MLDL2000: something to talk about.

[Vieira, Luiz C. (Brazil)]

Hi, all;

after a successful operation, a Meindert's MLDL2000 unit has been delivered today at my Po.Box. I openned it and found 'gold':

I'm delving into the documentation and I tell you all that I'm going to fulfill at least two of my oldest dreams as a professional: to know some of the HP41 ROM resources and to learn how to program in MCODE (and to create some of these...). I know, I know, it is ' ancient' technology but, c'mon, it is almost 30 Y.O. technology and we are still using it for our daily activities. The HP41 is already part of the history and thanks to these marvelous, updated development tools (thanks Meindert, Diego, Klug and others), we can go ahead finding some new stuff we can do with it.

Cheers.

Luiz (Brazil)

Edited: 4 Nov 2005, 3:54 p.m.

[Matthias Wehrli]

Hi

As I told you a week ago I got my MLDL2000 last week. Up to now, I have about 150 images in it. All I can tell you is that this machine is the new spirit for the whole HP-41 scene. The programming is fast, esay and save. There is no risk of loosing your system when the internal backup battery is empty as it is a *real* problem in the ramboxes of W&W or ERAMCO. (Ok, the Profiset is a alternative, but who has a profiset? ;)

The only thing that I miss is a MCODE programm that makes images of a real module that is plugged in a defined port. I have a lot real modules we do not have an image of it....
Maybe someone can programm this "short" command for us/me.

In my mind I have something like this:

1. Give the machine a port (NOT AN HEX ADDRESS!), for instrance "8"
2. XEQ [ALPHA] CLONE [ALPHA]
3. The maching asks you, where to save the image (SRAM number of the MLDL), for instance "10".
4. This should copy the page 8 of the real module directly into the SRAM of the MLDL´s SRAM, number 10.

To prefer would be a command that does not requires to locate/define the memory of the MLDL first (That´s what the "MOVE" command of the ML-ROM needs).

Someone can follow my thoughts?

Matthias

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Matthias,

you can use the ML ROM MOVE command, if your MLDL setup contains a writable RAM page. The MLDL manual (and the original setup) describes the steps as one of the testing scenarios.

For a program which is more flexible (working the way you describe), it will be neccessary to enable one Page as an I/O page (page 4 comes into play here). Then an MCODE program can write to any MLDL RAM address. This is a bit tricky (see the MLDL specification) but can be done. When the module is in MLDL RAM, it can be saved to disk via USB.

I haven't written a single line of MCODE yet, so I'm not the guy to ask.

[Meindert Kuipers]

This is possible, but as of yet untested and requires mcode programming indeed. It is probably easier to implement this using the I/O features and dump it straight to USB. This requires both mcode (but easier) and software on the PC as well.

Meindert

[Matthias Wehrli]

I´ve got it! Finally I can make images of many modules... :)
Thanks Meindert.