Author Topic: Let's hack the HP Prime!  (Read 128322 times)

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #180 on: December 02, 2013, 04:17:20 pm »
Maybe I'm a bit too pessimistic, but I know that HP had financial troubles a few years ago and they have a long history of poor marketing when it comes to non-printer/computer stuff. What I am afraid of is if the HP Prime doesn't take off within the next two years, HP might as well pull the plug and discontinue the calculator.

Offline MacBernick

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #181 on: December 03, 2013, 11:27:26 am »
Heya and welcome to the forums! :)

Unfortunately, as far as HP Prime hacking goes, it's pretty much dead. Nobody will ever hack the HP Prime because nobody seems interested in doing it for a platform that has less than a million users in the world :(

Even TI-Nspire hacking is dead, although there are a few games still coming out every now and then. No more Ndless development nor anything else, and that's with a much more popular (although more closed) platform. It took three years until ASM arrives on the Nspire too. Same for the Casio PRIZM, but again, hacking it is no longer as needed, since Casio has done nothing to block third-party ASM/C code.

For the next few years, we'll have to stick to HP PPL language (although that's already quite fast enough for the time being, since it's compiled).

On a better note, apparently it was discovered not so long ago that the HP Prime pretty much lacks any viable protection against third-party OSes. In other words, someone could disassemble the HP Prime OS then modify it to add a LaunchASM() command that runs ARM assembly or C programs. He could even write his own OS or make such mod avaialble as IPS patch to avoid getting in trouble by releasing an OS containing copyrighted content.

Besides that, if you or anyone else knows enough ARM assembly, hacking and stuff, they are well welcome to help finding other alternatives. Of course, keep in mind that in the future, HP might release OS updates that could unintentionally (or if they're like TI, intentionally) block ASM exploits.

Hey thank you. If I have thought I would start such a discussion with a 'hello' ^^'

Well I bought the Prime because I was a huge fan of my two 48 that I used to program in asm (I loved Saturn asm, Jazz was so cool). But I lost them some years ago when a fire started in my flat. I don't have the real machine yet (should be here in the next few days), but I played a while with the simulator. At first, I must say I was a little disappointed. A lot of cool feature of the 48 are gone, RPN is not half as practical as it was, and RPL miss me a lot. The filesystem (sort of) that used to manage objects and variables too. It was just excellent.
Of course when I saw the specs, I wanted to program it in some low level language... I sure can help and contribute to some sort of hacking, but I'm not a reverse-engineering guru of any kind, I know nothing about ARM asm (yet ?), and I have a job that can take me lot of time, so I won't start any project myself.
But you're right, PPL seems quite fast, and it should be fun to try and do amazing things with it.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2013, 11:29:40 am by MacBernick »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #182 on: December 04, 2013, 03:12:00 am »
Ouch, that sucks about the fire. >.<

And yeah, the reason why a lot of 48 features are gone is because the HP Prime was aimed at a completely different userbase than the older models. Instead of engineers/professionals, it was aimed towards students for the most part, and in the past, I often heard younger students complain about how confusing and hard RPN/RPL are, so forcing RPN/SysRPL upon them with no option to use algebraic mode and a Basic/Pascal-like language would have turned them away. The same thing happened with the 83+/84+ when FastRPL language came out: It showed big promises for programmers who wanted to program fast games without having to learn ASM, but to know FastRPL, you needed some ASM knowledge (the stack, for example). Now look at how popular Axe Parser is.

Anyway, there are now good news about the calc: A new update came out. It breaks file transfer between the emulator and calc, but it fixes many other things and some connectivity issues with the connectivity kit, which can still be used to create/save programs on the calculator as an alternative to the emulator.

Offline timwessman

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #183 on: December 04, 2013, 09:44:28 am »
It breaks file transfer between the emulator and calc,

One of the issues prior with the emulator was that you couldn't tell where the communication was going. There is a new windows menu called "Connect To" that lets you select wit which unit you are trying to communicate. Have you selected your USB unit?
« Last Edit: December 04, 2013, 09:44:49 am by timwessman »
TW

Although I work for the HP calculator group, the comments and opinions I post here are my own.

Offline Han

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #184 on: December 05, 2013, 10:54:31 am »
Well I bought the Prime because I was a huge fan of my two 48 that I used to program in asm (I loved Saturn asm, Jazz was so cool). But I lost them some years ago when a fire started in my flat. I don't have the real machine yet (should be here in the next few days), but I played a while with the simulator. At first, I must say I was a little disappointed. A lot of cool feature of the 48 are gone, RPN is not half as practical as it was, and RPL miss me a lot. The filesystem (sort of) that used to manage objects and variables too. It was just excellent.

