--- In 50g@yahoogroups.com, "Seth" <sethm@...> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Brand new member here, I just got my 50g on Thursday.
>
> So far I'm happy with it. I'm upgrading from an HP48sx I got in
1990, which has better "build
> quality", but is dead slow by today's standards. Over the years,
I'd been tempted to move to
> a TI-86 or TI-89, but I just couldn't bring myself to abandon
RPN. Of course, the very first
> thing I did with my new HP was put it in RPN mode and check flag
117, so it's more like the
> 48!
>
> Funnily enough, the hardest thing for me so far is the new
position of the "ENTER" key. My
> fingers keep wanting to jab EEX when I'm doing calculations, until
I remember they've made it
> smaller, and moved it to the bottom right.
>
> Anyone else upgrading from the 48 series? Any tips or advice?
>
> -Seth
>
Hi, Seth. Same situation here. Also, the keyboard is vastly
different from the GX.
Some points about the 50g I didn't know about:
1. There are "holded" key combinations now. That is, if you press
left shift and release and press another key, that keypress is
different than if you press left shift and HOLD IT while you press
the next key. The rc.p keycode (row column . plane) for the held
keys is now rc.ph (where h is 1 for held key and 0 for non-held key).
2. Update your firmware to V2.09 Build 92 (available at hp.com) if
it's not already there. There is a bug in the current firmware that
prevents LINSOLVE to function properly. Hopefully 2.10 should be
out soon which fixes a similar (but less important for me), bug.
3. Read and learn the abbreviated keystrokes. In particular, to
automatically toggle between exact and approximate mode, press (and
hold) right-shift ENTER. You will see the "=" sign change to "~"
and vice-versa. Also, to switch between real and complex mode, left-
shift (hold) TOOL. There are others that I'm sure you'll find.
4. Programs written for the GX are not necessarily going to work on
the 50g without some (extreme?) twiddling. In particular, the 50g
has "infinite precision integers" (exact mode) that may not be in
the type dispatch of the GX program. This is just one example.
5. Go to hpcalc.org and download emacs 2.11g, SDIAG, etc. They are
mainly for SysRPL development, but the extable entries (standard ROM
entry points for compiling on the calculator) include help for all
of the built-in User RPL commands. Also newly available is an
updated usage command (although not a library anymore for some
reason).
6. If you like the periodic table that HP provided for the 48GX,
check out comp.sys.hp48 and in the fairly recent posts, Jean-Yves
Avenard (et al.?) converted the 48GX lib to the 50g series--very
nice!
7. The menu system can be changed to soft menus by setting flag -
117. There are now 128 system flags that can be mussed with, and
128 user flags. Some are not shown in the flag browser.
8. If you right-shift (hold) the EQW key ('), you will put
backticks on the stack which will use the Algebraic compiler to
parse your command while in RPN mode. I learned that trick from the
nice folks at comp.sys.hp48.
9. USB power: The 50g is capable of being powered by USB while
connected to a suitable source. Note that there is an issue if
you're connected to a USB power source and that source slowly looses
its voltage. Under these conditions, the HP will reset itself and
you will lose any information on the stack (not memory--it just
performs a warmstart). The calc works fine if you just unplug the
USB cable before shutting down your laptop, for example.
10. Have fun; take your 50g with you everywhere and get others to
go "oohhh, and ahhhh" :)
--Scott