71B MathROM bug list ?

[Valentin Albillo]

Hi all:

Is there any list or information about HP-71B Math ROM's
bugs ? I've never seen even one mentioned, but surely
there must be some publicly known ? Any info and/or bug reports would be much appreciated.

Re bug lists, I've seen frequent requests for some existing HP-71B ROM version 1BBBB bug list, but I've never seen such a list myself. I believe there were some 50+ bugs featured, mostly having to do with user-defined functions but again, never saw that comprehensive listing. I'd be most interested to have a look at it, can somebody help ?

BTW, ROM version 1BBBB was upgraded to 1CCCC which corrected a lot of bugs, I think, but introduced a really major one (probably the worst bug the HP-71B ever had) having to do with catastrophic RAM corruption if certain kinds of variables were redefined with changed dimensions or types. So severe was this bug and so
inconvenient the workaround that ROM version 1CDCC was promptly issued.

Thanks in advance for any info and

Best regards from V.

[Jordi Hidalgo]

As to the 71B bug list, I believe that such a list was distributed at one of the HPCC conferences in the 1980s.
There might be a copy in a back issue of Datafile and/or the conference proceedings (try searching the PPC CD-ROM set). Sorry for not being more specific.

Jordi

[Valentin Albillo]

Hi, Jordi:

Jordi posted:

"There might be a copy in a back issue of Datafile and/or the conference proceedings (try searching the PPC CD-ROM set)."

Thanks a lot for pointing me in the right direction, I was able to locate the HP-71B bug list (no version mentioned, but I think it's for rev. 1BBBB) in a past issue of Datafile. Lots of bugs, by the way, though I've never met any of them in (heavy) actual use. Good to know, just in case.

As for HP-71B's Math ROM's bugs, I still can't find not even a single mention, but there *must* be some !. Anyone can help ?

Best regards from V.

[Garth Wilson]

I have version 1BBBB and the only bug I've found was very serious. If you you have for example in a text file that you want to transform into a BASIC file,

DIM X$[len](how many)

(instead of telling it first how many elements in the array and then the maximum string length), it will crash badly when you try to transform it, and even INIT:3 may not bring it back.

I also have HPIL module ver 1B, Math module ver 1A, and Forth/assembler module ver 1A. I've given them all a lot of use although there are plenty of functions in the math ROM I've never touched, I used my own much more powerful text editor instead of the one in the Forth ROM, and never used the assembler; but I never found any bugs in those modules. The Forth was poorly written and I wrote a lot of my own improvements and extensions without resorting to assembly. I was able to speed up a lot of Forth words just by redefining them in Forth. The results ranged from 4 to 13 times as fast.

[V-PN]

[pre]
Heyyy!
Do you still have the source code?
DROP LETTER to me or revealed them here (or both :)
I still have my 71B & F/A ROM
(VPN)

[Garth Wilson]

VPN wrote:

> Heyyy! Do you still have the source code? DROP LETTER to me or revealed them here (or both :) I still have my 71B & F/A ROM (VPN)

I assume you mean my own source code, since the module came with a manual but not its source code, and I didn't pay the extra for the IDS.

Ok, give me a little time. I've transfered data from 71 to PC several times before but I do it so seldom that I'll kind of have to figure out how to do it again. I should be able to get to it by the weekend. It still beats re-typing it into the PC. I don't remember how much there is.

[Valentin Albillo]

Hi, Garth:

Garth posted:

"If you you have for example in a text file that you want to transform into a BASIC file [...] it will crash badly when you try to transform it"

Pretty interesting, I didn't know that kind of statement was legal syntax. Most bugs have to do with weirdly changing things from inside a multi-line user-defined function (such as redimensioning the array one of whose elements you're presently assigning a value by calling that UDF, etc)

Thanks for your input and best regards from V.