch the screen to adjust to the physical device resolution. That's done and worked quite nicely.
* Android doesn't have a menu on top, so I'll have to find another way to present the menu to the user, that will unfortunately mean extra coding. Even without the menu, when I closed the app I was asked to "save as" with a decently looking dialog and the app preserved state just like on Desktop, so at least that part worked flawlessly and gives me hope that just by displaying the menu I can make it work as-is.
* Android doesn't allow direct access to the USB port unless you are rooted, so that part won't work but I'll leave it operational in case people do root their phones, they should (in theory) be able to connect their 50g's to the phone and exchange files between the app and the physical calculator just the same as when newRPL Desktop is running on a PC.

I haven't tried it on real hardware yet, but at least I have hope that once I get that menu reworked we'll have a new addition to the newRPL family.

The Shadow · 09-13-2018, 05:33 PM

Fantastic, Claudio! The only Android 50g emulator I've seen doesn't work on my phone, so I'm very eager to get my hands on one that does!

In the absence of rooting, will it be possible to add files via an emulated SD card?

pier4r · (This post was last modified: 09-13-2018 06:28 PM by pier4r.)

a newRPL on android is just a dream. Really?

drools

If I can develop for the executable on android it would be gold. Then I have HP prime and new RPL. And whatever android device that supports the applications become a gold piece, given that I send the code as text.

If the USB without root is not possible, would it be possible something like "copy and paste" (text) ? Or SD card emulation is also a great idea. Of course I am well aware that the implementation is much harder than the request.

Claudio L. · 09-14-2018, 01:13 PM

(09-13-2018 06:25 PM)pier4r Wrote: If the USB without root is not possible, would it be possible something like "copy and paste" (text) ? Or SD card emulation is also a great idea. Of course I am well aware that the implementation is much harder than the request.

Copy/paste should work out of the box. I can't test it because I have no menu yet Smile

SD card image mounting (as it is now on desktop) should work out of the box. SD emulation is a different idea, I'll think about it.

The Shadow · 09-14-2018, 05:29 PM

I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know how to make an image of an SD card. What's the process? Is there software you would recommend?

brickviking · 09-15-2018, 01:18 AM

(09-14-2018 05:29 PM)The Shadow Wrote: I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know how to make an image of an SD card. What's the process? Is there software you would recommend?

At least for Linux, there's plenty of results explaining how to use dd to copy a "raw" device such as an SD card. One slight wrinkle for x49gp I found is that I needed to dump the partition (i.e. /dev/sde1), not the whole raw card (/dev/sde). I've no idea why, and frankly it makes answering questions like this slightly more difficult.

Quote:This is an example for a 64Mb card:
viking@fatty ~$ dd if=/dev/sde1 of=sdcard bs=512
131072+0 records in
131072+0 records out
67108864 bytes (67 MB, 64 MiB) copied, 0.494781 seconds, 136 MB/s
viking@fatty ~$

Mac OS X probably has access to the dd command as well, but Windows doesn't have it natively. I haven't tried to copy a sd card to a file on Windows recently, so others might be able to chime in on that.

(Post 283)

3298 · 09-15-2018, 09:42 AM

In addition to the path of copying an existing real SD card like brickviking showed, one could create a blank image using certain commands that should be present on Linux or OSX out of the box. x49gp's Makefile has these commands for the job:
- Linux:

Code:

/sbin/mkdosfs -v -C -S 512 -f 2 -F 16 -r 512 -R 2 -n "x49gp" sdcard 65536

- OSX:

Code:

hdiutil create sdcard -megabytes 64 -fs MS-DOS -volname x49gp

Both create an image for an emtpy FAT16-formatted SD card labeled "x49gp" that is 64MiB in size. The image is stored in a file called "sdcard" (Linux) or "sdcard.dmg" (OSX) in the current directory.
On Windows I have no clue how to create such an image with the tools included in the OS. With MinGW or Cygwin one could get a shell that's able to run the command for Linux, though installing MinGW or Cygwin just for that is a little overkill. On the other hand, it also gets you an environment for compiling Linux-targeted programs on Windows, which you could use for other stuff ... (unfortunately it fails for x49gp - blame QEMU. No need to try.)

Massimo Gnerucci · 09-15-2018, 09:44 AM

(09-15-2018 01:18 AM)brickviking Wrote: Mac OS X probably has access to the dd command as well, but Windows doesn't have it natively. I haven't tried to copy a sd card to a file on Windows recently, so others might be able to chime in on that.

On Windows you can use WinImage.

Massimo Gnerucci · (This post was last modified: 09-15-2018 09:54 AM by Massimo Gnerucci.)

(09-15-2018 09:44 AM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:
(09-15-2018 01:18 AM)brickviking Wrote: Mac OS X probably has access to the dd command as well, but Windows doesn't have it natively. I haven't tried to copy a sd card to a file on Windows recently, so others might be able to chime in on that.

On Windows you can use WinImage.

Or WinFLASHTool (never used myself... Cannot understand if it also creates raw images).

Eric Rechlin · 09-16-2018, 02:07 PM

Windows 10 also has something called WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which gives you full access to all the typical Linux tools. Microsoft added native support for all the Linux system calls so it's not even emulated or a virtual machine or anything like that. In my case, I'm using an Ubuntu 16.04LTS setup, but if you prefer other distributions there are other options for package management.

Massimo Gnerucci · 09-16-2018, 03:53 PM

(09-16-2018 02:07 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote: Windows 10 also has something called WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which gives you full access to all the typical Linux tools. Microsoft added native support for all the Linux system calls so it's not even emulated or a virtual machine or anything like that. In my case, I'm using an Ubuntu 16.04LTS setup, but if you prefer other distributions there are other options for package management.

Right, I use it almost daily on my Win10 laptop.
And then you can use Wine inside it, and then install Cygwin inside Win... Big Grin

Inception!

grsbanks · 09-16-2018, 05:18 PM

(09-16-2018 02:07 PM)Eric Rechlin Wrote: Windows 10 also has something called WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which gives you full access to all the typical Linux tools. Microsoft added native support for all the Linux system calls so it's not even emulated or a virtual machine or anything like that. In my case, I'm using an Ubuntu 16.04LTS setup, but if you prefer other distributions there are other options for package management.

Either that or go down the Hyper-V route if you have Windows 10 Pro and if virtual machines are acceptable to you (provided your CPU and BIOS allow for virtualization -- most do nowadays). It works perfectly well and I use it for developing websites (Apache in a Linux environment) and building firmware for my DM42.