Personal Triumph
#1

Heh. Not much, really, but to me it is!

I needed some basic quick functions to do simple average, median, etc. and a PC is not always available, so I beat my head against the HP 48G AUR for many weeks and wrote some programs to do those things on the 48G+. But the G+ is home and the G is the one carried. Bummer. Ah! Thank God for IR!

Then, I needed another cheap quickie to do some light crunching of some data. I just received my exchanged 49G+ with better keyboard, and am really excited by it all. So I bumble my way around the programming functions of the 49G+ and write the darn thing. Of course, I cheated- I relied on the good ol' 48G AUR again. (I gave up trying to read the 49G+'s own online; I prefer to read a bound paper copy much, much more than on a glowing screen, any day!) The little program did great at home, as I won't bring the 49G+ to work... but I need the prog there, too!

Wait, genius, if you relied on the 48G AUR, IT MUST RUN ON THOSE CALCS, TOO! Crap. It's on the 49G+. Whoa! Each one of these babies has its own umbilical! And PCs these days still retain one serial port whereby a 48G cable can plug, and lots of USBs whereby a 49G+ can plug!

Running both Conn 4x and HPComm, I was able to, given more than several minutes, as this process seems a tad slow, transfer from 49G+ via cable to PC... and then from PC to 48 G, which then beamed via infrared to the G+!

And much thanks to James M. Prange, who pointed out to me with simplicity and clarity how to handle calc files on the PC and troubleshoot HP calc to PC communication and connection problems.

Okay. I know, ho-hum. But for me, this is a biggie! (I'm still slightly buzzing about it!)

#2

Where would we be without having our trusty HP calcualtors around? (High Five)

Yes, getting the PC to work with the HP49G+ is a challenge for me at times also.

#3

You're welcome.

Note that the cable that comes with the 49G can connect it directly to the 48 series using the adapter, as well as another 49G without the adapter. If you have two adapters, you can use it to connect two 48 series. Other than that, it's not at all difficult to make a cable to connect two 48 series. IR is okay for small transfers, but it's 2400 bps only (as built-in). Of course, for the 49g+, you pretty well have to use your PC as a go-between for anything except a connection to another IrDA device.

Of course, if you want the programs to run on both the 49 series and the 48 series, then rely on the 48 series documentation. As long as you stick to 48 series compatible commands, you can write the programs on the 49 series and transfer them (in a round-about way, in the case of the 49g+) to the 48 series. The 49 series keyboards and menu layouts are flawed, but they have the advantages that the cursor movement keys are independent of the alpha keys, scrolling is much faster, the editor has search and search & replace, copy/cut/paste, you have the SREPL command built-in, and so on.

But for larger programs, I usually write them in a text editor on the PC and transfer them to the calculator for debugging and use.

I'll also point out that the 49g+'s command set seems to be identical to the 49G's, exceptions being if you get down to programming the underlying Kinpo operating system for the ARM processor, and maybe in a few cases, SysRPL commands. Other differences are the screen dimensions, RedEye to the printers, IrDA and USB instead of (3-wire) RS-232 compatible, the memory available (including in the ports), and the MMC/SD card.

Anyway, fotr the 49g+, download the 49G Advanced User's guide, available at http://www.hpcalc.org/search.php?query=Advanced+Guide&hp49=1 Note that the "CAS commands" and "other commands" are listed separately. A few commands were added after the guide was published; these can be found under the "What's New from Release..." notes at http://etud.epita.fr/~avenar_j/hp/49.html

For information on the system flags and reserved variables, see Federico's submissions at http://www.hpcalc.org/search.php?query=Federico&hp49=1&author=1

It was kind of a pain printing it all out, but using my good old Epson dot-matrix impact printer with re-inked ribbons, not very expensive. Of course, it's black on white only (no colors), but for a user's guide, who needs color?

Regards,
James

#4

James,

I was not aware of an adaptor that would connect a 49G+ to a 48G!

Do you know the model number and/or where it can be obtained?

Fascinating news (to me, at least)!

#5

I use a PC as an adaptor

(-;

[VPN]

Edited: 3 Dec 2004, 2:01 p.m.

#6

Hi, there, Veli-Pekka! This one made me laugh.

It must be the world's most expensive and unwieldy "adaptor"!

I have an old fashioned HP49G (no +) emulator, I downloaded a long time ago from HP when they were trying to advertise the coming of the "new" 49G.

But I'd rather hook up cables than use the emulator. Adaptor it is!

