Archive for January, 2004
I recently learned that the reason I’ve had trouble all my life with keeping my shoelaces tied is that I was taught to do it incorrectly. There are two major steps to tying a standard shoelace bow, and each step can be done in two mirror-image manners. If you pair the steps incorrectly, [...]
Simulating HP-11C; dumping HP-32E ROM
0 Comments Published by Eric January 24th, 2004 in Calculators, NonpareilGot the HP-11C firware working well enough in NSIM that it displays “Pr Error” at startup, which is what it’s supposed to do. Then pressing the ON key will get a “0.0000″ display. Nothing beyond that though. At least it’s progress.
I still need to merge the Nut simulator from NSIM into CASMSIM, [...]
Calculator ROM-sucker
0 Comments Published by Eric January 23rd, 2004 in Calculators, Hardware, NonpareilI caught a cold from my roommate. I don’t want to give it to coworkers, and I don’t really feel up to going out anyhow. I can’t really work from home at the moment, so when I wasn’t feeling quite so miserable I spent a few hours hacking on CASMSIM.
I cobbled together an [...]
The Elder Gods; Monster
0 Comments Published by Eric January 21st, 2004 in Books, Film, Science Fiction & FantasyI purchased the new book “The Elder Gods” (The Dreamers, Book 1) by David and Leigh Eddings last night at Borders. The Eddings’ have been my favorite fantasy authors ever since I read “Pawn of Prophecy” (book 1 of the Belgariad) back in the mid 1980s.
When I got home, I discovered that they’d stuck [...]
Non-rectangular windows with GTK+
0 Comments Published by Eric January 21st, 2004 in Calculators, NonpareilI spent some time trying to figure out how to use the X shape extension to have the window shaped like the calculator. At first I tried loading a separate image mask bitmap, but later realized that it would be much better to simply use an image format that supports transparency, such as PNG. [...]
Typed in HP-01 microcode from patent
0 Comments Published by Eric January 21st, 2004 in Calculators, NonpareilI’ve typed in the source and object code for a preproduction HP-01 calculator watch from U.S. Patent 4,158,285. I need to write a new assembler for it; the style of assembly code changed quite a bit compared to the first generation CPU.
Implementing reflection (otherwise known as a meta-object protocol) in C is no fun at all…
Typed in first half of HP-65 ROM source code from patent
0 Comments Published by Eric January 19th, 2004 in Calculators, NonpareilI’ve typed in the partial HP-65 source code from U.S. patent 4,099,246. It’s only the first half of the code, unfortunately, so it won’t really do much good in CASMSIM until I can dump the remainder out of the real calculator. The file (hp65.asm) is in the Subversion repository in case anyone is [...]
CASMSIM 0.19 finally has support for slide switches. This is currently necessary for the timer/program/run switch on the HP-55, but will also be needed for other models in the future.
The switches shown on-screen are really ugly at the moment. I’m using GTK+ radio buttons in the mode where they display as normal buttons, [...]
CASMSIM now simulates HP-80
0 Comments Published by Eric January 18th, 2004 in Calculators, NonpareilCASMSIM 0.17 adds simulation of the HP-80 financial calculator.