mday@iconsys.icon.com (Matthew T. Day) (02/19/90)
I am new to this newsgroup, and my HP-28S, and I have a few questions: 1) I ftp'ed everything off of gmuvax2.gmu.edu. A few of the programs seem to have blatant run-time errors (ie: the "chess" program gave errors when it tried to use 'i' as the square-root of -1, without ->num'ing it first. I later found out it was assuming flag 36 was set). I start to question my usage of these programs, no matter how useful, when they have such problems. 2) In the "peeknpoke" file on gmuvax, it mentions a version of the "speed" program using "bag". This does not work, and I think there's a missing command. Here is the program: << RCLF 4 STWS R->B #FFFF00h BAG STOF >> It looks like it's trying to do a R->B on the return value of RCLF, and that's invalid. Is there a fix? 3) I notice some people post programs without checksums. Since programs can be dangerous if typed in incorrectly, shouldn't we all be using checksums? Maybe at least whoever's running the ftp sites can checksum their copies and add them to the article. Perhaps this has already been discussed and I missed the conversation (I have no idea how old the programs I am typing in are, they could have been written before "standards" were set. 4) Thanks go to those who comment programs. I not only enjoy the program but the knowledge gained from the program, and comments help tremendously. <hint> 5) There was a "bat" program posted recently by Alan Yasutovich, and I'm not sure it's working. When run, it always returns a 74 to me; however, it returns a 100 on another older calculator. Once, it returned a 95, but I couldn't reproduce this. When I increase the number of times it loops to calculate it's "average" to 1000, it returns a negative number (sort of impossible for an "average" calculation). Does anyone know what's going on here? I am running the "correct" 2nd version posted by Alan, his posting listed an incorrect version. 6) I have a program called "towers" that I got off of the new ftp site, plains.nodak.edu. This program expects 4 numbers, going into variables named 'f', 'a', 't', and 'n'. The description doesn't explain what these variables do, give an example command listing, or even a usage. Can someone explain this program, or can we at least have people supply a usage with their program? I don't want to offend anyone, but these are just a few ideas I have that would make learning the HP-28S a little more easier. Thanks -- - Matthew T. Day, Sanyo/Icon International, mday@iconsys.icon.com
jws@hpcljws.HP.COM (John Stafford) (02/24/90)
Well I haven't any real data to back this up, but "towers" is probably the Towers of Hanoi (or whatever) program, I suspect f = from pole, a = auxiliary (temp) pole, t = to pole, and n = the number of disks. Try f = 1, a = 2, t = 3, and n something <=8 (I believe the puzzle takes (2**n)-1 moves).