RPN bugs both present in Prime Calc and emulator

[Eelco Rouw]

Hi everybody,

Have been reading several comments of people having their calculator crashing when using the Spreadsheet App with RPN. I can add more to this, not only the spreadsheet crashes, but also the EDITLIST and EDITMAT commands do the same.

Both spreadsheet and the commands above also crash the emulator when in RPN mode.

It would be great if these errors could be fixed, the calculator is really promising (although I do miss the elegance of RPL ;-)).

Kind regards,

Eelco Rouw

[Michael de Estrada]

Also, it corrupted my flash drive, such that the Apps key no longer worked and would reset/reboot the calculator when pressed instead of entering the Apps screen. I was forced to re-format the flash drive to restore the system, resulting in the loss of all programs and data that I had stored on it. Since there is no SD card slot and no backup utility for the pc connectivity software, there is no simple way to safeguard your work in the event of flash drive corruption.

I think that HP should revise the code for this machine such that all Apps or utilities that cannot operate in RPN entry mode are disabled when RPN entry is selected in the main settings.

[Eelco Rouw]

I have been delving in this issue a bit deeper. The 1Var and 2Var statistics programs work and seem to use some kind of EDITLIST/EDITMAT. Could it be an error in some kind of handling routine?

Kind regards, Eelco

[Tim Wessman]

The issue with editlist/editmat is that they were not designed to handle anything but the built in objects when first designed and implemented, and then later user created objects passed the error checking that would detect the object type when trying to access the memory location. However, accessing a user object is a bit different then a hard coded variable.

The issue in spreadsheet had to do with reference counters on the parsed objects so they were prematurely deallocated.

TW

Edited: 16 Oct 2013, 10:19 a.m.

[Eelco Rouw]

Hi Tim,

Great to hear that the cause has been found. Is there anything (besides turning RPN off) we can do ourselves, or should we wait for a firmware update? If so, when can we expect this update?

Really love the calc. Have been investigating it further. I like its programmability and color is such a nice addition!

Kind regards,

Eelco

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Quote:

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Since there is no SD card slot and no backup utility for the pc connectivity software, there is no simple way to safeguard your work in the event of flash drive corruption.

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That's not quite correct. The Connectivity Kit has a backup feature which creates a zip file which can be restored or dissected and used file by file.

[Michael de Estrada]

Can you please show me how to do this, since I didn't see anything in the connectivity software ? Is there any help file or user guide for it ?

Edit - I found the User Guide on my hard drive in the Connectivity Kit install directory. It was supposed to be in the program Help menu, but it is missing in my version. I now see how the backup works. It wasn't obvious, since it's not part of the drop down menu options.

Edited: 16 Oct 2013, 6:28 p.m.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Tim explained the reason why the Connectivity Kit User's Guide isn't in the Help menu: It's not available in all supported languages and is therefore hidden from view.

[Mike (Stgt)]

The errors must be the same, or the emulator isn't.

Ciao.....Mike

[Eelco Rouw]

Actually I read that the emulator is actually a simulator and thus not binary identical. The emulator is approx. 5-10 times faster.

Reproducing the error in both physical hardware as well as the emulator could help to drill down to the root cause.

Kind regards, Eelco