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From: madler@piglet.caltech.edu (Mark Adler)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: The HP 48 Programmer's ToolKit (review, long)
Message-ID: <1990Sep26.181705.20455@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 26 Sep 90 18:17:05 GMT
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I saw the advertisement for James Donnely's toolkit in the EduCalc catalog,
and it somehow seemed to me unethical.  I have not really decided on this
yet, since the issue is fuzzy, but allow me to air my thoughts ...

I was quite pleased to see his little HP-48 handbook, that others complained
about because he is privy to internal HP information.  I felt though that he
was doing a service by getting information out of HP, to us.  Like stuff
about the machine level debugger, wslog, etc.

The toolkit is a little different though.  Here he is using information, but
not making it available.  He has access to very special tools at HP for
constructing machine language programs, not to mention access to commented
source for the ROM.  If machine source for his tools, and perhaps a
description of the instruction set came with the tools, then I would consider
it a great service and would have no qualms whatsoever about him making a few
bucks off of his special position.  But as it is, the tools are magic boxes
that are useful, but nonetheless mysterious.

On the other hand (I sound like Tevye), the tools are themselves quite
useful, and make the calculator all the more powerful.  And if HP itself
will not provide them, then I suppose it is good that an employee is
allowed to on his own time.  This is to the benefit of the non-hacker
users of the HP who have interest whatsoever in writing similar tools.

So am I off base in my initial gut reaction to seeing a member of the HP-48
team selling machine language tools, competing with other after-market
software developers for the HP-48?

Mark Adler
madler@piglet.caltech.edu