50g

The calculator only has 1.5 MB of memory for programs if distributed amongst Ports 0, 1, and 2 I think. At any rate the place where you'd logically store programs (the HOME directory) is actually RAM, limited to 241 KB. Anytime RAM has a slight hiccup in its operation the calculator dumps everything. It's kind of cool. The whole screen starts to fizzle with little black dots, and then everything is gone. So, its time to start using SD cards. The calculator will format unformatted SD cards in FAT32 and excepts either FAT16 or FAT32 but most cards are already formatted. First, of all there are a lot of SD cards out there, which one is the right size and who has them? Second, how much memory can the card have? Once the card is working, can you change the directory to Port 3 and/or a subdirectory in Port 3 and have it remain there until it's changed again like in the other directories or do you have to type some cryptic code to gain access to objects in Port 3 subdirectories under the same directory you in? And lastly, when you fill up a large SD card, and have concerns about backing it up with another, how do you do it without being able to transfer it to the calculators existing memory? If you make a copy of the SD card using the computer, how is this done given that your computer has a MMC/SD card slot i.e. is it simply highlight it and click on copy?

Suggest chapter 18 in manual supplied with HP50 for SD card management in calculator. I think 2 Gigabyte is maximum recognized flash card size.
Backup or duplicating an SD card could be done in the HP50; 100 or so Kbytes per transaction, however it would be much more practical to duplicate with a PC.
Insert card with content in PC and copy that content to a folder/directory.
Insert empty SD card and copy folder to the card. So answer to your last question is yes but change SD cards before pasting :-)
Or just leave the backed up material in the folder on PC.
Good luck!

--- In 50g@yahoogroups.com, "rickwendel763242" <rickwendel763242@...> wrote:
>
> The calculator only has 1.5 MB of memory for programs if distributed amongst Ports 0, 1, and 2 I think. At any rate the place where you'd logically store programs (the HOME directory) is actually RAM, limited to 241 KB. Anytime RAM has a slight hiccup in its operation the calculator dumps everything. It's kind of cool. The whole screen starts to fizzle with little black dots, and then everything is gone. So, its time to start using SD cards. The calculator will format unformatted SD cards in FAT32 and excepts either FAT16 or FAT32 but most cards are already formatted. First, of all there are a lot of SD cards out there, which one is the right size and who has them? Second, how much memory can the card have? Once the card is working, can you change the directory to Port 3 and/or a subdirectory in Port 3 and have it remain there until it's changed again like in the other directories or do you have to type some cryptic code to gain access to objects in Port 3 subdirectories under the same directory you in? And lastly, when you fill up a large SD card, and have concerns about backing it up with another, how do you do it without being able to transfer it to the calculators existing memory? If you make a copy of the SD card using the computer, how is this done given that your computer has a MMC/SD card slot i.e. is it simply highlight it and click on copy?
>

In addition to the reply you got, check out messge 653 of this group...

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/50g/message/653

...in particular, notice the suggestion to use FAT16.

--- On Sun, 8/2/09, rickwendel763242 <rickwendel763242@...> wrote:

> From: rickwendel763242 <rickwendel763242@...>
> Subject: [50g] Can anybody help me with memory management?
> To: 50g@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sunday, August 2, 2009, 9:30 AM
> The calculator only has 1.5 MB of
> memory for programs if distributed amongst Ports 0, 1, and 2
> I think.  At any rate the place where you'd logically
> store programs (the HOME directory) is actually RAM, limited
> to 241 KB.  Anytime RAM has a slight hiccup in its
> operation the calculator dumps everything.  It's kind
> of cool.  The whole screen starts to fizzle with little
> black dots, and then everything is gone.  So, its time
> to start using SD cards.  The calculator will format
> unformatted SD cards in FAT32 and excepts either FAT16 or
> FAT32 but most cards are already formatted.  First, of
> all there are a lot of SD cards out there, which one is the
> right size and who has them?  Second, how much memory
> can the card have?  Once the card is working, can you
> change the directory to Port 3 and/or a subdirectory in Port
> 3 and have it remain there until it's changed again like in
> the other directories or do you have to type some cryptic
> code to gain access to objects in Port 3 subdirectories
> under the same directory you in?  And lastly, when you
> fill up a large SD card, and have concerns about backing it
> up with another, how do you do it without being able to
> transfer it to the calculators existing memory?  If you
> make a copy of the SD card using the computer, how is this
> done given that your computer has a MMC/SD card slot i.e. is
> it simply highlight it and click on copy?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>     mailto:50g-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>

HP50 is not a PDA or a Highend cellphone, this only works with FAT16, FAT32 and others uses more RAM and this calc dont give us it...




--
Marcus Fazzi
オープンソースコード いきかた!
http://anunakin.blogspot.com/
http://www.vivaphp.net

Thanks to all for your help. Heres some information I've discovered so far about SD cards:

1. Secure Data (SD) cards and Multimedia Memory Cards (MMC) cards work exactly the same way. You can do anything you can do using the other memory ports.

2. The Flash ROM version is assumed to be 2.08. Tim Wessman had mentioned something about using 2.09. You can find out by pressing ALPHA ALPHA VERSION Enter. You can and should upgrade to 2.08 according to the 50G manual. There's a procedure for doing so using a formatted memory card described in the 49G manual.