If you liked the HP48 and want a faster machine with a larger display and much more expandability, why not consider an HP50G? You can program in RPL, SystemRPL, Saturn Assembly, ARM, or C (via HPGCC). As for Jazz, yeah it was very cool -- and still is. I updated it to the HP50G and it is much more robust now.

http://users.ju.edu/hduong/jazz

Offline MacBernick

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #185 on: December 05, 2013, 06:59:43 pm »
Ouch, that sucks about the fire. >.<

And yeah, the reason why a lot of 48 features are gone is because the HP Prime was aimed at a completely different userbase than the older models. Instead of engineers/professionals, it was aimed towards students for the most part, and in the past, I often heard younger students complain about how confusing and hard RPN/RPL are, so forcing RPN/SysRPL upon them with no option to use algebraic mode and a Basic/Pascal-like language would have turned them away. The same thing happened with the 83+/84+ when FastRPL language came out: It showed big promises for programmers who wanted to program fast games without having to learn ASM, but to know FastRPL, you needed some ASM knowledge (the stack, for example). Now look at how popular Axe Parser is.

I know that, in fact I was not complaining really. This machine is a new born and it can takes time before a scene appear, if it actually happens.
If you liked the HP48 and want a faster machine with a larger display and much more expandability, why not consider an HP50G? You can program in RPL, SystemRPL, Saturn Assembly, ARM, or C (via HPGCC). As for Jazz, yeah it was very cool -- and still is. I updated it to the HP50G and it is much more robust now.

http://users.ju.edu/hduong/jazz

Nice to see this great tool is still alive !

The 50g was my first choice before I heard about the Prime. Might be an option if the Prime really have no success and/or really don't meet my needs.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #186 on: December 05, 2013, 09:26:43 pm »
What would be cool is an HP 51g: An HP 50g with functionalities identical to the 50g, but with the OS recoded from scratch for ARM instead of being an emulated Saturn OS, a 320x240 color LCD and the same processor speed as the Prime, while still keeping both SysRPL and Hp PPL as on-calc languages.

Offline MacBernick

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #187 on: December 05, 2013, 10:13:18 pm »
The 50g OS adapted for the screen (res and colors), installable as an app on the Prime, and a good C/asm dk for the ARM, you have the ultimatest pro/students/hackers calc ever :p
« Last Edit: December 05, 2013, 10:13:39 pm by MacBernick »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #188 on: December 05, 2013, 10:36:29 pm »
That would be nice indeed, but still, the problem with the 50g is that the OS is basically a Saturn CPU emulator on which an improved HP 48 OS is running. Even with a 200+ MHz ARM processor, the fact the OS is running on a Saturn emulation layer makes it way slower than the HP 39gII and Prime OSes.

I wish that HP actually ported the 50g OS to ARM ASM rather than just sticking to Saturn ASM and using an emulator, the OS wouyld have ran much faster.

The HP Prime app idea is nice by the way.

Offline MacBernick

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #189 on: December 05, 2013, 10:55:03 pm »
Would be great to have the 50g OS native for ARM, but that would mean restarting from scratch. Nothing HP will ever do I guess, and a veeeery long task for the community. Well, that's what did the guys that actually made the 50g OS, if I'm not wrong. Let's hope they have a Prime now ^^
« Last Edit: December 05, 2013, 10:57:02 pm by MacBernick »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #190 on: December 05, 2013, 11:40:56 pm »
Indeed, plus the resulting bugs and glitches >.< (although at least HP has done a good job at fixing many of them this time). Oh well, in the future, maybe people will release HP Prime OS patches that enables some 50g features or extend RPN mode. A better thing, though, would be applications letting you use extra functions, kinda like what some TI apps do.

Offline SpiroH

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #191 on: December 06, 2013, 07:32:05 am »
The 50g OS adapted for the screen (res and colors), installable as an app on the Prime, and a good C/asm dk for the ARM, you have the ultimatest pro/students/hackers calc ever :p
Ultimatest for hackers for sure but for students i doubt it. Schools would never embark on such an adventurous trip.
Quote
.. Let's hope they have a Prime now ^^
I wonder, are they still working for HP? ;)

Offline Han

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #192 on: December 07, 2013, 12:44:51 pm »
Quote
Quote
.. Let's hope they have a Prime now ^^
I wonder, are they still working for HP? ;)

Among the users-turned-employees, I think Cyrille and Tim are the only ones left. Mika and Mozgy, two really awesome SATURN programmers have long disappeared from the HP "scene" from what I can tell.

As some of you may recall, Mika was the author of Jazz, which incorporated the ML debugger from Jan Brittenson.

Claude-Nicholas Feichter and Mika wrote ALG48.

Mozgy reverse-engineered the HPTools and created the GNU Tools, among other programs (e.g. Willy in the Mines adaption for the HP48).

Jean-Yves Avenard and folks from the MetaKernel worked for HP but I think they eventually branched off to Hydrix after the Australian office was killed off.

Offline SpiroH

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #193 on: December 07, 2013, 01:07:42 pm »
@Han: wow thanks for such a comprehensive answer!

Offline Han

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Re: Let's hack the HP Prime!
« Reply #194 on: December 07, 2013, 09:03:19 pm »
@Han: wow thanks for such a comprehensive answer!

Not all those I listed were officially employed by HP though. They just were the "big guns" during the day. A lot of their work did make it into the HP49G/HP50G firmware, or toolchain, though.