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HP Forum Archive 20

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HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #1 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 18 Apr 2011, 12:15 p.m.

I've made some new current draw measurements with my lab HP 20b. I was astonished to see that having HP's cable plugged in alone, even with the calculator turned off, draws permanently 5 mA. This is 20 times what the wp34s firmware draws in idle mode!

So unplug the cable when you're done with flashing!

BTW, I'm working on the power requirements of the wp34s. It will go down, at least in idle mode, be assured! :-)

      
Re: HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #2 Posted by gene wright on 18 Apr 2011, 1:41 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by Marcus von Cube, Germany

Hey Marcus, if / when you can, let us know when you post a good calc.bin file or note on the calc.bin area on sourceforge whether a calc.bin file is good to install.

:-)

Please? that would help

            
Re: HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #3 Posted by Marcus von Cube, Germany on 18 Apr 2011, 3:01 p.m.,
in response to message #2 by gene wright

What's in the ZIP should be usable. My latest SVN update is working, too.

                  
Re: HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #4 Posted by gene wright on 18 Apr 2011, 4:27 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by Marcus von Cube, Germany

For example, the Revision 685 calc.bin file has this as its comment: "Turn of flash memory while idle"

which probably says turns off flash memory when idle.

But... is it a stable build? is it worth loading? Or should I load for real testing Revision 673 from Sunday?

That's the only reason I thought to ask you to note on the builds if it is a partial "I fixed X but haven't looked at Y" build or "Hey, this is a pretty solid build and you can use this to load your 34s" build.

:-)

Sorry for causing trouble...

                        
Re: HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #5 Posted by Paul Dale on 18 Apr 2011, 5:50 p.m.,
in response to message #4 by gene wright

There are no stable builds at the moment :-)

Generally the latest subversion build will be best, we're bug fixing not featuring adding presently.

- Pauli

                        
Re: HP 20b/30b programming cable eats on batteries!
Message #6 Posted by Walter B on 19 Apr 2011, 1:31 a.m.,
in response to message #4 by gene wright

Well, we're in an alpha-beta test phase still. So expect surprises. That said, the last builds were pretty stable for what I'd call standard functions. So you won't see any smoke nor too many crashes ;-)

Safe for testing by educated users, I'd say.

Walter


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