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HP Forum Archive 17

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HP71B Arrive
Message #1 Posted by Vincze on 6 Sept 2007, 7:51 p.m.

My friends, my HP 71B arrive today from Spain. It is beautiful and in excellent condition. It come with two 4k memory modules, a sleeve of memory card, the card reader, and two manuals still wrapped up ( I wonder if I should even open since I have manuals on PDF). One thing that shock me is how slow it is to run (and fact that math on 71B is not RPN but Alg). I very happy though as I finally have. Now I have to try some of Valentíne's programs and some of others that you all post.

If someone would send me information about what math module will do for me and maybe where I can find one reasonably, I would appreciate.

Your friend, Víncze

Edited: 6 Sept 2007, 7:52 p.m.

      
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #2 Posted by Namir on 6 Sept 2007, 8:32 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Vincze

You can check the web page for the EMU71 emulator. Download it as well as the math rom and JPC rom (the web page has many links that you need to follow do download the various parts). Edit the file emu71.ini to include the math rom (and JPC rom if you like). The emulator will give you an idea what the math rom is capable of doing (pretty neat stuff).

Then watch eBay for MATH ROMs for sale and buy one when available.

Namir

            
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #3 Posted by Vincze on 6 Sept 2007, 9:14 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by Namir

Thank you my friend. I will try that, I ashamed I not think of that.

Is there not some place to see what Math rom give you though? I thought MoHPC site might have something, but I not find yet.

Edited: 6 Sept 2007, 9:20 p.m.

                  
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #4 Posted by Namir on 6 Sept 2007, 10:10 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by Vincze

If you have the new museum DVD disks (or the previous version) you can find the PDF for the HP-71B Math ROM. The manual tells you how to use the ROM and what features are available in it.

Namir

                  
Math ROM articles
Message #5 Posted by Valentin Albillo on 7 Sept 2007, 6:02 a.m.,
in response to message #3 by Vincze

Hi, Vincze:

    Congratulations on your new acquisition. If interested, you can see the Math ROM in action by downloading and having a look at my two articles about it, both freely available in PDF format at my calc web site, namely: 
      HP-71B Math ROM Baker's Dozen (Vol. 1)
HP-71B Math ROM Baker's Dozen (Vol. 2)
      
     18-page article, in two parts, featuring 13 assorted mini-topics 
     discussing novel aspects of using the extremely powerful and
     versatile Math plug-in ROM for the HP-71B.

    You might also want to download my article "HP-71B Minimax Polynomial Fit", which includes as an example a subprogram to compute the coefficients of an arbitrary-degree polynomial Least Squares fit to a set of data, extensively using Math ROM capabilities, and just 3 lines long.

Best regards from V.
                        
Emu71 copy and paste
Message #6 Posted by Vincze on 7 Sept 2007, 9:28 a.m.,
in response to message #5 by Valentin Albillo

My friend, Valentín. I have to ask really dumb question. You have many cool program that you post here, and in Emu71, I see it allow user to cut and paste from windows environment. I take that to mean that I can write program in notepad, and then copy it to Emu71, and paste in there. Maybe I misunderstand, but when I copy from notepad, it not let me paste in Emu71. Does it work only where I copy from Emu71, and then paste in windows? If so, I would assume there is way to read file from disk. I guess I need to RTFM to figure that out?

**EDIT** Never mind, I figure out how to Paste to EMU71 (right click title bar in window, select edit and then paste).

I still interested in how to load and save from Emu71 though. I will figure out.

Edited: 7 Sept 2007, 9:42 a.m.

      
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #7 Posted by Garth Wilson on 6 Sept 2007, 9:43 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Vincze

Quote:
One thing that shock me is how slow it is to run
What did you try on it? With the 4-bit data bus and 64-bit registers, it will be slow for something like text operations or an empty FOR-NEXT loop, but it is optimized for floating-point math. With the Math ROM, it could do a 1024-point complex FFT twice as fast as the early PCs running GWBASIC. Also with the many available LEX files from the user groups, many operations can be dramatically sped up.

Edited: 6 Sept 2007, 9:47 p.m.

            
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #8 Posted by Vincze on 7 Sept 2007, 8:40 a.m.,
in response to message #7 by Garth Wilson

I just do simple program as follows: 

10 Print "Hello"
20 Print "World"
30 Goto 10

When it print, words, it display for about 1 - 2 seconds, then go to next word. I thought it would be much faster, but may it be designed to display longer?

