Re: HP50g ROM upgrade: is it worth it? [2.08 vs. 2.09 vs. 2.10]

jdoliva wrote:

> I have a new HP50g since last month.
> Out of the box the ROM version is 2.08

Hasn't HP been shipping newer ones with 2.09?

The earliest 50Gs came with 2.08,
which had an embarrassing bug in LINSOLVE,
so 2.09 shortly followed, primarily to fix that
(it also separated the Equation Library from this and all future ROM updates)
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/browse_thread/thread/48cbba3e6768d7c0

I don't recall anything else which changed.

All who have installed "Nosy"
might try inspecting "Loop" (#5149h) in 2.09,
and those who have 2.10 might try doing the same.

Or, try #5149h #10h PEEK in each version (after attaching library 256).

Do you get "142164808CD9D20B" in 2.09 (or even with 2.10 on Emu48)?

Do you get "81B164808CD9D20B" only in 2.10 (on a real calculator)?

Note that "Loop" is part of GETPTRLOOP (#5143h),
which is very often called to resume RPL from ML;
so if the 2.10 code executes faster,
it should contribute to faster execution overall.

Try a bytewise comparison of the 2.09 vs. 2.10 ROM files,
to see whether there are any more such places;
if there are many, then 2.10 may have some speed improvement over 2.09,
like a tune-up for a car, although not in the sense of anything
that was a logical "bug" to begin with.

2.10 was apparently also to have fixed several other things:

"ROM 2.10 will provide a fix for most of the issues remaining with summation
(such as doing sum of sum). At the expense of speed unfortunately"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/msg/aba3e6c181c36789?

"The Linear Solver can only solve systems using matrix of reals,
not symbolic matrices. This is fixed in the forthcoming 2.10"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/msg/6f4887b9cdc0400f
(see the post for a work-around with earlier versions)

A display bug "fixed in 2.10"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/msg/ae0bc1db138809ce
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/msg/94bc6695b927f287

Here is a longer list of others "fixed in 2.10"
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.hp48/msg/bf6a973770c1acea

Has anyone found anything that got worse in 2.10?

But there is no 2.10 that HP has yet wanted to offer directly.
Lots of good product updates never get to market; maybe the same with ROM.

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