DM42n

[Werner Hoffmans]

Hi,

Can Plus42 be made to run on DMCP5 on Swissmicros DM42n?

DM42(n) ships with Free42, but it has the larger screen, and an extra row of keys, but alas, Plus42 uses 9 rows of keys (Free42: 7) and DM42n only has 8 rows. So we would have to resort to more cluttered keymaps / key-combinations. And an overlay anyway since even with the same number of keys the mapping is different.

I wish Swissmicros also would make the DM42plus :) 

(And even better: The DM48 with a free48 by Thomas :-) )

Thanks,

Werner

[Thomas Okken]

I am planning to port Plus42 to the DM42n, later this year. I would prefer if SwissMicros would do it, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain, I guess. :-D

I don't know about porting it to the DM42, that will be a much tougher challenge. Maybe I'll start with Plus42 Binary as a proof of concept, and if that works, I'll see what I can do about reducing the space requirements for decimal floating-point. No promises on that front.

Regarding DM48 with Free48: I don't think anyone is working on getting an HP-48G emulator running on the DM42(n) hardware, and I certainly have no plans of tackling anything like that myself. I am thinking of implementing an RPL compiler in Plus42, but that wouldn't be a full-blown HP-48 work-alike. The platforms are far too different, and it would be far more work than I'm willing to take on. But you may be interested in db48x: https://48calc.org/

[Thomas Okken]

BTW, the fact that the DM42 doesn't have a 9-row keyboard is not as big of a deal as you might think. Plus42 is quite usable with an 8-row keyboard. You can try that yourself by running Plus42 with the DM42 skin.

With that skin, or with Free42 skins in general, Plus42 moves DIRS and UNITS to the first row of CATALOG for easy access, swapping them with FCN and MEM. EQN can always be accessed using the [=] softkey in the SOLVER and ∫f(x) menus, and DIR.FCN, UNIT.FCN, and EQN.FCN can be accessed using the EQNS, UNIT, and DIR submenus in the fourth row of CATALOG.

For the remaining functions, that is, PLOT, TVM, R↑, X<>, VIEW, %CH, and SST↑, you'll have to make do with the CUSTOM menu. Not ideal, but workable, in my experience. While Plus42 was under development, I used it with the HP-42S 37-key keyboard most of the time, since the extended keyboard was added fairly late in the process, after EQN, DIRS, UNITS, and the big display.