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From: jpser@cup.portal.com (John Paul Serafin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: The HP 48 Programmer's ToolKit (review, long)
Message-ID: <34311@cup.portal.com>
Date: 27 Sep 90 07:37:41 GMT
References: <57750@microsoft.UUCP>
  <1990Sep26.181705.20455@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 46


>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
.
Hard to say.   It certainly would be nice if there were more support for
48 developers and it would certainly be a shame for powerful tools to not
be available.   It is begining to look like having only two ports is going
to be extremely frustrating.   Presumably, the next generation will have a
larger address space or fast easy bank switching and also more ports
or a next generation of cards which are really drawers with multi user
installable chip capacity.
.
He *should* be soundly thrashed for perpetuating stupid names like "car"
and "cdr" then adding to the confusion by applying them to strings instead
of lists.   Was that some kind of cruel joke?
.
John Serafin
jpser@cup.portal.com