HP-15C emulator also free now!

[fhub]

I've found it on the site of an official HP distributor:

http://www.derekenwinkel.nl/scientific-calculators/hp-15c-limited-edition.html

Just scroll down to the bottom of the page, it's the updated version (Jan 2013) that doesn't need any activation.

It seems the HP people are slowly changing their emulator policy ... :-)

Franz

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

They seem to have changed their mind again. I get a 404. :-(

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Same here the first time I tried (it is working now). If 404 still persists, try this

http://www.derekenwinkel.nl/wetenschappelijke-rekenmachines/hp-15c-limited-edition.html

or even that

http://www.derekenwinkel.nl/fileuploader/download/download/?d=0&file=custom%2Fupload%2FFile-1359550868.zip

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

The download worked for me. Thanks!

The emulator is plagued by the same PSE bug as the hardware. So it's a faithful emulation of the LE. ;-)

[Nigel J Dowrick]

Franz - this link doesn't work for me. This one does, however:
Link to HP-15c emulator. I've installed it: as you say, it runs without any activation, but on my computer the display is temporarily corrupted whenever f or g are pressed.

Thanks for the information!

Nigel (UK)

[fhub]

Quote:

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... but on my computer the display is temporarily corrupted whenever f or g are pressed.

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Yes Nigel, this emulator seems to have big graphic problems. Sometimes it helps to reset the emulator or switch to an other skin (small/medium/big), but after that you must minimize and reopen the window again, because this also messes up the screen.

This emulator is indeed quite buggy (at least the graphic), and I really don't understand that HP couldn't fix this crap even with this update! :-(

Franz

Edited: 3 Feb 2013, 4:23 p.m.

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

Quote:

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this emulator seems to have big graphic problems.

---

One of them are those nasty dings on the left side of the bezel :-)

Now seriously, there's no problem here with the f and g keys, but after changing skins the emulator window has to be minimized and then restored again. Also, when running a program the screen most of the times goes blank. This hasn't been fixed by your alternative skins below.

Gerson.

[fhub]

Quote:

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Now seriously, there's no problem here with the f and g keys, but after changing skins the emulator window has to be minimized and then restored again.

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Yes, these display problems seem to happen only randomly, and that's what really annoys me. Although my fix (with the skin files) solves this problem, I hate it if I don't understand HOW and WHY this display bug is happening.

The other problem (when switching skins) is of course something that I could only fix when I would have the emulator sources.

Franz

Edited: 5 Feb 2013, 6:29 a.m.

[Tim Wessman]

Me either.

We have spent quite a bit of time trying to track these down several different times. The strange thing is, the 12C doesn't have the problem and the 15C does. The code is identical between them though with regards to the emulator part. It is very perplexing.

TW

[Nenad (Croatia)]

Unfortunately, it correctly emulates the infamous PAUSE bug

[DeboT]

Quote:

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... it correctly emulates the infamous PAUSE bug

---

And I think it should. If I develop a program on the emulator, I want it to work on the real calculator - and not have surprises and spend more debugging time if the emulator is not a true representation of the real thing.

[Marcel Samek]

I use this emulator occasionally. There is one bug that I have found that has bitten me:

When you fire up the emulator, it correctly restores the state of memory, as it should. However, it resets all the user flags on each restart of the emulator whereas on the real hardware the flags are not reset when it is powered on. As a result, if you have a program that depends on the state of the flags and does not initialize the flags, it might behave differently on the real hardware and on the emulator.

[DeboT]

The case that proves my point, I guess.

Saving the calculator state between startups does seem to be a bit random among emulators. I have 2 RPN "calculators" on my Nokia N8, Martin Krischik's HP-45 emulator and EasyRPN (not an emulator, but an on-phone calculator). The HP-45 remembers FIX setting and all register contents between startups, but for EasyRPN every startup is a "new day", whereas the real HP-45 does not save anything between switch-ons and most modern scientific calculators do; quite ironic :-)

[Kiyoshi Akima]

Is it possible to flash the emulator's ROM with the 15C+ ROM? Given the emulator's nature I'm willing to sacrifice the low battery indicator in return for a working PAUSE.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

The problem is not in the ROM but in the emulation layer. The latter is surely different in both implementations (Emulator and 15C+/LE). I guess that the emulation layer was written in C++ and compiled with a MS compiler for the emulator and the IAR cross compiler for the device. The 15C+ seems to have different code here.

[fhub]

Hi,

I've experimented today with this display bug that was mentioned yesterday in an other posting: the problem was that sometimes (randomly) pressing the [f] key displayed a part of the keyboard image in the number display.

Now I found out that the problems seems to be in the skin files - either there are some wrong entries or the emulator interprets some values incorrectly.

Although I still don't fully understand the purpose of all those entries in the skin file, I could find the lines which caused these display glitches and I've simply commented them out.

So if anyone has the same problem with his HP-15C emulator, just download the following file and unzip the modified skin-files into your emulator folder (I've also included the original files):

http://www.hpmuseum.org/guest/fhub/skins15c.zip

Since the same problem happens with the HP-12c emulator (not the Platinum!), I've also fixed the 12c skin-files (which are almost identical to the 15c files) and uploaded it here:

http://www.hpmuseum.org/guest/fhub/skins12c.zip

Let me know if these modified skins don't fix the problems on your computer.

And if anybody could explain how exactly the lines "POLY=..." work (i.e. what they do) - any detailed explanations would be appreciated.

Franz

[Didier Lachieze]

Great! that solves the display issue with the f key on my PC! Thanks for that. (still wondering how you identified the lines to comment)...

Edited: 5 Feb 2013, 2:21 a.m.

[fhub]

Quote:

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(still wondering how you identified the lines to comment)...

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Well, about 30 years experience with analyzing and modifying programs to fix any bugs! ;-)

But it was indeed quite some work, I had to find out the most important things about the structure of these skin files, and finally I found which lines (i.e. which numbers after "poly=...") are responsible for the display annunciators.

Nevertheless the complete working of the skin files is still a mystery for me - it's ways more complicated than necessary (if you compare it with the skin handling of Christoph Giesselink's emulators).

Franz

[Tim Wessman]

It really isn't any different. One is an XML with labels for each individual item, the other is just flat.

poly= on calculators with LCD segments, gives the outline of the area to be filled for the specific pixel.
POLY= same, but for the copy screen which has a much larger size.

A negative on those means copy a region from the bmp image rather then make a filled polygon.

On units where the calc has a matrix display, MATRIX= defines the number of pixels and a scaling value.

key= defines the key location and keycodes that actuate the key.

Fairly straightforward stuff. We didn't design it for end user editing of course, and that is what you really are complaining about! :-)

TW

Edited: 5 Feb 2013, 12:40 p.m.

[Thomas Radtke]

That works, thanks!