HP 33s out of production?
#1

http://tinyurl.com/7ym7yry


http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/can.do;HHOJSID=6pLcPJ6BTKD6pjzGWstzVLpP8bk2nBLpqhGbln6pllTyfKGLvYJh!-1306313788?landing=calculator&category=Scientific&catLevel=1&storeName=storefronts&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg_ipg/calculator/Graphing_&_scientific_calculators

Edited: 5 Mar 2012, 12:43 p.m.

#2

Yepper. Just another case of HP dropping the ball. Sure glad I picked one up recently after they fixed the invisible decimal point problem.

#3

Funny you should mention this. As from my OP, I was looking to buy either the 15C LE, 33 or 35, although I did find the 35 & 15 at HP, the 33 was nowhere to be found (not even in the business calc section). So, I ended up buying two brand new ones off of eBay. By the way, which are the 33s that have the decimal point bug fixed? What serial number series do these fixed 33s begin with?

Edited: 5 Mar 2012, 1:39 p.m.

#4

There was never a decimal point bug. They were just really really small.

Early production has tiny decimal points, and really early production had at least three different ROMS, and the most notable two bugs were an H.MS bug, and a Polar-Rectangular bug. Both of those were resolved, but I can't remember when. I am pretty certain (but not absoltely so!) that all of the large decimal point machines are free of these two bugs. When we raised the issue with HP, they actually put out an errata sheet, and even included the appropriate work-around RPN programs to replace the built-in buggy routines.

Too bad they are discontinuing the 33s. I guess it isn't selling as well as the 35. I like it a lot more than the 35.

#5

At least the HP33s emulator is still available: :-)

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/hp-33s-emulator-setup.zip

Edited: 5 Mar 2012, 1:46 p.m.

#6

Hm... Is it a "limited-accessibility" software? It asks me for a serial, and I have no idea where to find one - The serial from my physical calculator didn't work! :) I thought it was a "free" emulator made so that people could try and get used to the real calc...

Cristian

#7

I thought it was for teachers only

#8

It might be that the whole range of scientific programmable calculators will be out of production soon. There is actually only the 35s, as the 15CLE is a limited offer. Compared with the range of financial ones the situation is pretty obvious. It looks like that TI doesn't offer, at least in UK, any scientific programmable calculator, so HP is following the trend. Possibly, the majority of students are not interested in programming like we were and parents want to spend as little as possible.

#9

The 33S has been mostly discontinued (extremely limited availability) for years. I think they only kept making it to give another option for the NCEES exams. I'm not surprised if they are finally pulling the plug completely.

Eric

#10

Quote:
I thought it was for teachers only

or for someone with a good debugger and a bit knowledge of assembly language ... ;-)

#11

Probably pulled it due to all the lawsuits from people going cross-eyed from that migraine-inducing chevron keypad. It's worse than Navin Johnson's opti-grab.

#12

Now, now, don't be a jerk!

#13

Hello there.

Yeah, in the beginning, I was a critic of the chevron (the keyboard, not the gasoline), thinking that was a style that TI, Casio or Sharp would resort to to appeal to the HS and teen crowd BUT, in defense of the unconventional diversion from HP's professional look, I gotta say:

1--Being that it's a RAMped (yes, pun intended) version of the 32SII, that's one nod in favour

2--another supporting vote is that, although I don't consider the 33s a collector's piece, it does make for a great alternative to overworking my 32SII

3--With #2 above, I don't mind taking the 33s out on the road with me and leave the 32SII in protective surroundings and use that one at home.

4--Since I have a powered-up 32SII in the 33s (try saying that 20 times), it gives me more flexibility and options if I need to think on my feet (read, on the road). That way, I don't need to troubleshoot, find a place to sit and rewrite code just because there's not enough memory or programming space.

Even if I'm working with the 33S at home, these above factors make the 33s much more versatile as a result.


Edited: 5 Mar 2012, 11:20 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

#14

I feel exactly the same way about the 33s as you do. Basically, it's an amped up 32SII with the many advantages of a 2-line display. I had one of the early ones with the tiny decimal point and sold it, but fortunately bought a newer one recently, and am using it a lot. I never liked the 35s, and was using my 32SII instead, but can now give it a rest. About the only decent scientific calc made by HP anymore is the 50g, which is an absolute powerhouse. I've ported all my 48SX programs to it and added many more. I'm afraid this is the end of the line for HP in the calc business.

