HP 42 simulator for PPC

04-05-06, 10:00 PM

Thosam Okken, the maker of Free42 has just released a PPC version of this software. From the author's readme:

Quote:

Free42 is a complete re-implementation of the HP-42S scientific programmable RPN calculator, which was made from 1988 until 1995 by Hewlett-Packard. Free42 is a complete rewrite and contains no HP code whatsoever. At this time, the author supports versions that run on Pocket PC, Microsoft Windows, PalmOS, and Unix.

I have used the PC version for quite awhile and I have been playing with the PPC version for a few minutes and think it is quite good. It is working fine on my x51v and should work fine on any ARM processor. If you are using a vga device I would recommend that you use one of the many "force true vga" hacks (I use Tweak2k, but there are free versions out there also). Download the skin pack for PPC's and select the "Ehrling42ssv" skin and you will have a full vga display which looks great. I recommend a soft reset after installation, and the program wouldn't start initially in OzVGA but after exiting to standard display, selecting the vga skin and then entering OzVGA it worked fine.

You can download it here: http://home.planet.nl/~demun000/thomas_projects/free42/

And can download a pdf with basic instructions for using the HP42 here: http://joselauro.com/42s.pdf

If you find it useful I would suggest you consider contributing to the author.

Note that I would recommend that most users should install the decimal version.

04-05-06, 11:17 PM

I thought the original project also was to include a emulator for the HP 17BII financial calculator. Do you know if a emulator for the 17BII exists?

04-06-06, 10:25 AM

You are thinking of Emu42 which is written by the author of Emu48. The problem is Emu42 requires ROM images for the calculators it emulates. HP has not released any of the ROMs for those calculators so you have to download them yourself. This simulator does not need a ROM image.

This is the one you are thinking of http://christophgiesselink.homepage....e.de/emu42.htm Just be prepared to spend quite a bit of time figuring out how to download and compile your ROM image.