I am an HP71B guy.

But I dusted off my 48GX over the weekend. 1MB RAM pac & finance pac installed. Lithium throughout.

Is there a way to interface this with PCs / Macs now that serial ports are no longer there?

Suggestions resources for 48 users if possible.

I played with this thing in depth in the 90s. Found it hard to program & use. I like the screen and some of the software for it but I never took this thing to the limit.

ON SPEED: I recall one of the complaints about this back then was it was a 4-bit machine. Are there mods to "widen the lanes" to 8 or 16 bit or so? This would open up the machine quite a bit.

From HP:

HP 50g, 49g+ and 48gii Calculator PC Connectivity Kit

You'll have to install the XModem library on the HP-48GX first (refer to Communications in the HTML Help on how to do it). You you'll need a USB-RS232 adapter and the serial cable, of course.

Lots of software and information are available at Eric Rechlin's hpcalc.org.

Edited: 21 May 2012, 8:21 a.m.

RE: Speed.
Short answer no.

The 48GX actually uses a later version of the the same saturn processor found in a 71B, and is in fact the fastest version of it ever made. The original saturn as found in the 71B used an external 4 bit wide bus on which it clocked out addresses as a sequence of 5 nibbles and transferred data nibble at a time. On the versions of the saturn used in the 48 series hardware, a memory controller was added to allow for the attachment of industry standard 8 bit RAM and ROM, so the external bus of these versions is 8 bit and has a separate 17 bit address bus. However I would suspect that internal to the chip you would find the same old 4 bit saturn bus between the processor and the integrated memory controller. The clock speed of the processor in the 48G(X) is already more than 5 times as fast as in the 71B.

Thanks for bringing up the subject. I've been pondering between replenishing my 48GX or to just port over my 48 progs to the 50G. As I also am a Mac user with a Firewire & USB 2.0 PowerBook, I am glad that you brought up the connectivity aspect.

Thanks

Edited: 21 May 2012, 1:42 p.m.

Matt. I am using a loaded MacBook with 500GB SSD and i7 at full speed.

Also have the old stuff.. Eurocom PC.

I have not checked out the 50g. Will do so.

Quote:

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Is there a way to interface this with PCs / Macs now that serial ports are no longer there?

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You'll find connecting a HP 48GX to a PC is easy once you have the appropriate adapters & a great way to write programs & back-up the calculator. I have previously successfully used a USB to RS232 cable such as the one shown here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Cable-for-HP-48G-48GX-48SX-w-DVD-Factory-Made-New-/180661859591?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a10493507 & off course the RS232 communication boards you can add to the newer PCs without a built in serial port.

Would however suggest you also use the original HP Graphing Calculator PC Link software (available here: http://www.hpcalc.org/details.php?id=3713 ) in addition to the XModem based Conn4X (Hp50G ... PC Connectivity Kit)software mentioned above. The newer software is far quicker & permits direct editing of files but is not capable of backing-up the HP 48GX like the older Kermit protocol software can.

Cheers,

Michael