Re: HP85 Emulator / Viper Message #6 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 10 Feb 2004, 9:18 a.m., in response to message #1 by Mark Myers
Hi, Mark:
The ability to run your HP-85 programs on any card or
emulator will depend very much in your programs' requirements. For instance, if your programs make use of
any binary routines (such as the ones used to take control
of the keyboard, improved screen handling, etc., which were very popular at the time, look for LOADBIN being used in your programs) and/or uses keywords residing in plug-in ROMs (such as the Matrix ROM, the I/O ROM, or the Plotter ROM), it will be far more difficult to run/emulate them, if at all possible.
However, there's always the possibility to port your programs to the PC by rewriting them from scratch. Any modern PC language (such as Visual Basic, C++, Pascal, or Delphi, or even Java) can be used to easily recreate the original functionality, with the added advantage of running many times faster. Also, the HP-85 had just 16/32 Kb RAM, so program sizes are reasonably small, at least by today standards.
Matter of fact, I had to port an HP-85 navigation program to the PC a few years ago. That program used the CRT screen to plot some trajectories and data, sent them to a graphics printer, and did some tape read/write operations. It also used a binary for keyboard and screen control. I did the port using Visual Basic 3.0 for Windows and it took me just two days to have a fully operational Windows 3.11 version running smoothly, with the added advantages of the Windows environment (copy, paste, much better graphics, etc).
So don't be afraid to try. If you don't feel like doing it yourself, perhaps you could search instead for some company or individual that can offer such a rewriting service.
Best regards from V.
Edited: 10 Feb 2004, 9:27 a.m.
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