Sunday 14 June 2009

x48 0.4.3

I was in two minds whether to post this application, but on reflection I thought that since I occasionally dip into it when I don't have my normal calculator to hand, it does belong here. Here is Markus Fritze's x48 for the Sharp Zaurus (pdaXrom):


Although this application has not been compiled by myself (it was originally compiled by anunakin), I have re-packaged it with some goodies. This pretty faithful rendition of the last of HP's great industrial calculator designs (before HP became a toy manufacturer): the HP48GX. My ipk comes with a (revision R) ROM, and two storage cards (128k in port1 and 128k in port2) pre-configured. There appears to be a bug that ensures the valid card configurations are always limited to those of the HP48SX, ie 2 128k cards. I have tried various ROM images and card configurations, but always end up with two 128k cards, irrespective of the sizes of the files generated by mkcard that are used. This limits to a degree, the sort of applications that can be stored on one card, but I guess there is no reason why you cant have multiple cards. I would like to return to this to see if I can't get a proper GX card configuration accepted at some time in the future.

I have written a small how-to and some .ksc scripts for transferring files between the Zaurus and the emulator. Armed with these, the vast array of software for the HP48 at sites such as hpcalc.org is available to the Zaurus via X48. I have included a link to a kermit ipk (originally compiled by Jeffrey Altman for the Zaurus 5000) at the bottom of this post, which is what I use to transfer files to and from x48. The transfer how-to assumes the use of this package.


Although I believe Hewlett Packard retain the copyright on the ROMs, they made them 'available' for individuals not owning HP48s back in 2000 (for non-commercial use), so you can now use such ROMs with a clear conscience. Other ROM revisions can be found here. PDF manuals for the HP48 can be found here.

Sadly, it looks like the x48 project has stalled; the original developer has not released an update since 2005, so it looks like this is the final version of x48 unless someone else can pick it up.

Although this emulator is a little slow, it is workable particularly if you have 'must-have' applications for a real HP48. This application should run on a default pdaXrom installation.

(required) Downloads
x48_0.4.3

(optional) Downloads
kermit_8.0.206
Transfer how-to and kermit scripts

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