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First version of Free42 - a new HP-42S
simulator
Wednesday 10th of November 2004
A few days ago Thomas Okken announced the first release of the his HP-42S simulator - Free42 - with binaries and source code for Windows, Linux and Palm. Even though it is still in an early stage it appears to be very promising. As it is not using the copyrighted ROM of the HP-42S but rather contains reverse engineered versions of all functions this means that you do not have to go through the ROM dumping process in order to run Free42. Also, as it runs native compiled code and not an emulated Saturn code it will run significantly faster than an emulated HP-42S. On the downside there is still a lot of work left if it is to be 100% compatible with the original HP-42S. The two major issues that spring to mind is implementing decimal arithmetic and a program format compatible to Emu42 binaries. The author has already committed himself to implementing the latter of these two and during the first few days after the initial release there has been almost daily bug fixes released so the project is moving forward in a high pace.
Visit the Free42 homepage
Wednesday 10th of November 2004
A few days ago Thomas Okken announced the first release of the his HP-42S simulator - Free42 - with binaries and source code for Windows, Linux and Palm. Even though it is still in an early stage it appears to be very promising. As it is not using the copyrighted ROM of the HP-42S but rather contains reverse engineered versions of all functions this means that you do not have to go through the ROM dumping process in order to run Free42. Also, as it runs native compiled code and not an emulated Saturn code it will run significantly faster than an emulated HP-42S. On the downside there is still a lot of work left if it is to be 100% compatible with the original HP-42S. The two major issues that spring to mind is implementing decimal arithmetic and a program format compatible to Emu42 binaries. The author has already committed himself to implementing the latter of these two and during the first few days after the initial release there has been almost daily bug fixes released so the project is moving forward in a high pace.
Visit the Free42 homepage