#15

I don´t think so. The improvements appearing in the new HP 39 GII can be applied to a new HP 50 GII (or whatever). At university level, HP calcs are still very much in demand and cannot be replaced easily with laptops or Iphones/Ipads, even if they have a proper software. The main reasons: battery life, size, proper keyboard, integrated software for calculations and the posibility of building a "1-minute-programs in RPL or RPN" very quickly. Compare these with 8 hours battery life, no keyboard or a qwerty one, bigger size and a more complex software for programming and calculations.

#16

Here's another method to get the HP-33s emulator (that I mentioned above) to work:

The installed 'HP 33S.exe' is made of 2 parts:

the first 417280 bytes are just a loader for the real emulator, which is the following block of 90112 bytes.

So if you split the file 'HP 33S.exe' into 2 separate files, this last 90112 byte block is the plain emulator which runs without any problems.

(e.g. you could load the file 'HP 33S.exe' into a hexeditor, remove the first 417280 bytes (from the beginning up to the second 'MZ' string), and the save this reduced file with 90112 bytes).

#17

Thank you for this 'slip out of the straitjacket' :) Alas on Win7 starter edition 'Exit' makes the program window disappear but not terminate its execution. I regard it only as a minor glitch compared to the result of the quite simple 'slip away'.

Ciao.....Mike

PS: are there other emulators to get that way?

#18

Quote:
PS: are there other emulators to get that way?

The only other one where this method works is the HP-10bII:

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/hp-10bII-emulator.zip

It has exactly the same split address (hex 65E00), i.e. the loader is again the first 417280 byte-block (up to the second 'MZ' string) and the plain emulator after removing this loader is 297472 bytes.

All other HP emulators available from the HP site work differently (i.e. don't just use an old emulator combined with a loader), so for these emulators a bit more effort has to be done.

But indeed not really difficult - if you know 'where and what' to patch ... ;-)


PS: As for the problem with Win7:

I've just tried the 33s emulator on my Win7-netbook and you're right, the process still exists after closing the emulator and has to be killed manually before you can start the program again. :-(

But that's definitely not a problem of this 'extraction' method of the emulator, because I've also tried it with the original 33s program (i.e. with the loader), and it shows the same behaviour.

On the other hand this problem does not exist on my old Win98-notebook here, so it's in fact a bug of the emulator itself (or better an incompatibility with Win7).

The HP-10bII emulator mentioned above doesn't have this problem, it works fine also in Win7.

Edited: 7 Mar 2012, 5:17 a.m.

#19

Quote:
Here's another method to get the HP-33s emulator (that I mentioned above) to work:

It works very well with Wine under Linux! :) Thanks! Do you know if hp also has a similar emulator for the 35s?

Cristian

#20

Thank you very much for your prompt reply and the additional link. Alas I have no clue aboout the 'what and how' to patch. I am a mainfraim dinosaur, even to extract the 90112 bytes as you described above I used the emulated host. (Well, since one day I have the old PC from my son w/o hex editor installed yet.)

Ciao.....Mike

#21

There is a hp-35s-emulator-setup.zip with 18.692.322 bytes, in contrast the hp-33s-emulator-setup.zip is only 1.572.939 bytes. So the answer to your qestion depends what you mean by 'similar'. :)

Ciao.....Mike

#22

Quote:
Do you know if hp also has a similar emulator for the 35s?

Well, HP has lots of emulators for almost every of their calculators!

There are 3 websites from where all those emulators can be downloaded, and since these are official sites and have even been posted here (IIRC) long time ago, I see no problem to post these addresses again.

Scientific: HP10s, HP35s, SmartCalc300s

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/scientific-calculator-emulator.html

Financial: HP10BII, HP12c, HP12c-Platinum, HP17bII+, HP20b, HP30b

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/finance-calculator-emulators.html

Graphing: HP39gs, HP40gs, HP50g

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/graphic-calculator-emulators.html

And one additional: HP33S

http://www.hp.com/sbso/product/calculators-emulators/hp-33s-emulator-setup.zip

But all those emulators can't be used without having a vald serial number (these programs are usually for teachers who get such S/Ns for free), and my trick for the 10bII and 33s doesn't work for the other ones.

Since I'm quite experienced in 'modifying' (or call it 'patching' or 'cracking') programs, I do have a patch for all those HP emulators, but I doubt it would be allowed to post these patches here. ;-)

Franz

Edited: 7 Mar 2012, 7:26 a.m.

#23

Quote:
I doubt it would be allowed to post these patches here. ;-)


One might even question the legality of making the patch in the first place or describing how to do it.

#24

Quote:
One might even question the legality of making the patch in the first place or describing how to do it.

I didn't describe any patch, did I?

