HP48 PDL app files--porting to Emu48 or Power48

[Les Wright]

With my recent malfunctioning cable purchase the seller threw in a utilities CD, which included the DOS-based HP PDL interface for creating RPL code for porting directly to the calculator.

Old software and DOS-based interface notwithstanding, I actually really find the GUI easy to use for my modest purposes and would like to use it to key in simple User RPL programs.

My problem is I have no idea how to create variable and program objects and the like that simply be saved to an appropriate format on my PC for transfer NOT to the actual calc (remember, can't do that, no cable), but rather Emu48 or Power48, my emulators of choice.

Are their compliers or converters out there that take the *.app files created by this utility and turn them into the appropriate object files that can be loaded to the emulators in question? I know the PDL utility does something of this sort, but not as an individual process, but rather as something integrated in uploading created programs and variables to the actual HP48G over the serial connection.

Grateful, as always, for your forthcoming wisdom.

Les

[Han]

If you are only writing User RPL code, any text editor will be more than sufficient. Try typing in the TEACH command, and then send one of the example programs from the TEACH package to your PC using ASCII mode. Then take a look at the file to see how to write User RPL (you can do this with any text editor). Emu48 should be able to load it just fine (I haven't tested this, though).

Han

[Les Wright]

I will try that when I get a working cable and can transfer one of the TEACH programs to my PC.

In the meantime, I have found that HPBINASC works. There is a lot of header information in the HP PDL app files that needs to be edited out first, otherwise it pads the resultant object with extra text, but all of the special HP48 symbols (<<>>, the integral character, the del, the back arrow, etc.) seem to get translated just fine. The resulting object is a character string, so when I load it on the stack in Emu48 or Power48, I have to take off the double quotes first, then buff it up, then store as a variable. With a couple of small programs so far today this works well.

I am open to other suggestions, preferably with a user-friendly GUI.

Les

[Dia C. Tran]

Emu48 supported the serial port so what I did is to transfer the apps from PDL to Emu48 via a serial cable connecting 2 serial ports on the same PC running Windows. It works just like the real thing and is very cool.

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

Hi all (especially those experienced Windows programmers)!

Wouldn't it be cool to have two virtual COM ports (properly mapped to the DOS box as if they were real hardware) which are directly linked to eachother as if there were a connection via a cross-over cable between two real ports? Speed and data format settings would be ignored because the raw bytes are just shifted between the buffers. Some handshaking must be provided to avoid buffer overruns.

No current notebook I know of has serial ports nowadays, just USB. To do the loopback trick in real hardware, you need a HSB hub and two USB-Serial converters or a device with more than one port, and a matching cable, of course.

Any takers?

Marcus