HP Forum Archive 17

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HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #1 Posted by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) on 27 Sept 2007, 6:30 p.m. Hello everyone, I just got my HP 35S and I noticed that when "all" digits are to be shown, I get: 2345678 1/x = "4,26315973463E-" ... ... scrolling to the right ... "7" Very brave of the calculator to show all known digits, but very annoying that I have to scroll to view the last digit of the exponent. The 33S for example reveals "4,2631597346E-7" which is just fine and as it should be. Is there an explanation or even a workaround for this? I'd hate to go back to the fixed decimal places as known from the 12C. Regards, Wolfgang

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #2 Posted by Karl Schneider on 28 Sept 2007, 12:14 a.m., in response to message #1 by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) Wolfgang -- Welcome! (I saw your earlier post in response to mine from several weeks ago...) No, I don't believe that it was the best idea, either. I'll be presenting a constructive suggestion in the near future. -- KS

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #3 Posted by Walter B on 28 Sept 2007, 12:18 a.m., in response to message #1 by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) Hallo Wolfgang, with SCI 7 you'll be sure to see everything. IMHO there are very few practical cases were you have >8 significant digits. HTH Walter

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #4 Posted by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) on 28 Sept 2007, 6:14 a.m., in response to message #3 by Walter B Hello Walter, you're right of course, but I'd love to leave the setting to "all" decimal places and get a reasonable reading for every calculation - and sadly that does not seem to work :-(

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #5 Posted by vq on 28 Sept 2007, 6:51 a.m., in response to message #4 by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) Yes, the "ALL" setting is extremely inconvenient on HP35S, hiding the most important part of a result quite often. I wonder if someone at HP ever tried to do some trivial calculations on HP35S before production? Using SCI7 is not a good workaround as most numbers easily fit in the display without the E notation - 0.07645 is (for me at least) easier to read than 7.645E-2. I use FIX7 instead, which works quite fine for most occassions, though not an ideal solution.

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #6 Posted by bill platt on 28 Sept 2007, 8:39 a.m., in response to message #5 by vq For some of us that grew up on Voyagers and earlier, we are quite happy with a FIXed notation and find the ALL notation quite useless most of the time.

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #7 Posted by Martin Pinckney on 28 Sept 2007, 8:52 a.m., in response to message #6 by bill platt I guess we civil engineers must do only approximate calculations. I can't imagine routinely needing 7 significant digits. I usually use FIX 3, sometimes FIX 4, and even FIX 2!

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #8 Posted by Kelly Huckman on 28 Sept 2007, 9:35 a.m., in response to message #7 by Martin Pinckney My god, fix 2? Isn't this what happened the last time a civil engineer used fix 2? Kidding of course. ;)

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #9 Posted by Meenzer on 28 Sept 2007, 10:06 a.m., in response to message #8 by Kelly Huckman Some years ago civil engineers in Switzerland and Germany had a problem that even could not have been solved with FIX 20... A bridge was build, starting on the Swiss border and ending on the German side - 50 cm to low. The reason for this was the fact that Swiss cartographers refer to an AMSL (above mean sea level) taken in the Mediterranean, Germans measure the North Sea as zero (Austria refers to the Adriatic, Eastern Europe to the Baltic Sea). And these zeros are different as the Earth is not a perfect sphere. The real joke was that the engineers KNEW it - but corrected their measurements in the wrong direction ;-)

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #10 Posted by Forrest Switzer on 28 Sept 2007, 3:54 p.m., in response to message #8 by Kelly Huckman It depends upon whether we are talking centimeters or miles. :)

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #11 Posted by db (martinez, ca.) on 28 Sept 2007, 7:46 p.m., in response to message #6 by bill platt bill; i've used fix to remind myself where i am in the output of a program not written for the 41 (i know-why bother?): fix 4 for angle, fix 3 when distance comes up. since i never remember which way i'm going: ft>m is fix three, m>ft is fix two. it's kind of a sneaky way to label output on a calc that doesn't arclx.

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #12 Posted by bill platt on 29 Sept 2007, 9:32 p.m., in response to message #11 by db (martinez, ca.) That is clever. And since the meter is a larger unit, it makes sense to give it more decimal places and so it is easy to remember the hidden meaning. Oh, and on my 32sii, I store 0.3048 in "H" (so that pushing RCL twice brings it up). It gets a lot of use :-) Edited: 29 Sept 2007, 9:33 p.m.

Re: HP 35S number width exceeds display Message #13 Posted by Brad Davis on 28 Sept 2007, 6:23 p.m., in response to message #1 by Wolfgang Jacques (Germany) Here's a related question. Just for example, say I divide 10 by 12 and get 0.8333 with the 3 repeating forever, of course. I keep mine set at Fix 4, so this one displays no problem. Say, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to use the ->ENG. Mine comes up as 833.33333333E- and the 3 off the right side of the screen. The exponent's sign stayed on the screen, but the number was booted off. I've had this happen on several real calcs and it's irritating to have to scroll to the right to see the exponent. Is there a way to keep it from doing this?

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