Re: held breath, found tapes & drive working Message #9 Posted by Garth Wilson on 8 June 2012, 4:57 p.m., in response to message #8 by J-F Garnier
With both 71's, immediately after unplugging the module, the computer operation was back to normal, without having removed the batteries. With the module plugged in, I couldn't do anything at all. As soon as the module was unplugged, the ROM tests were normal. I will try the discharge with the module plugged in on the back-up 71 though.
The only severe crash I have ever had came as a result of doing DIM X$[length](how many), ie, wrong order, in a text file when I tried TRANSFORMing to BASIC. Even INIT 3 wouldn't bring it back. For complex programs, I like to write in text, with indentation, white space, and no line numbers, sometimes with long, descriptive variable names which get replaced by a search-and-replace before TRANSFORMing to BASIC. Then a subprogram adds the line numbers and removes blank lines and comments before doing the TRANSFORM. The original text file is kept of course.
There were a coule of times I got a MEMORY LOST when I turned it on, but a tip from a friend about buttons getting pressed in the attache case prompted me to have a woodworker friend make me a thin wooden box to slide the HP-71 case into. The 71 in its case with the quick-reference booklets and key overlays fits snugly but not tight. That was over 15 years ago, and there have been no MEMORY LOST occasions since then (until the Forth ROM died).
Edited: 8 June 2012, 9:13 p.m.
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