nonpareil

nonpareil copied to clipboard

Nonpareil - a calculator simulator Copyright 1995, 2003-2006, 2008 Eric Smith [email protected] $Id$

News:

Release 0.78 adds support for the 22 and 27, and sound output for the 41 family. A 15X model is provided, which is a 15C modified to have more RAM available to the user.

Errors in the KML files that caused spurious decimal and comma displays have been corrected. Instead of separate KML, ROM, and image files for each model, there is now a single .ncz file which is a zip file containing those files.

In this release, the following calculators are simulated:

Classic series:    35, 45, 55, 80
Woodstock series:  21, 22, 25, 27
Spice series:      31E, 33C, 34C, 37E, 38E, 38C
Nut series:        41CV, 41CX
Voyager series:    11C, 12C, 15C, 16C

Modified Voyager:  15X

Many menu commands are not yet implemented.

Known bugs and deficiencies:

• The 55 simulation does not correctly support user registers .0 through .9.

• The 41CX clock runs at very close to real time, but it does not currently initialize the calculator time and date from the host, nor track the host time and date.

• The 82143A printer paper advance button does not work correctly in program mode.

• The 27 color scheme is wrong.

Background:

Nonpareil is a microcode-level simulator for electronic calculators. Currently it is able to simulate some of the HP calculators introduced between 1972 and 1982.

Most of the Nonpareil package is distributed under the terms of the Free Software Foundation's General Public License, version 2. However, some of the associated files, particularly the ncd directory tree and the .ncd and .obj files generated from files in that tree are instead covered by a Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 2.5 license. See the accompanying file COPYING for more detailed information.

The HP-35, the first of HP's classic series of handheld calculators, was introduced in 1972 and described as the "Electronic Slide Rule". The HP-35 was a non-programmable scientific, and was followed by the HP-45 improved scientific calculator, the HP-65 scientific programmable with card reader, the HP-55 scientific programmable with stopwatch, and the HP-70 and HP-80 business calculators. All of these calculators used essentially the same processor, which was also used in the HP 3380 Integrator, the HP 5830 and HP 5840 Gas Chromatographs, and the HP 1722 Oscilliscope.

In the HP Classic series processor, unlike modern microprocessors, various instructions were interpreted by various chips. The core processor consists of the C&T (control and timing), A&R (arithmetic and registers) and the ROM or QUAD ROM chips. Additions chips may be present for data storage or program storage. Since different calculator models have different combinations of these chips, some instructions are not available on all models. For instance, the "delayed select" instructions are probably not implemented in the HP-35 and HP-80 which use single ROMs, and the "search for label" instruction is only available in the HP-65.

The design of the processor and the instruction set are described in detail in United States patents 3,863,060 and 4,001,569.

In 1975 HP introduced their second generation handheld calculators, known internally as the Woodstock series. These use an improved processor architecture described in the article "Inside the New Pocket Calculators" in the November 1975 issue of Hewlett-Packard Journal. An online copy of this article is available from the Museum of HP Calculators: http://www.hpmuseum.org/journals/woodb.htm

In 1978, HP introduced their third generation handheld calculators, known internally as the Spice series. These use essentially the same processor architecture as the Woodstock series, with the addition of an instruction to checksum a 1K region of ROM, used as part of a self-test feature.

In 1979, HP introduced their first expandable scientific handheld calculator, the HP-41C (Coconut). It was the first calculator to use the Nut processor architecture, which was also used in the Voyager series (HP-11C, HP-12C, etc.) introduced in 1981.

Nonpareil simulator:

Nonpareil uses the GTK+ 2.x toolkit and the Glib 2.x and libxml2 libraries.

Nonpareil uses a single command line argument to specify the NCZ file. If no argument is found, nonpareil will try to find a file using the concatentation of the name under which it was invoked and ".ncz". This allows you to (for instance) link nonpareil to "45" and have it automatically try to use "45.ncz".

Nonpareil attempts to run the simulation at the same nominal rate of microinstruction execution as a real calculator, e.g., 3500 microinstructions per second for a 55. The HP-55 used a crystal oscillator, but most other models used an LC oscillator which was not very accurate. On a computer that is heavily loaded, the microinstruction rate will be reduced, so the 55 timer mode (and the undocumented 45 timer mode) will run slow. Don't blame me if you try to use it and burn your eggs.

