hp 39gs/40gs applet setup on hp-50g

[Erturk Kocalar]

Hi all,

I recently got a hp 39gs from amazon for about $31.

I have a 50g but I'm starting to like the 39gs, especially the concept of applets. I discovered it saves the environment/settings between different applets. so for example, as an electrical engineer, so I created one applet that has the electrical formulas I use and the mode is set to engineering mode. I also have another applet for normal calculations, with format set to standard. It makes it easy to switch back and forth between different purposes. almost I have multiple calculators.

however, I would like to use the hp50g because it is much faster and powerful. I am not a power user (so don't know much about programming). How can I set up 50g in an "applet" fashion?

thanks,

Edited: 20 Aug 2011, 2:55 p.m.

[Gilles Carpentier]

Hi Erturk ,

I never use a 39gs. But if I understand well what you want to do, PUSH and POP command is what you need.

PUSH and POP : The PUSH command saves the current status of the flags, and the current directory path. This allows the user to change the flags or the directory path, then restore them all with the command POP

For exemple :

PUSH

 -105 SF @ to go in 'APPROX' mode

 -103 SF @ Set complex mode on

 ...

 Your program

 ...

POP @ restore the environment as it was at the last PUSH command

It works also when you change the standard/engeneering etc mode

So, in resume, you only need a PUSH command at the beginning, then set all the flags as you want and a POP at the end of your program

PS : you can also combine this with the STOF and RCLF commands. This is explained in the advanced user reference manuel.

Edited: 20 Aug 2011, 3:58 p.m.

[Tim Wessman]

You can't really do the same concept of "aplets" on the 50g. You could potentially do some saving of flags and directories as stated, but the 50g really isn't set up to do task switching which is the whole basis of aplets.

Interestingly enough, there is some code still left in the 50g when a former calc engineer was planning to enable support for aplets on the 50g. The work was never finished though. There wasn't much interest for it either.

I do think that everyone discounts the 39/40 though - especially here since they are algebraic only. They are very simple to operate, and even simpler to explain how to use, but that simplicity definitely puts of those wanting to do things more than 1 or 2 ways that are supported. The 50g shines in its flexibility.

Remove those limitations (such as give it units, more flexibility in programming, and some more customization) and I think more people would be willing to give it a shot.

TW

[M. Joury]

I am an old time HP RPN user and for that reason put off trying the 38/39/40 series calcs for years. A little more than a year ago I decided I needed something new to play with and purchased the 39gs. I have to say that I love it. It is not an HP50 or even an HP48S/X but it has some really cool features.

Overall, I have been very impressed with the machine and it's capabilities and the more I play with aplets the more I like them. I do wish that the programming language were a little more powerful (the ability to call a subroutine within a program would be nice for example) but even with the current limitations one can do a lot with the calculator. I also really like the keyboard color which even though it dies not look quite as "professional" as the 50g is much easier on my eyes. Add RPN, a wide enter key, and a few additional features and this machine would be a real winner.

I did implement an RPN mode for it that provides the approximate capability of a HP45 so that I can get my RPN fix and I am just getting back (after 9 months being busy with other things) to working on converting this app to SysRPL to improve the speed (I just wish I could figure out how to load libraries into the Emu48/39g emulator since I currently have an issue with my Parameterized Outer Loop and keep trashing memory during debugging <g>).

Cheers,

-Marwan

[David Hayden]

I'll second Marwan's comments. I really like the colors of the 39gs. And although I'd prefer RPN, I think the 39gs completely blows away the TI 83 which is it's main competition. Aplets are exactly what teachers need in the classroom.

[Erturk Kocalar]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Push/pop commands with some programming could be a partial work-around. I think Tim hit it on the head by saying task switching, which is what I was looking for.

Quote:

---

I do think that everyone discounts the 39/40 though - especially here since they are algebraic only. They are very simple to operate, and even simpler to explain how to use, but that simplicity definitely puts of those wanting to do things more than 1 or 2 ways that are supported. The 50g shines in its flexibility.

---

yes, it is easy to learn and operate. The build quality is same as 50g. I was able to show the concept of graphs to my 7 yrs daughter. ( she was asking for a graphing calculator afterwards :)). It also helped me understand the capability and expandability of 50g because I would go back and try to do the same thing on 50g.

Quote:

---

Remove those limitations (such as give it units, more flexibility in programming, and some more customization) and I think more people would be willing to give it a shot.
TW

---

within a week of use, i don't have a strong feeling of anything missing (for its purpose). Units would be nice and also if one could enter multi-character variables in solver. however, after using 50g and 40gs, I find there is a fine line between keeping it simple and complicated. For my use, I would keep 40gs as is (=cessna) and use the 50g (=fighter jet + airbus). :)

I haven't started programming yet. the views reminded me the event-driven programming. It looks like it is possible to add pictures to applets, which will be nice. I'm thinking about making tools for calculating pcb trace impedances. Also, when I calculate the impedance of a cap or inductor, I want to see a plot of the impedance vs freq with cursor at the entered freq (maybe this is the split view.)

Now if i can figure out how to overclock this calc, that'll be cool :)