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Full Version: Wild hack: Synchronize your HP-41 with your mobile phone calendar
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From the fringe outback of sanity: You can now use your HP-41 as a true PDA and have it synchronized with your Google Calendar (and hence your mobile phone if it supports Google Calendar).

It's a wild hack consisting of the REM program (v.0.4) on your HP-41 and a Ruby script (remsync.rb) on your PC and requires a working HP-41<->EMU41 setup with PIL-box or such as the link.

From the REM web page (go to the page to get all the needed links):

With the help of a PC-side program, you can now even sync your HP-41 with Google Calendar and through that service keep your mobile phone calendar and HP-41 in sync! This requires you to have the PIL-Box or similar bidirectional communication with your PC and the EMU41 running on your PC (use Dosbox if you use Linux). Download the Ruby-script here.

Download the EMU41.INI (and edit it to suit your needs), the Dosbox config (edit the serial1 as needed - it is set for use with Ubuntu Linux 9.10) and the remsync config (Linux users should save remsync.conf as ".remsync.conf" while Windows users should save it as it is - without the period in front of the file name). For Linux users, read this post on how to get your HP-41 connected to EMU41 in Dosbox on your PC via the PIL-Box.

Before you can synchronize, you need to format the HDRIVE1 Lif-file: XEQ "NEWM" and press "001" to format the file rem.lif with only one file (the REMF). Then create the REMF file in the Lif-file: Enter "REMF" in Alpha, 126 in X and XEQ "CREATE". Finally create a file called "rem.lif" on your PC and make sure you edit the variable "Lif_file" (in ".remsync.conf") to point to "rem.lif". Note: for Windows users, edit remsync.rb so that you load the correct remsync.conf file (leave it somewhere and let the load command in remsync.rb point to where it is).

To synchronize, first ensure you have EMU41 running on your PC with your HP-41 connected (via the PIL-box or otherwise) and XEQ "REMSYNC" on your 41. The program will stop and display "RUN PC PRGM". You then run remsync.rb on your PC. When remsync.rb finishes, press R/S on your 41, and voilá - you have sync'ed. You will now find that the next 25 or so appointments are the same in REM on your HP-41 and your Google Calendar. Only the start date/time and the titles are sync'ed to not eat all you Extended Memory on your 41. Try to keep the titles of your appointments short as you enter them in Google calendar (preferably 12 characters or less).

Useful? Probably not. Fun to make? You bet :-)

Thanks to Egan Ford and Tony Duell.

Coool project!

Just another idea that came to my mind when visiting your web site: there is this YouTube video showing your (unfortunately lost) calculator collection. Last week I read that you now can provide subtitles for YouTube videos (didn't try it yet). As most of us do not understand Norwegian, this might be a nice addition to your video. Maybe you have some free minutes between your great calculator projects ;-)

Keep on your amazing work and thank you for sharing it,

Juergen

Oh, I forgot to mention that you need the Ruby Gem "gcal4ruby" installed (on Linux: "sudo gem install gcal4ruby")