HP Handheld SIG News | November, 1999
A Bit of a Distraction
I wish to apologize to those looking for me at the last two meetings, as I was not able to attend due to the birth of our new twin daughters and the recovery of one of them from a digestive problem which required addiitonal hospitalization. Hopefully, things will return to normal soon...
HP Promises Fulfilled: HP49 Advanced Users Guide
As promised, the Advanced Users Guide is beginning to appear on HP's web site. The initial chapter, covering the CAS (Computer Algebra System) is available for download in Acrobat .pdf format from http://www.hp.com/calculators/products/manuals/49g/cas.pdf, with other chapters to follow. This is the first part of the must-have document for all who wish to do any serious work on this calculator.
HP Promises Fulfilled II: HP49 Serial Interface Software
A promise made by Hewlett-Packard at the August Handheld Conference in Vancouver, Washington was that soon we would have free software to allow flash ROM updates to the HP49 operating system. Just recently, this promise was kept, as they posted the new Serial Interface Kit software on their website at http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/link/HPComm-30r2.zip. Along with this, the version 1.10 of the HP49 ROM was also posted, so users could update their recently-purchased machines, all of which came with version 1.05. The ROM upgrade appears at http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/rom/hp49g-1.10.flash on the web. In addition, the comp.sys.hp48 newsgroup has been percolating with messages from the HP ACO development team, promising all kinds of improvements and bug fixes in future versions. (News flash: now you can download the beta version of version 1.14: find it at http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/sdk/beta.html)
Promises III: HP49 SDK Released
Another hot topic at the HP Conference was the HP49 Software Development Kit which was to be released for free to the world this month. They came through with this one as well, with the release available at http://www.hp.com/calculators/graphic/sdk which includes not only the kit, but the source code plus a large help file. This is quite a turnabout of attitude for the calculator folks, and hopefully it will spawn a good deal of third- party support.
Even More: A Free HP49 Emulator
In addition to all of the above, HP even has made available an HP49 emulator for general use, probably for people to try the calculator before buying. This may be found at http://www.hp49gcompetition.com on the web. The goodies just keep on coming.