First Month with 50g

[MarkMason]

[font=Arial]Received the 50g about 5 weeks ago. I bought it as a retirement toy. Had I still been a working engineer I would probably have gone with a WP-34s or 35s, but wanted something different. The 50g’s RPL appealed by allowing both stack based RPN style programming as well as Algebraic expression evaluation in programs for readability. I have found the 50g to be insanely capable, RPL to be involved to learn but logical and powerful, and the whole package lots and lots of fun !!! Prior to its arrival I worked on the emulator which is a very nice option to have, but after using the mouse to actuate the keys it gave me a new appreciation for the physical calculator.

On the first day after opening the package the 50g felt light, ‘plastic-ey’, and with an awkwardly placed [Enter] key. By the third day everything became ‘normal’ and has felt so since. I’ve enjoyed reading through the HP User’s Guide and working through all the examples (in RPN). The User’s Manual seems to be a subset of the User’s Guide so I’ve not bothered with it. Eduardo Kalinowski’s Programming in UserRPL was great, the exercises were good practice. The HP Museum USB arrived and I’ve already devoured W. Wickes HP41/48 Transitions, which I found just as satisfying and informative as the recommendations on this forum indicated. Right now I’m half way through his first Insights book. BTW, thanks David for putting together this USB repository for such a nominally small price. Just the forum archives are enough for months of amusement, and the manuals are a great reference. Special thanks to Bill Markwick for the ultra-useful HLP49, which I’ve come to rely on as a daily reference.

So far User RPL has been fun to play with. I have discovered that algebraic expressions inside a program bring with them an execution speed disadvantage vs stack based commands and functions. At least we have a choice. I’m even getting used to how far postscript notation is taken, ‘a’ STO, a b >, etc. One thing that has struck me as a little opposite to stack logic is defining local variables in a program. The convention here seems to have been arranged to be read left to right, with values and variables both in left to right order. If your values are already on the stack, this seems to execute backwards:

Stack:
3: 7
2: 6
1: 5

<< -> a b c <<……>>..>>
Leaves a=7, b=6, and c=5, whereas:

<< ‘a’ STO ‘b’ STO ‘c’ STO
Would leave a=5, b=6, and c=7

In the second example, the first variable encountered logically takes its value from level 1 of the stack. In the first example the first variable listed in the program jumps to level 3 to take its value. This convention seems like an exception, but if there are not too many of these I can just commit it to memory and go on.

Using the Space key instead of Enter to separate a series of numbers in the command line is very slick. Seeing all the values jump to their own levels of the stack upon pressing Enter always makes me smile.

Storing a variable seems to take me more steps than in the User’s Guide. My keystrokes are normally: [tick] [alpha] [alpha] name chars [K] [Backspace ()] [alpha] [Enter] [STO]. With a little more practice my goal is to reduce this by at least three!! :~)

I’ve been using NiMH AAA cells, which seem to run the calculator OK but don’t last very long. Been through 2 sets so far, but judging from how quickly they recharge, I strongly suspect that the reduced voltage output (1.2vdc vs 1.5vdc for alkaline cells) translates into the calculator not using their full charge. This is not a problem for me as a few years ago I discovered Eneloops and converted all devices that take AA and AAA cells to these and have charged sets on hand ready for rotation. Also the USB power option a nice backup.

Mark