3. Objects can be stored to and recalled from SD cards as well as evaluated while stored in SD cards. Objects other than libraries can be stored on the SD card, they can be recalled from the SD card, and they can also be evaluated while on the SD card. Library objects can be stored on the SD card and recalled from the SD card, but cannot be used or evaluated on the SD card. The calculator doesn't require extra software to get this to work.

4. 512 KB memory cards have been tested to work. This person used FAT16 file format and said that FAT16 worked and FAT32 did not work - but also said that it's alright to use the calculator to format the memory card. The 50G calculator formats in FAT32 so he must have been using a calculator that formatted in FAT16. Means this information was taken from the HP-49G manual and just haphazardly copied to the HP-50G manual, I would surmise that the 49G used FAT16 file format rather than FAT32 and that FAT32 probably works just great on the 50G. The 512 KB card was the biggest card available at the time the information was written. He said that any size card can conceivably be used. Who's to say that you couldn't plug in a 2 GB card and have it work just fine using FAT32? Means DOS was probably upgraded, the read speed is probably no longer a factor.

5. You may or may not be able to remain stationed in a Port 3 directory however. By this I mean you may not be able to use CHDIR like you would while operating in Ports 0, 1 or 2. All the instructions regarding recalling and using objects stored in the Port 3 directory use the left arrow and double colons keys followed by, 3 > `Object' Enter. But, the information was written for an earlier calculator.

6. In the past, probably with the 49G and older calculators you only had a basic DOS file system that only allowed you to read its contents. So, files were stored in the memory card in DOS and were not directly accessible. You had to upload a program called SDFiler which consists of 16 files created and/or available through Tim Wessman. With the 50G there should be no need for this according the 50G manual.

7. There's a lot of confusion on this because it's simply never been properly edited from one calculator to the next and that means one thing; you guessed it, another hour of trial and error! But even though HP couldn't write a proper manual for creating a glass of lemonade, they have engineers that know how to design a calculator.

> 2. The Flash ROM version is assumed to be 2.08. Tim Wessman had mentioned something about using 2.09. You can find out by pressing ALPHA ALPHA VERSION Enter. You can and should upgrade to 2.08 according to the 50G manual. There's a procedure for doing so using a formatted memory card described in the 49G manual.

Use 2.15 instead. There are better instructions in the download for upgrading. http://www.hpcalc.org/details.php?id=7097

> 3. Objects can be stored to and recalled from SD cards as well as evaluated while stored in SD cards. Objects other than libraries can be stored on the SD card, they can be recalled from the SD card, and they can also be evaluated while on the SD card. Library objects can be stored on the SD card and recalled from the SD card, but cannot be used or evaluated on the SD card. The calculator doesn't require extra software to get this to work.

Small correction here, objects 'evaluated' from SD card are actually recalled to RAM and then run. Thus it must be smaller than avail memory.

> 4. 512 KB memory cards have been tested to work. This person used FAT16 file format and said that FAT16 worked and FAT32 did not work - but also said that it's alright to use the calculator to format the memory card. The 50G calculator formats in FAT32 so he must have been using a calculator that formatted in FAT16. Means this information was taken from the HP-49G manual and just haphazardly copied to the HP-50G manual, I would surmise that the 49G used FAT16 file format rather than FAT32 and that FAT32 probably works just great on the 50G. The 512 KB card was the biggest card available at the time the information was written. He said that any size card can conceivably be used. Who's to say that you couldn't plug in a 2 GB card and have it work just fine using FAT32? Means DOS was probably upgraded, the read speed is probably no longer a factor.

Both FAT/FAT32 are supported. However, USE FAT16!!! FAT32 has many more clusters and the calculator will scan them ever power on. This means on large cards there will be a 2 second delay every time you turn it on. The calc can't handle formatting 2GB cards. I'd recommend formatting to fat16 on the PC.

> 5. You may or may not be able to remain stationed in a Port 3 directory however. By this I mean you may not be able to use CHDIR like you would while operating in Ports 0, 1 or 2. All the instructions regarding recalling and using objects stored in the Port 3 directory use the left arrow and double colons keys followed by, 3 > `Object' Enter. But, the information was written for an earlier calculator.

Port3 is just like port 0-2. You can never be in any of those. Accessing objects in port 3 is the same with 1 exception. You can also use strings :3:"MYDIR\MYSUBDIR\ITEM" HP directories from HOME, when copied to the SD card, are single files and no longer directories.

> 6. In the past, probably with the 49G and older calculators you only had a basic DOS file system that only allowed you to read its contents. So, files were stored in the memory card in DOS and were not directly accessible. You had to upload a program called SDFiler which consists of 16 files created and/or available through Tim Wessman. With the 50G there should be no need for this according the 50G manual.

It has more to do with the way flash works and the limitation of the old operating system. SDfiler was written to allow long file name support, and for operations like copying files from subdirectories to other subdirectories. Also for deleting folders. Since these are direct operations, not involving RAM, you can move and delete files up to any size on the card. Only 2 files are needed to install on the calculator, the rest are source files for those interested in learning or making modifications.

> 7. There's a lot of confusion on this because it's simply never been properly edited from one calculator to the next and that means one thing; you guessed it, another hour of trial and error! But even though HP couldn't write a proper manual for creating a glass of lemonade, they have engineers that know how to design a calculator.

Thanks. Although I didn't have anything to do with the 50g or earlier, I will pass it on to those that did.

TW