WP 34s : An old problem coming back

[Miguel Toro]

Hi,

Some time ago. I had this problem when connecting my WP-34s with the emulator in my PC, that prevented me from the calculator to the PC, but it was solved when I updated versions on both sides or something like that.

Today, I was trying to transfer a program from the calculator to the emulator and I got an I/O error. However, from the emulator to the calculator, there is no problem whatsoever.

So, my setup is simple:

- PC with serial connector

- Windows 7

- Gene's cable

- WP 34s

- WP34s.ini with 'COM3:'

I tested, trying different correction factors on 'X' without success. So any help is welcomed.

Thanks and regards,

Miguel

[Les Wright]

I had that issue once too, only with XP virtually rendered in VMWare Fusion on a MacBook and using the FTDI USB-Serial converter Eric Rechlin sells. Drove me nuts, but eventually things got sorted.

I should reexamine the issue and get back to you. Presently I use the QT emulator directly in OS X on my Macs, and the connectivity is fine both ways, which it was NOT in the early days of that emulator when I tried it.

I still flash with MySamba under XP in a Fusion virtual machine. If I follow the steps it works fine. I tend not to do the back and forth serial transfer stuff any more. My preference is to compile my own wp34s-lib.dat file with the Python assembler tool from my text listings, concatenate that with calc.bin to give what I call my_calc_full.bin, and flash that to an erased calc. Works perfectly.

Hope you sort this out. Are you using the same firmware version on both sides of the transfer?

Les

Edited: 4 Nov 2013, 8:04 p.m.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Les, it's Perl, not Python. :-)

Your idea is not bad because the lib tool sorts the programs alphabetically which is not the case when copying a program to flash on the device. I'd prefer not to erase the whole flash because this will cost you everything stored on the machine. Just do a backup with ON+STO twice, then switch to SAM-BA mode with ON+D, ON+S (twice). Now you can flash your modified firmware. The backup is preserved and will be automatically restored when the firmware starts the first time after flashing.

I have no idea what's wrong with Miguel's setup. If the transfer works in one direction it should do the same in the opposite sense. Transfer is always bidirectional because of the handshake taking place. The adjustment factor is only evaluated on non-XTAL machines. The crystal is one of the most useful hardware modifications for WP 34S.