Stand-alone version of WP34s assembler available

[Neil Hamilton (Ottawa)]

All,

Though the executable is big (5.6MB) and clunky slow (if has to decompress itself -- each time -- before it runs), it is available for any Windows environment without an installed Perl package. Other than that, it has none of the drawbacks of the TinyPerl build attempted a few weeks ago, and behaves identically to the main Perl script.

The Assembler documentation in SVN has been updated and includes some commentary about this addition as well. (A 'red-lined' difference of the document is also available at: WP34s_Assembler_Disassembler_diff_30Jun2011_to_9Jul2011.pdf)

The main Perl script is still, and will continue to be, the main development but the executable will be topped-up from time to time (its an ugly, multi-computer chore to create, ugh!!).

On another note, after a month wandering in the wilderness of Canada Post, my overlays have arrived (thanks Eric!) so I can finally retire my paper overlay. My photography doesn't hold a candle to others I have seen, but here is the comparison (I haven't flashed in a bit):

I too have had the mushy keys on <-, and to a lesser extent EEX and +/-. I am going to try a sharp razor blade to release the keys. You can just make out a bit of hacking I tried on the <- key with a less than sharp xacto blade.

Other than that minor issue, the new overlays are great.

Cheers...

[fhub]

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... it is available ...

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Now the only question is: WHERE? ;-)

[Etienne Victoria]

On the SVN repository in the usual directories here

Best

Etienne

[fhub]

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On the SVN repository in the usual directories here

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Thanks!

That really strange: I'm always using the following link

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wp34s/develop

but there's still SVN 1196 (even with refreshing the browser cash)!?

Franz

Edited: 9 July 2011, 2:38 p.m.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Franz, get yourself an SVN client like TortoiseSVN. The latest WP 34S release is 1197.

[fhub]

Well Marcus, I doubt this program would work on my old Win98 notebook I'm using here for internet! ;-)

And so far the link for the WP34S-SVN I've posted above has always worked fine - I don't know what's the matter today, maybe a problem on my ISP!?

[Hubert Weikert]

Hello Neil,

Congratulations! Have you used pp or have you found something better?

Hubert

[Neil Hamilton (Ottawa)]

Hi Hubert,

Yes, this was done using "pp". Once I got it all together it worked quite well. There were some problems with which Perl package was used and I'd have to go back and find out which one I eventually used.(I think I mentioned more details in an email to you last week.)

There is about 14MB (compressed to ~5MB) of unicode that I am still trying to figure out if I can remove. I have tried several tricks -- including just deleting the darn stuff -- but, as yet no luck. I am still looking for a solution that will make it smaller. Making it smaller will also make it faster since the majority of the time is taken decompressing the image.

The Assembler documentation gives a bit more detail.

BTW: It may *not* work with VERY old versions of Windows (ie: Windows 98). I have no way to test this but I do recall seeing something in some "pp" documentation that may indicate this.

Cheers...

[fhub]

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BTW: It may *not* work with VERY old versions of Windows (ie: Windows 98).

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Win98 is VERY old? Well, I'm much older myself ... :-)

But here on my Win98 notebook it seems to work fine so far!

[fhub]

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Though the executable is big (5.6MB) and clunky slow (if has to decompress itself -- each time -- before it runs)

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Hi again,

I've now looked into your EXE and I saw that the biggest part in it is for Unicode support (in the subfolder lib\unicore).

Maybe you could try to compile it without Unicode support?

I don't know if this is possible, but it would dramatically reduce the size of the EXE and also its decompression time, and Unicode is certainly not necessary for your assembler.

Franz