HP32s Relative GTO

[Mike T.]

I've just managed to obtain an HP32s - but it does seem to be a little limited when it comes to labels, I find that having to use a label when I could use a relative jump seems rather wasteful goven the number of program steps...

Can't figure out how to do a relative GTO - is there another (more efficent) way of constructing a (conditional) loop...?

Mike T.

[Katie Wasserman]

There is no relative branching mechanism on the 32s, you've got just the 26 labels available. However, there's a very limited program memory space (390 bytes), the ratio of one label per 15 bytes seems pretty reasonable to me. Considering that most instructions take 1.5 bytes that's one label per 10 steps. Furthermore, in practice you'd use some of those 390 bytes for variables so you'd have even more than 1 label per 10 steps.

-Katie

[Mike T.]

Thanks for your reply.

Not having a relative jump is a pity - but I'm still very pleased with the HP32S. I almost brought one in London in the late '80s to replace my HP33C but didn't as it seemed 'too complicated'. I think it was the menus that put me off, and the huge price tag!

I'm still not a big fan of menus but having used my 'new' machine for a few hours I have to admit that the HP32S implements them in a reasonably intuitive fashion (the only function I have trouble finding is PSE).

Mike T.

[Jim Yohe]

There's indirect addressing in the 32sii if that helps but I don't know if the 32s (rather than the 32sii) is more limited. Page 13-19 of the manual.

[Don Shepherd]

The 32s has indirect addressing too (except for indirect access to the 6 stats registers which only the sii has). The 32sii programming also adds text prompts via EQN, which is nice. And the algebraic solver is very nice.