The Museum of HP Calculators

HP Forum Archive 15

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

S&SMC #9 HP41cx
Message #1 Posted by Jonathan Watmough on 19 June 2005, 1:58 a.m.

Hi Valentin,

I am a lurker as far as your challenges, but I have greatly enjoyed reading them.

I recently bought a HP41cx, so I thought I'd have a 'go' at trying to get #9 running on a HP41. This is the first program I've written on a calculator since about 1986 when I owned a Casio FX4000p.

I'll feel kinda stupid if this is wrong, especially since I 'cheated' and looked at your original solution briefly, but I can't seem to find the original posts about this challenge. Sadly my school calculus is very rusty, so I played with EMU48 and plotted a few polynomials before I had any idea at all what was going on.

The program ran for about an hour and 20 minutes before getting the following answers :

A=1 B=-5 C=8 D=-7

I skipped the part about finding an exact root ;-) Any suggestions, optimisations, rewrites etc are very welcome.

Best Wishes Jonathan

I used the following registers and labels :

Registers:

01 A    hardcoded to start at 1
02 B    -M to M
03 C    ditto
04 D    ditto
05 x1   3.1
06 x2   3.2
07 f(x1)
08 f(x2)
09 M    9

Labels:

LBL SM start of program
LBL 01 main loop
LBL 02 compute f(x1)
LBL 03 compute f(x2)
LBL 04 success!

The program:

01 LBL SM  set up variables
02 1
03 STO 01
04 RCL 09
05 CHS
06 STO 02
07 STO 03
08 STO 04
09 3.1
10 STO 05
11 3.2
12 STO 06
13 LBL 01  main loop
14 XEQ 02  calc f(x1)
15 XEQ 03  calc f(x2)
16 RCL 07
17 RCL 08
18 /       divide them and look for -ve
19 0
20 X<>Y
21 X<=Y?   -ve?
22 GTO 04  success !! x1 and x2 straddle the root
23 RCL 04  
24 1
25 +
26 STO 04  D=D+1
27 RCL 09  
28 X<>Y
29 X<=Y?   <=M ?
30 GTO 01  loop
31 X<>Y
32 CHS
33 STO 04  else D=-M
34 1
35 RCL 03
36 +
37 STO 03  C=C+1
38 RCL 09
39 X<>Y
40 X<=Y?   C<=M?
41 GTO 01  loop
42 X<>Y
43 CHS
44 STO 03  else C=-M
45 1
46 RCL 02
47 +
48 STO 02  B=B+1
49 RCL 09
50 X<>Y
51 X<=Y?   B<=M?
52 GTO 01  loop
53 X<>Y
54 CHS
55 STO 02  B=-M
56 1
57 RCL 01
58 +
59 STO 01  A=A+1
60 GTO 01  loop -- should be a check here
61 "FAILED"
62 AVIEW
63 LBL 04  we come here if we find a root in [x1,x2]
64 "FOUND IT"
65 AVIEW
66 RTN
67 END
68 LBL 02  Calculate f(x1)
69 RCL 05
70 3
71 Y^X
72 RCL 01
73 *
74 RCL 05
75 X^2
76 RCL 02
77 *
78 +
79 RCL 05
80 RCL 03
81 *
82 +
83 RCL 04
84 +
85 STO 07
86 RTN
87 LBL 03  Calculate f(x2) 
88 RCL 06
89 3
90 Y^X
91 RCL 06
92 X^2
93 RCL 02
94 *
95 +
96 RCL 06
97 RCL 03
98 *
99 +
100 RCL 04
101 +
102 STO 08
103 RTN
104 END
      
Re: S&SMC #9 HP41cx
Message #2 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 20 June 2005, 4:49 a.m.,
in response to message #1 by Jonathan Watmough

Hi, Jonathan:

Thanks for your interest in my challenges. I also don't keep copies of the threads, so I'm not sure what the exact number was, but certainly your program has nothing to do with S&SMC#9, which is quite recent and asked for a 10-digit number fitting some divisibility criteria.

Your solution surely has to do with a much ancient S&SMC, but don't know exactly which, so I can't comment on the solutions posted at the time though I suppose that your program finds it correctly, whatever it was it had to find :-)

Thanks again for your interest, and keep posting your HP-41CX solutions to past, present, and future challenges. And by the way, congratulations on your recent acquisition.

Best regards from V.

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

Go back to the main exhibit hall