What about manuals in sealed wrapper? Should I open, or should I just use PDF that I have and leave in wrapper.

                  
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #9 Posted by Maximilian Hohmann on 7 Sept 2007, 9:23 a.m.,
in response to message #8 by Vincze

Hello!

Quote:
What about manuals in sealed wrapper? Should I open, or should I just use PDF that I have and leave in wrapper.

Open them and use them for the purpose they were printed for. These things are not holy cows. And not old enough to be real antiques anyway. The only reason to keep them sealed would be if your intention is to re-sell the calculator in the future. For some people, sealed manuals increase the value of the product. But how big is the probability, that you encouter one of these in the very moment that you want to sell your calculator?

Enjoy your new toy :-)

Max

NB: My latest toy arrived yesterday (hp-67), now I have wait for my gummy-wheel-repair-kit to arrive from the states so that I can perform some open-heart surgery on it...

                  
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #10 Posted by Howard Owen on 7 Sept 2007, 10:45 a.m.,
in response to message #8 by Vincze

Quote:
What about manuals in sealed wrapper? Should I open, or should I just use PDF that I have and leave in wrapper.

I think it depends on how well the PDF files met your needs. Personally, I find a physical manual easier to use than a scanned-in PDF. That's partly because you can't search a scanned document, since its pages are just images of the originals. But it's mostly because I grew up learning how to use a book as a reference. Plus, a book is portable in a more convenient way than a laptop. (You don't have to plug a book in, or wait for it to boot up.) On the other hand, PDFs take up no physical space, so it's possible to have a complete library on your laptop or PC. If I'm on the road, this advantage is crucial.

Those are my reasons for preferring a physical manual. But your taste may differ. My advice is to take some time to think about how you would use a physical manual, as opposed to the PDF, and make your decision based on what you come up with.

Regards,
Howard

                        
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #11 Posted by Egan Ford on 7 Sept 2007, 2:15 p.m.,
in response to message #10 by Howard Owen

Quote:
That's partly because you can't search a scanned document, since its pages are just images of the originals.
Actually you can. I use Adobe Acrobat to OCR the documentation I used most. This way it is fully searchable.
                              
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #12 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 7 Sept 2007, 4:34 p.m.,
in response to message #11 by Egan Ford

Hi Egan,

Quote:
Actually you can. I use Adobe Acrobat to OCR the documentation I used most. This way it is fully searchable.

Well - Partially true - you have to be careful with this. I use Acrobat 6.0 professional to convert scanned pdf to text and it "appears" to do a great job. Everything appears great on the display, will print correctly and the size of the file is drastically reduced, but...

When I do a search for a particular word, it doesn't find all occurances. For an occurance that it doesn't find, I can select it with the text tool, copy it to the clipboad, and when I paste it into a document file, it comes up as mis-spelled or has some garbage characters in it.

It looks like Acrobat somehow keeps part of the scanned image with the OCR text. As a result, displays great, prints great, but will not search or cut and paste correct.

I'm not sure if later versions of Acrobat does this.

Bill

                                    
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #13 Posted by Egan Ford on 7 Sept 2007, 5:37 p.m.,
in response to message #12 by Bill (Smithville, NJ)

I have had good luck with version 7 OCRing the MoHPC DVD. I have had very few problems with search and cut/paste.

                                          
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #14 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 8 Sept 2007, 7:21 a.m.,
in response to message #13 by Egan Ford

Hi Egan,

That's good to know. I'll have to upgrade to version 7.

Bill

                                                
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #15 Posted by Egan Ford on 8 Sept 2007, 2:56 p.m.,
in response to message #14 by Bill (Smithville, NJ)

If you like, I'll send you an OCR'd manual (assuming you have the DVD), then you can decided if an upgrade is necessary.

                                                      
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #16 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 8 Sept 2007, 5:47 p.m.,
in response to message #15 by Egan Ford

Egan,

Thanks - I have sent you an email with my email that can receive attachments. And yes, I do have the DVD.

Bill

                  
Re: HP71B Arrive
Message #17 Posted by Howard Owen on 7 Sept 2007, 10:48 a.m.,
in response to message #8 by Vincze

Quote:

When it print, words, it display for about 1 - 2 seconds, then go to next word. I thought it would be much faster, but may it be designed to display longer?

Yes, it is. Take a look at the DELAY keyword in the reference manual.

Regards
Howard

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