exCELL or exAL on Droid48?

[electricpete]

Has anyone been able to successfuly install and run either exCELL or
exAL on Droid48 (HP48 emulator for Android) ?

I was able to get these to work on Emu48.

I was not able to get either one to work when installed on Droid48 in
the exact same configuration as I had installed them on Emu48. (and
both Droid48 and emu48 use HP48 Rom revision R).

The problem on Droid48 is that the programs install and launch.
However keys do not respond correctly once the program is launched.

In exCELL, a key press repeats many times. For example one press of
the 1 key might result in 1111111111. One press of an arrow key
always jumps two cells.

In exAL, the data entry cursor seems to flutter. Sometimes the first
keypress works. Most of the time pressing a key in data entry mode
has no effect.

So my questions:
1 - has anyone successfuly used these programs (exAL, exCELL) on this
platform (Droid48)?
2 - Do exAL and exCELL share common code.... especially the way they
handle keystrokes?

[electricpete]

Some clarifications:
I meant XCELL (not exCELL).

The versions that worked on my Emu48, but NOT on my Droid48 are:
XCELL48V13
XCELL48V20
EXAL61

[Han]

I would wager that these programs have their own input routines (and possibly done in ML). If that is the case, then there is really not much you can do other than hope that the developer will improve the hardware emulation.

[woddo]

Yes, XCell has its own input routine and is written in SysRPL and ML.
To improve this, one would have to write all the code that handles the
InputLine.

I run other programs in Droid48 and is the same. Like Jazz 6.8.

[electricpete]

Thanks for both responses.

Can you clarify the last statement: Are you saying that you have
problems with other programs on Droid48 for example Jazz 6.8?

Regarding exAL and XCELL, I did find confirmation they have many
unsupported entry points. For example in the following thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/browse_thread/thread/73bab9e1e3b1ddf/1ee9f39d177e16d6?lnk=gst&q=xcell+exal#1ee9f39d177e16d6
... in above thread Dheera stated :
"Xcell: Seems to use tons of unsupported entry points (HPCONV shows
64dce, 11320, 4231a, 5f2a3, 5f2ee, and tons more...
Exal: Uses many of the same unsupported entry points as Xcell."

I'm trying to understand the significance of unsupported entry points
in the context of my original question. Unsupported entry points can
cause behavior that acts different on different rom versions (right?).
However my Emu48 and Droid48 use the same rom version (R) and yet
Emu48 runs these programs fine while Droid48 does not. If the
problem was unsupported entry points, I'd think it would affect them
both.

Maybe Emu48 implements the ROM very literally by emulating the
hardware around the rom, while Droid48 emulates commands without any
reference to the actual rom? I do know Emu48 requires us to supply
the program with a ROM during installation while Droid48 does not.

[arnaud....@gmail.com]

Hi, I'm the author of Droid48 !
I'm fully aware of the input bug : it's a timing issue from my Android/native keyboard implementation and I never found the proper way of handling it, so I ended up disabling repeated key presses by putting an old unused patch from the original project, X48 (see https://github.com/shagr4th/droid48/blob/master/jni/actions.c#L123 )

I never took the time to dive deep again to solve this, but I'm guessing it's not much work for someone skilled :p

About the emulation, I did that port without knowing much about Hp48's emulation, but apart from those timing issues, it should behave like X48 (sadly, I'm not sure how to easily put programs on the stack with X48, since I added that bit of code myself)

[electricpete]

On Mar 11, 4:55 am, arnaud.broch...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi, I'm the author of Droid48 !
> I'm fully aware of the input bug : it's a timing issue from my Android/native keyboard implementation and I never found the proper way of handling it, so I ended up disabling repeated key presses by putting an old unused patch from the original project, X48 (seehttps://github.com/shagr4th/droid48/blob/master/jni/actions.c#L123)
>
> I never took the time to dive deep again to solve this, but I'm guessing it's not much work for someone skilled :p
>
> About the emulation, I did that port without knowing much about Hp48's emulation, but apart from those timing issues, it should behave like X48 (sadly, I'm not sure how to easily put programs on the stack with X48, since I added that bit of code myself)
>

It’s a pleasure to meet you.

That’s good info. At least I know now that I didn't do something wrong
during installation of these applications. The linked code looks like
some version of C. I imagine it is not accessible for implementation
without some significant amount of work by someone knowledgeable
(that’s not me). So, it’s probably not realistic to expect it to be
available for use in the near future.

HP48 is a very powerful handheld programmable math computer, even
today.
The ability to carry it around inside my phone (using Droid48) is
fantastic.
Thanks for making that available to us!