01-17-2021, 03:21 AM
Is it possible at all to enhance programming the HP-71B by making it BASIC support longer variable names? The curent variable naming scheme is very limited.
Namir
Namir
(01-17-2021 04:03 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote: [ -> ]What I've done is write programs in text with my text editor, with variable names being anything I want, then use the search-and-replace to substitute-in names the 71 can accept, then TRANSFORM it into BASIC. You'll need to keep a copy of the original text file so you'll still have the original names for the iterative write-transform-try cycle. Doing it this way, I can also have white space, and write without line numbers, and I have a utility to add the line numbers before it transforms the program into BASIC.
(01-17-2021 03:21 AM)Namir Wrote: [ -> ]Is it possible at all to enhance programming the HP-71B by making it BASIC support longer variable names?
Quote:Yes I have written a similar program on the PC that replaces long variable names with 71B-BASIC-compliant names.
Quote:Another concern is speed, the HP-71B is quite a slow beast (even back at the time, as compared to the HP-75C or the HP-85, say, about 5x slower)
(01-19-2021 01:48 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote: [ -> ]Quote:Another concern is speed, the HP-71B is quite a slow beast (even back at the time, as compared to the HP-75C or the HP-85, say, about 5x slower)
Do you have any speed comparisons, for different types of benchmarks? I know it was slower for something like a FOR...NEXT loop (probably because the 75 had a wider data bus), but I think the 71 was much, much faster in math that involved the math module. The two computers had approximately the same clock speed, but the 71 could address eight times as much memory (which was great for when I had 128KB arrays plus all my programs in RAM), had a better BASIC, (I think) bigger registers (64-bit, and I can't find the 75's register size but I think it's 8-bit) [...]
(01-19-2021 01:48 AM)Garth Wilson Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have any speed comparisons, for different types of benchmarks? I know it was slower for something like a FOR...NEXT loop (probably because the 75 had a wider data bus), but I think the 71 was much, much faster in math that involved the math module.
Quote:The two computers had approximately the same clock speed, but the 71 could address eight times as much memory [...]
Quote:I wrote my very capable text editor [...] to include a lot of great LEX files from the Paris users' group, material that was published in the CHHU Chronicle.
Quote:The Fast Integer Processing comes from the HP-85 [...] It's a shame that the same feature was not included in the HP-71B!
(01-19-2021 06:57 PM)Gene Wrote: [ -> ]Speed comparisons from Joe Horn in the PPC Computer Journal using some common BASIC benchmarks. Attached is the PDF - Valentin, let's see if you can read this. :-)
(01-19-2021 06:58 PM)Valentin Albillo Wrote: [ -> ]It seems they needed the ROM space for the useless abomination called "CALC mode", as some über-imbecile people decided it would bring more sales appeal than having much faster program execution.
Hey, J-F, come to it, why don't you edit CALC mode out of the System ROMs and use the recovered ROM space (5 Kb) to provide instead the super-useful keywords in the STRINGLX file and some other worthy LEX files, as you did with the enhanced Math ROM ?
The resulting 1CDDD (say) System ROMs could then be available as part of your Ultimate ROM and/or the MultiMod. A dream come true !
(01-19-2021 06:57 PM)Gene Wrote: [ -> ]Speed comparisons from Joe Horn in the PPC Computer Journal using some common BASIC benchmarks. Attached is the PDF - Valentin, let's see if you can read this. :-)
Horn Wrote:VAL (actually evaluates a string as if it were a math expression of any complexity)
Horn Wrote:CALC (a fast claculator (sic) mode)
Horn Wrote:The table below shows how fast the HP-71B and some other small computers run seven BASIC benchmark programs [...]
(01-19-2021 06:57 PM)Gene Wrote: [ -> ]Speed comparisons from Joe Horn in the PPC Computer Journal using some common BASIC benchmarks. Attached is the PDF - Valentin, let's see if you can read this. :-)
Gene
(01-20-2021 12:10 PM)toml_12953 Wrote: [ -> ]Since credit wasn't given in the article, I'll list it here. Benchmarks B1 - B7 were written by Tom Rugg and Phil Feldman and first appeared in the June 1977 issue of the US computer magazine, Kilobaud.