HP Forum Archive 19

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #1 Posted by Dave Britten on 30 July 2009, 9:18 a.m. I've got a 200LX that I quite like, though I don't use it nearly as much as I would if I had a decent semi-interactive programming environment for it. I'm not looking to create full-blown desktop applications on the thing, but something high-level like programming a 28S/48G would be great. A DOS version of Free42 would be fantastic, but that might be asking too much. :) What do the other 200LX fans use to fill the niche of programmable calculator? Aside from just pulling out the 48GX, of course...

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #2 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 30 July 2009, 9:56 a.m., in response to message #1 by Dave Britten The old Borland tools, Turbo C and Turbo Pascal for DOS should run fine on the LX. There are libraries around which mimic the GUI so your applications look simililar to the built in PIM software. Google for the S.U.P.E.R. site if it still exists.

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #3 Posted by Bill (Smithville, NJ) on 30 July 2009, 10:10 a.m., in response to message #1 by Dave Britten Hi Dave, I second Marcus recommendation of the old Borland programming languages. I have used Turbo Pascal on the HP-200LX and it works great. If you are looking for HP Calculator emulations, I think that both emu41 and emu71 work on the 200LX. You won't have the pretty calculator image, but you will have the calculator environment. Bill

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #4 Posted by Thomas Chrapkiewicz on 30 July 2009, 11:09 a.m., in response to message #3 by Bill (Smithville, NJ) I've used and/or recommend on a 200LX: 1. The aforementioned Borland languages. 2. QBASIC/Quick BASIC 3. PowerBASIC 3. bigcalc (a high/variable-precision DOS rpn emulator) 4. Derive (DOS version of course) TomC

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #5 Posted by Mark Edmonds on 30 July 2009, 11:38 a.m., in response to message #4 by Thomas Chrapkiewicz Another interesting one to look at is Clipper. I don't know about availability, nor to be honest whether it would work on the 200LX but off hand, I can't think of any reason why not. Altough Clipper was designed to be a compiler for dBase applications, there is much more to it than that and I remember one particularly handy feature was the ability to effectively compile code on the fly from strings. This made for some interesting techniques in building dynamic code, substituting values for variables and so on. For its time, I always thought it was quite a neat language that would have been better off shedding its dBase compiler image. Many many many years since I used it in anger though so I hope my recollections are accurate! Mark

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #6 Posted by John Pierce on 30 July 2009, 11:44 a.m., in response to message #1 by Dave Britten If you have some interest in the FORTH language you might want to try Pygmy Forth or CMPFORTH at www.hp200lx/super6.html.

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #7 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 30 July 2009, 1:54 p.m., in response to message #1 by Dave Britten I really like programming in AWK on the 200LX, there are several versions that run under DOS including GAWK. I usually run GAWK 3.0.6.

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #8 Posted by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) on 31 July 2009, 2:33 p.m., in response to message #7 by Katie Wasserman Kind of symmetry: KW AWK... has it something to do with your initials? :-) (I know about Aho, Weinberger and Kernighan, but...)

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #9 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 31 July 2009, 3:28 p.m., in response to message #8 by Andrés C. Rodríguez (Argentina) Thanks for pointing that out. I knew that there was a reason why I liked this archaic language so much!

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #10 Posted by Dave Britten on 30 July 2009, 2:09 p.m., in response to message #1 by Dave Britten I like the sound of some of these suggestions - I'll have to try a few out. I've got about 210 MB left on my CF card, so why not! Turbo Pascal sounds like it could be of some use. I think I'll steer clear of C in this case, since there's usually a much larger time investment to get a working program (and I don't need the performance gain that C would afford). Might be nice to keep around just in case, but I don't anticipate heavy use. I'd prefer to find something simpler and more akin to a programmable calculator, though. I don't intend to pound out any lengthy applications on these little keys. I've been playing around with Lotus 123 macros a bit, and they're more flexible than I expected, but having only one "sheet" per .wk1 file, and having to jam your macros in there beside your data is kind of a pain. If you stash them in extra columns off to the right, inserting rows in your main data columns will break the macros... Any Lotus pros have suggestions for effective macro storage?

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #11 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 30 July 2009, 2:39 p.m., in response to message #10 by Dave Britten There's always the Solver in the built-in calculator app. I think it's by far the best version of the solver HP ever implemented and it has extensions that link to Excel. Look at the bottom of this thread for an example of what you can do with it.

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #12 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 30 July 2009, 4:12 p.m., in response to message #11 by Katie Wasserman Not to Excel, to 1-2-3. Otherwise you're correct.

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #13 Posted by Katie Wasserman on 30 July 2009, 6:18 p.m., in response to message #12 by Marcus von Cube, Germany Right, thank you for the correction! Old age stinks, at least I didn't say VisiCalc :(

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #14 Posted by Dave Britten on 30 July 2009, 7:57 p.m., in response to message #13 by Katie Wasserman I suppose I could load Excel on it, but dropping out of System Manager, connecting a mouse, and starting up Windows 3.0 probably isn't worth the trouble. :) But that's never stopped me before!

Re: Good programming environment for a 200LX? Message #15 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 31 July 2009, 3:58 a.m., in response to message #14 by Dave Britten You can try Multiplan instead. ;)

[ Return to Index | Top of Index ]

Go back to the main exhibit hall