#7

No, not an adapter to hook up a 49g+ to any 48 series, or even
(via wire) another 49g+, a 49G, or a 48gII. As far as I know, the
49g+ can connect only to a USB host (PC, Mac, etc.), or another
IrDA device (including another 49g+, and presumably a 48gII). Note
that it can't connect to any other USB device either. Also note
that the 48 series' "Serial IR" doesn't work with the 49g+'s IrDA.
Of course the 49g+ can also send to a RedEye printer, such as the
82240A and 82240B, and some Martel Instruments models, although
the range is greatly reduced from what the 48 series could use.
Note that INPRT on a 48 series isn't able to capture the 49g+'s
RedEye printing signal either.

A few people have been writing about making the 49g+'s USB host
port able to also function as a USB device port, but I don't know
whether they'll ever succeed. Another idea is to use the SD card
port for communications, but again, that's still just an idea (as
far as I know).

The adapter that I meant (HP part #F1633-66001) is for connecting
the 49G (not 49g+) 10-pin to 10-pin cable (HP part# F1633-66000)
to a 48 series calculator; both of these came with my 49G. The
cable connects two 49Gs, or with the adapter, a 49G to a 48. Later
49Gs also came with an adapter (HP part# F1906-66000) from the
10-pin cable to a DB-9 connector, and perhaps a longer cable (HP
part# F1633-66050).

Another of these adapters plus a 10-pin to DB-9 cable (HP part#
F1897-66000) came with the free ROM upgrade package for my 49G.
With the adpater, this cable also works with a 48 series.

The 10-pin to 10-pin cable with an adapter on each end is
convenient for connecting two 48 series via wire.

By the way, my F1633-66000 cable is about 28 inches (0.7 metre)
long. If someone has a 10-pin to 10-pin F1633-66050 cable, I'm
curious as to how long it really is. My thinking is that they
probably would have made it about the same length as the
F1897-66000 cable, about 60 inches (1.5 metre).

There are also adapters that allow connecting a 4-pin 48 series
cable to the 49G's 10 pin connection, but I don't have one of
those.

See Joe Horn's Cable
Table
for more information on "Genuine HP" cables and
connectors for these calculators.

hpcalc.org probably has
instuctions for making your own cables, but adapting whatever
cables you already have or making a new one shouldn't be
difficult; only four wires are involved. Basically you want the
Signal Ground pins on the calculators connected, the Transmit Data
pin on each calculator connected to the Receive Data pin on the
other, and the cable's Shield connected to the Shield pin on one
or both calculators. DC ground loops aren't a problem because the
shield pin on the calculator is isolated from the calculator's
ground by a capacitor. I expect that leaving the cable's shield
completely disconnected would still work in most cases.

In case anyone is wondering about the 49G having a 10-pin
connection instead of the 4-pin connection, the extra pins are
intended for connection to an overhead projector display. These
used a card slot on the 48 series, but of course the 49G lacks any
card slot, so the signals are on the extra pins on the port. These
extra pins aren't used for RS-232 compatible connections.

Whether there'll be an overhead projector for the 49g+, I don't
know. Both HPComm and Conn4x can do "screen captures" (using
PRLCD), which, together with a projector for a PC, have some of
the functionality of the overhead projector accessories. It seems
to me that it would be simple enough to write a 49g+ program that
would do a PRLCD every time that the calculator finished what it
was doing and was ready to take another keystroke. Offhand,
vectored ENTER comes to mind. Now, if someone were to write a
program for a PC that would watch for these to arrive at the USB
port and automatically project them, that would add some more
functionality.

Note that with XModem Server, Conn4x can operate the calculator
remotely, much like using a Kermit remote host command with the
calculator in Kermit server mode. The remote stack display in
Conn4x is text only with optionally the character translations.

I suppose that someone who knows what he's doing could write a
program for the computer to pass information between a USB port
and a COM port, or between any two ports, for that matter. Maybe
someone's already done this. But for transferring between
calculators, I just use my PC as a place to store files received
from one calculator before sending them to another calculator.

Note that I can open two separate instance of Conn4x, with one
connected to a 48GX and the other connected to the 49g+ for
example, and then just drag and drop (or copy and paste) between
the two windows. Of course the variables have to be compatible
without editing, so transfers between a 49 and a 48 have to be
"text" mode, at the least. This also leaves a copy of the file in
my Windows %temp% directory.

A similar technique with HPComm, or perhaps one instance of HPComm
and one of Conn4x, might work, but I haven't tried it.

Regards,
James



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