HP 50g & SD Cards: Performance, Format, Notes

[Claudio L.]

(08-30-2016 12:37 AM)JDW Wrote:  I successfully flashed my 50g with newRPL. At the end of flashing it said "WAIT RESET" and gave me the option to press the ENTER key, which I pressed. But then the screen said the following:

-- EXCEPTION --
install will wipe out RAM

Cont

I pressed the F1 button which corresponds to Cont.

It then said "Memory Cleared."

Now at the bottom of my screen, where the soft menus normally appear, I see 3 rows used, which kind of looks like an Excel spreadsheet. At right I see "SD" in gray. And in the top right of my 50g screen, I see a little arrow pointing right which blinks and blinks forever.

I typed 5 and ENTER and then ENTER and + to confirm addition is working, which it is. Now the "SD" which once appeared in the bottom right corner in gray is gone. But that right-arrow in the top right corner of the screen continues to blink endlessly.

That's normal, it's a "heartbeat" useful only during the debug phase.

(08-30-2016 12:37 AM)JDW Wrote:  Sadly, when I press the white Left-Arrow key and then the APPS button, to bring up the File Manager, nothing happens. In fact, pressing the APPS key alone does nothing at all. Ditto for the MODE and TOOL buttons. Ditto for VAR, STO and NXT. And when I type a number, I see a black flashing cursor that has a "D" inside it, which is very odd.

There's no File Manager yet. MODE, TOOL, VAR, STO and NXT are now used for the second soft menu (VARS).
The letter in the cursor indicates the input mode:
"D" = Direct evaluation (execution).
"A" = Algebraic mode
"C" or "L" = Alpha Uppercase (C) or lowercase (L)
"P" = Programming mode

(08-30-2016 12:37 AM)JDW Wrote:  I can't bring up NUM.SLV or S.SLV or USER or FINANCE or CONVERT. And when I press the HIST key, the calc tells me:

STO Error:
Expected an identifier

When I press the Orange right-arrow button, I see the icon in the upper left of the screen display in gray, and it flickers for some reason.

Menus are not active yet (many of them are defined and can be used "manually" but will only be activated when final to avoid confusion and things moving around).
The HIST key is STO/RCL.

(08-30-2016 12:37 AM)JDW Wrote:  At least I can turn the calc OFF and then ON again. But this newRPL is very confusing to me, I must say.

All said, I don't understand how to test my SD card within newRPL now that File Manger is dead. It would be appreciated if you could please offer me guidance.

Thank you,

James W.

On and Off is a good start, newRPL is a new platform after all. I would tell you to read the manual, if there was one.
But to your current problem:
simply put a number on the stack:
1.2345
'SOMENAME'
SDSTO

If it doesn't give an error, you can pull the SD card and see on a PC if a file called 'SOMENAME' exists. Of course another way is:

'SOMENAME'
SDRCL

If you get back the number 1.2345 then your card was written and read correctly, confirming the write lock detection mechanism is broken on your 50g.

Hint: To type SDSTO, press Alpha only once to enter alpha mode, the cursor will turn into a C, indicating you have "Caps Lock" activated.

A quick program to list your SD card directory from the calc:

Code:


<<
"." SDOPENDIR
'HAN' LSTO
WHILE
    IFERR HAN SDNEXTFILE THEN HAN SDCLOSE 0 ELSE 1 END
REPEAT
   DROP DROP DROP DROP
END
>>

This will leave your stack full of strings with the names of all files in the current directory.

Once you confirm if the mechanism is broken or not, then you can happily flash back the stock ROM, like nothing ever happened.