If you want to use the undocumented timer mode of the 45, there are comments in 45.kml explaining the change necessary to that file. On a real HP-45 this feature was accessed by pressing RCL then the "right half of the ENTER key". The ENTER key actually covered two switches, but the key was shaped so that it only pressed the left switch, and the ROM was written so the right switch would provide the ENTER function as well as allowing use of the timer mode. It was possible to either put a shim on the key, or to create a a phantom keystroke by simultaneously pressing CHS, 7, and 8. Nonpareil doesn't support multiple key presses at all, so the KML change makes the simulator's ENTER button produce the keycode for the right switch.

Uasm microassembler:

Uasm requires a command line argument to specify the source code file name, and optional arguments to specify object and listing file names.

The object file format is one word per line with the five digit octal address, a colon and the instruction word in hexadecimal.

I personally prefer my assembly source code to be in all lower case, so it doesn't look like it is shouting at me. All the source code I have typed in from patents is in lower case, but uasm is case insensitive so if you prefer emphatic source code be my guest.

Uasm considers the keywords which are used to form instructions to be reserved words, so they can't be used as labels. HP's assembler was more flexible in this regard; I had to change the label "go" in the 55 source code to "go_".

Uasm does a better job of displaying the branch target addresses than the HP assembler did. It will actually show the correct target address based on the delayed select instructions, unless the delay instruction is in the last word of a page. Uasm has a ".rom" directive which can be used to provide the rom number. This is roughly equivalent to the origin directive in a typical assembler, except that uasm always start assembling code at location 0 of the selected ROM.

Because HP assembled each ROM separately, they were able to use the same symbols in multiple ROMs. uasm therefore has a separate name space and keeps a separate symbol table for each ROM.

Uasm has a .symtab directive which causes the symbol table to be printed to the listing file. If the source file contains multiple ROMs, each ROM should have its own .symtab directive.

The file "55.asm" when assembled with uasm will produce one warning, which will be printed to standard out twice (once during each pass). This warning can be ignored as it is the result of uasm being pickier than the HP assembler about forms of the "go to" instruction.

82143A Printer Notes:

Nonpareil can now simulate an 82143A printer, though the printer support should be considered to be of pre-alpha quality. The printer output is shown in a window, and can be saved as a PNG file. The MAN/TRACE/NORM mode switch and PRINT and PAPER ADVANCE buttons are shown in the printer window. Do not use the PAPER ADVANCE button in program mode, as it does not work correctly and will result in a persistent "paper out" error.

Start up Nonpareil with the command "nonpareil 41cv". On the Configure menu, select "Load Module", and choose the module file containing the printer firmware, normally "82143a.mod". A "Printer" window will appear. If you execute "FS? 55" the display should show "YES", indicating that the 41 recognizes the printer.

Runtime dependencies:

Nonpareil depends on a number of libraries commonly available on Linux systems. The minimum recommended versions of these libraries are:

gtk+, gdk, gdk-pixbuf	2.12.8
glib			2.14.6
libxml2			2.6.32
SDL				1.2.13

Later versions of libraries will probably work. Earlier versions might work, but have not been tested. The author will not offer any assistance in using Nonpareil with earlier versions.

Installation:

The file INSTALL provides instructions for configuring, building, and installing Nonpareil.

Credits:

Nonpareil was originally written by Eric Smith. Any bugs in it are my fault.

The full list of credits is getting long, so it is now in the file CREDITS.

Ports:

David Hicks translated the earlier csim HP-45 simulator to Java: http://www.hpmuseum.org/simulate/sim45.htm

Jonathan Purvis ported csim to PalmOS: http://one-two-three-four-five.com/palm/csim/

Maciej Bartosiak ported the earlier nsim HP-41CV simulator to MacOS X: http://homepage.mac.com/mba/nsim/

Notices:

Nonpareil is not an HP product, and is not endorsed or supported by HP.

Nonpareil is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. Note that I am not granting permission to redistribute or modify Nonpareil under the terms of any later version of the General Public License.

Nonpareil is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program (in the file "COPYING"); if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.