newRPL - build 1255 released! [updated to 1299]

[Claudio L.]

(09-06-2018 12:34 AM)acoto Wrote:  I think it may be interesting to always speed up when starting a calculation, no matter if simple or complex, calculator may feel faster, and always return to low speed when finish and returning to UI.

(09-06-2018 02:07 PM)Claudio L. Wrote:  The calculator UI feels pretty quick as it is. Most simple calculations are instantaneous, and speeding up the clock makes them feel instantaneous just the same, but burning more battery.
The idea with the clock switch is that only when a computation is taking long enough to be annoying to the user we'll run at full power. The 300 ms (or 500ms) feels fine. Perhaps we can have a user setting to tune that timer from 50ms to 500 ms, so the user can control how "responsive" their calculator feels.

And it's done.
All ROMs updated to build 1111 (nice number).
The only changes are:

* Fixed a critical bug (rare but critical) in multiplication assembler routines
* Added support for system flag -88 "Responsive mode"

The first is a very rare bug. I only found it accidentally by running the cos^2+sin^2=1 test from another thread.
On all my tests, it produced an incorrect result when computing 11 COS (in radians), but only when using 64 digits precision. Instead of 64 correct digits it produced only 56 correct digits.
For example, using On+Up set the precision to 64 digits, run 11 COS, then On+Up to 80 digits, 11 COS - and see that the difference is 10^-56 when it should be < 10^-64.
It's all fixed now.

Then there's the "responsive mode" that came from our friend acoto's concern about speed. When system flag -88 is set, newRPL only waits 30 ms before running at full speed. With flag -88 cleared, the normal is 500 ms before the faster clock kicks in.
It does feel more responsive but nothing to "wow" the crowds, it will certainly drain batteries a bit faster but I have no measurement to back up that claim (that's for all of you to test!).