HP Forum Archive 17

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Using Solver on The PC Message #1 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 6 Mar 2007, 10:15 a.m. There's seems to be a lot of interest in the Solver on the HP-17BII, 19BII and 17Bii+. Gerson has created some great Trig routines and there's been some other solver equations by various other members. Even though I've been wanting to play around with some of these equations, especially the Trig ones, I'm just a little bit too lazy to type them into my 17BII or 19BII. So I've been looking for an easy way. I first tried the HPCALC.EXE program that came with the old HP Omnibook computers. While it runs in Windows and does have a Solver Application, it's not a complete implemetation of the caculator solver. It doesn't seem to have L(), G() or SIGMA functions, and it has a lot of quirks on how it handles a lot of the solver functions. Then I remembered the HP-200LX. It has a great calculator in it which also has a solver. Better yet, it does implement L(), G() and SIGMA. The HP-200LX makes a great development platform for developing solver equations - the memo pad can be used to edit the equations - and results can be fully tested and debugged on the HP-200LX. It's also very easy to copy equations, such as Gerson's TRIG ones, and then paste them into the SOLVER.EQN file on the PC, copy the file to a PCCard and insert into the HP-200LX for running. The 200LX solver is 100% compatible with the 17BII solver with two exceptions: You need to place a left Brace and Right Brace around the equation, and all Colons must be changed into Commas. Other than that, the equations work as-is with no modification. EDITED - As Gerson points out next message, there is no need to change the Colons into Commas. Just copy and paste into the SOLVE.EQN file. (Bill) Now for the really good part - You can emulate the HP-200LX (or 100LX) on the PC using CPACK100 or CPACK200. Doing this allows for using the Windows Notepad (or other editor) to edit the Equations, then run and debug on the emulator. Once the equation is perfect, you can print it out and enter it into the calculator. For a test, I scanned the TRIANGLE equation pages from the Technical Applications Book, OCR'ed it, convereted the Colons to Commas, and then copied it to the SOLVE.EQN file. Just had to correct a few mistakes due to the OCR, but the result worked great. A lot easier than typing it directly in. The CPACK100 can be downloaded from: CPACK100 Put all the files in a directly called CPACK100 and run the APP100.BAT file. You now have a great development platform to let your Solver imagination run wild. Bill Edited: 6 Mar 2007, 12:15 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

Re: Using Solver on The PC Message #2 Posted by Gerson W. Barbosa on 6 Mar 2007, 11:54 a.m., in response to message #1 by Bill (Smithville, NJ) Hello Bill, Thanks for the link. CPAK200 would be great, but CPAK100 works. Quote: You need to place a left Brace and Right Brace around the equation, and all Colons must be changed into Commas. Other than that, the equations work as-is with no modification. I had to enter a simple equation into the solver, so the file Solve.eqn was created. Once the file exists, it's just a matter of copying and pasting. There was no need to change colons into commas, though. Have you tried it? This is a better development tool than the HP-200LX and a CF card I used when working on the equations. Thanks again! Best regards, Gerson. Edited: 6 Mar 2007, 11:56 a.m.

Re: Using Solver on The PC Message #3 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 6 Mar 2007, 12:09 p.m., in response to message #2 by Gerson W. Barbosa Hi Gerson, Quote: There was no need to change colons into commas, though. Have you tried it? You're right - colons wirk fine. I was going by the list of functions which show commas in lieu of colons, so thought they had to be commas. I'll correct my original post. Thanks. Sure is a lot easier to edit equations on the PC than in the calculator. I've used both CPACK100 and CPACK200. Both work fine. Bill

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