The 2 methods I've described are just splitting a file into 2 parts (or extracting a sub-program from an EXE), so that's far away from 'patching' a program.

And about the method for all other emulators I didn't tell a single word, nor will I do so ... ;-)

Franz

#25

I don't know about Austria, but in Germany the software author has the exclusive right to alter and modify (splitting!) his work; see § 69c Nr. 2 UrhG for reference.
So to prevent the owner of this fine museum from getting into any trouble, it might be a good idea to refrain from discussing this publicly on his site.


Edited: 7 Mar 2012, 9:40 a.m.

#26

Quote:
I don't know about Austria, but in Germany the software author has the exclusive right to alter and modify (splitting!) his work; see § 69c Nr. 2 UrhG for reference.
So to prevent the owner of this fine museum from getting into any trouble, it might be a good idea to refrain from discussing this publicly on his site.

I don't know about Germany, but in Austria the customer of any software does have the right to modify a program IF it doesn't work properly on his system.

And both emulators (33s and 10bII) didn't run on my Win98 system exactly because of this 'loader' (which just crashed in Win98), so I guess I HAD the right to make the program running correctly.
#27

Quote:
I guess I HAD the right to make the program running correctly.


So you are a teacher and have the S/N? I apologize for assuming otherwise.

BTW, HP states

Quote:
Software is designed for use on PCs using the MS Windows 2000 or newer operating system.

That tells me the emulators are not intended for WIN98 and no one is allowed to modify the software for that reason.


Edited: 7 Mar 2012, 10:28 a.m.

#28

Quote:
BTW, HP states

"Software is designed for use on PCs using the MS Windows 2000 or newer operating system."

Well, that's quite usual nowadays, because almost nobody could imagine that someone would still use Win98. ;-)

Although many companies state Win2000 as minimum requirements, some of such programs are still working in Win98.

#29

Quote:
Well, that's quite usual nowadays, because almost nobody could imagine that someone would still use Win98. ;-)

I'm writing a Casio FX-702p emulator and one of my beta-testers asked me for a W98 versions a few months ago...

#30

Quote:
I'm writing a Casio FX-702p emulator and one of my beta-testers asked me for a W98 versions a few months ago...

Hey, good to know that I'm not the only 'computer-dinosaur' in the world in these days ... :-)

BTW, is there any website where we could find your 'work'? ;-)

#31

Quote:

[...] but in Austria the customer of any software does have the right to modify a program [...]


Did you really buy the program ?

As I know downloading it is not buying it.

And even if you paid something, it is surely only an End-User License which give you the right of using it, but certainly not to modify it nor any part of it.

Here in Europe, only the owner of any software have the right to alter it. End-users only piad to get the right to use it without any modification on one system.

To buy a software you have to be really rich !

#32

I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure that some countries grant their citizens some additional rights, and these legally "supercede" the EULA limitations...

Cristian

#33

Quote:
I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure that some countries grant their citizens some additional rights, and these legally "supercede" the EULA limitations...

Absolutely correct!

And this is just true for what I wrote after the "IF ..." in my post - but C.Ret simply removed this part in his quote.

#34

Correct me if I'm wrong:

Those modifications will only be legal withing the country which allows said modifications. The distributing the modified program into the country of origin where the EULA was issued would be forbidden and subject the importer to criminal prosecution.

#35

Quote:
Those modifications will only be legal withing the country which allows said modifications. The distributing the modified program into the country of origin where the EULA was issued would be forbidden and subject the importer to criminal prosecution.

That sounds likely, too, especially if it's a country really careful about copyrights and patents and such like the US...

Cristian

#36

Quote:
Correct me if I'm wrong:
...

Well, you may indeed be right.

But since I did not (and will not) distribute any of these files, all these legal issues are of no interest for me.

All I did is describe how I got these 2 emulators working on my system here, not more or less. Whatever anyone else does with this information is not my problem.

#37

Quote:

in Austria the customer of any software does have the right to modify a program IF it doesn't work properly on his system.


Let's do a quick check here: In Austria, according to paragraph 40e UrhG, if you have the license to use the program, you are even allowed to obtain the source code in order to modify the program to make it work again (!) on your system. If the license grants you only a specified use, you have no right to receive the code nor to alter it. If you don`t have the license (obtained legally), you`re not allowed to do anything. So in the 33s-emulator case, if you're not an educator and want to use the software in an actual course, you`re out of luck: no patching, no splitting, no nothing!

Secondly, publicizing this information on other people`s site is a whole different matter, covered by the laws of the country the site is hosted in, which is the US in the case of the hpmuseum, I assume.



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