Re: Reality, Emulation and New Calculators (Probably Long) Message #11 Posted by Christoph Giesselink on 22 Mar 2004, 2:15 p.m., in response to message #1 by Steve
Some personal remarks as author of some published and unpublished emulators to this topic.
First of all I think we must distinguish between PC (desktop / laptop) and PDA based emulator systems.
1) PC
This is the area where most people know my name, especially as maintainer of Emu48 (Win32 version). I must confess I'm one of the persons where a PC runs all the day. In the company from the morning to the evening and at home from the evening until I go to bed. So especially the emulation of the high end calculators completely replace the usage of the real ones. Replace means here, replacing the Windooze integrated calculator for simple math like pi*4 and on the other side for HP program developing purpose. The only real calculator I use quite often is the HP32SII in my jacket. Especially for program development PC based emulators are my first choice.
All my DAY calculation routines for the HP42S published on www.hp42s.com were developt with an emulator. I never tested them on a real machine, it's just too clumsy to type them in or to maintain them on a real machine.
On the other side emulation of low end machines on the PC like HP10B, HP20S or with some restrictions the HP32SII makes not too much sense. It was fun for me to program them, also like Emu28, the HP28C emulator but I don't really use them on the PC.
2) PDA
This is area where my name is unknow. The reason for this is simple, I haven't published my emulators for PocketPC 2002 (Jornada 565).
Reason for this, I got many support requests on Emu48 and much more on Emu48CE. I have nothing to to with any Emu48CE version! A test platform, especially when you write software for PocketPC like me, is quite expensive. How should I test my software and give support to a platform I haven't? Would you spend much time and money into such a project? Selling each copy isn't possible because some source code parts are published under the GPL.
Now back on topic again, on one side we have the emulation of the high end graphical calculators like the HP48 or HP49 on the other side emulations of Pioneer series calculators or other smaller machines.
2.1) HP48, HP49
IMHO not very useful (even if you have a fully working and a more or less bug free version like me), the display is too small, the keyboard has no tactile feedback and depends on the KML script it's sometimes also too small. Also not very useful for developing purpose.
The only useful thing maybe that you have special programs or libraries (navigation tools, ...) which you have to use frequently outside home.
2.2) HP42S, HP28S
I'm personally not such a friend of the HP42S, I use the HP32SII emulaton more often. For more complex calculations I prefer my HP28S emulation on the PDA (display in landscape mode). It's a litte bit faster than the HP48 emulation and the relationship between display and keyboard size is IMHO much better.
2.3) HP32SII
This is an emulator I like very much. The PDA has quite the same size like the orignal, the display is big enough and the size of the keys is acceptable. The emulation speed is about 10 times faster than the original one.
But here we have to ask, what think HP about this? Such an emulator will be a competitor in some areas to there new HP33S. But it's useless to discuss this at the moment, ROM images aren't available.
2.4) Simulators
Can be adapted especially to the needs of the users and onto the situation on the host system. No problems with firmware copyright. Take no care on the restrictions of the original hardware.
Regards
Christoph
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