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.

Actually stock, it runs 75MHz.  You need to run another program to "uncap" it's speed.

That said, you know the ease of updating the prime, I can't help if it might not be possible to re-purpose the Prime in a similar fashion to the way in which the HP 30b was repurposed into WP 34s...

As even though the Prime isn't horrendously awful, I'd really have preferred the older 28/48/49/50 series "OS" re-written to ARM native... the CAS at least is LGPL, but I cannot recall if it's SRPL, Saturn ASM or what any longer as it's been so long since I've bothered to look(think back to 49g), which I think a good deal of the rest of the stuff is written in as well... have to chuck all the Saturn ASM and re-write those portions as make sense, in preferably something more amenable/portable like C excepting where necessary...

Probably won't be much of an impetus for this unless HP gives up on it and stops updating the firmware...

Oh right, I forgot about the app. And yeah having rewritten the old OS would have been a great idea (perhaps better, IMHO, providing that they also include HP PPL and make the calc more user-friendly for younger audiences). It's just a shame that this wasn't done with the 50g, since a lot of this platform hardware potential (regardless of it it runs at 75 or 200 MHz) is being wasted, as well as battery power, via slow emulation.

Welcome to the forums by the way!

Thanks, just decided to finally join since it seems that the Prime has generated interest in HP calcs.  I know that Casios were kinda popular, but the fx-cg10 just didn't really grab my attention, and the fx-cp400, well all I can say is: Are they SERIOUS?! (This is a POS @ $140, maybe $60 it MIGHT compete w/a 50g which you can get for $80 on Amazon nowadays.)

...was also thinking, a pretty much complete maxima install on Android is ~100MB, and I hate to say it, but it's probably generally a better CAS than xCAS(IIRC that's the real name of the 49/50/Prime CAS... I think that Cyril de Brebbison is still working with HP at least for the CAS and some other parts of the "apps"...)

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 08, 2013, 06:41:53 pm

Oh right, I forgot about the app. And yeah having rewritten the old OS would have been a great idea (perhaps better, IMHO, providing that they also include HP PPL and make the calc more user-friendly for younger audiences). It's just a shame that this wasn't done with the 50g, since a lot of this platform hardware potential (regardless of it it runs at 75 or 200 MHz) is being wasted, as well as battery power, via slow emulation.

Welcome to the forums by the way!

Thanks, just decided to finally join since it seems that the Prime has generated interest in HP calcs.  I know that Casios were kinda popular, but the fx-cg10 just didn't really grab my attention, and the fx-cp400, well all I can say is: Are they SERIOUS?! (This is a POS @ $140, maybe $60 it MIGHT compete w/a 50g which you can get for $80 on Amazon nowadays.)

...was also thinking, a pretty much complete maxima install on Android is ~100MB, and I hate to say it, but it's probably generally a better CAS than xCAS(IIRC that's the real name of the 49/50/Prime CAS... I think that Cyril de Brebbison is still working with HP at least for the CAS and some other parts of the "apps"...)

Yeah as a long time TI fan, I was still happy to see people here take interest in other brand products and I myself took interest in them in the past as well, especially the Prime. As for the cg10, my main issue is the slow Basic language and I don't want to learn Lua to make faster stuff when I can already do it in Basic/PPL on the 84+/Prime. The FX-cp400 price tag is inexcusable considering even maths are slow. The hardware might be better, but the software is just inexplicably slow. Someone needs to teach Casio optimizing tricks.

As for HP, they just need to learn marketing better, so their calcs come out after most bad bugs get fixed, not before, and learn to promote their product outside the internet.

And yeah Maxima would have been great, although I guess this would have required a Flash memory upgrade, since the Prime only has 256 MB of it. Heck, Maxima would take more than half of my mobile phone's memory

Considering I suck at anything lower level than TI-83+ BASIC (even Axe Parser), I doubt it , unless you mean for marketing, but if they really wanted to try harder, the HP administration would have replaced the marketing team a long time ago.

That reminds me, one thing that might have generated a lack of interest for hacking this calc is due to how powerful the on-calc language is. Since it's a compiled language, it is not slowed down as much as if it was interpreted during runtime. Also the language has very powerful commands such as sprites and polygons. It lacks direct memory access and stuff, but it's miles ahead of Lua and TI-BASIC. Even if the HP Prime ran at 100 MHz, it would still be more powerful than Nspire Lua in terms of game making.

I like the idea about cross-compatible programs between the Nspire and the Prime, though.

Thanks to bb010g for posting this link on IRC http://ried.cl/en/franqueando-los-secretos-del-hardware-mediante-ingenieria-inversa/

Maybe that could be useful for Prime hacking?

Yeah, apparently the HP Prime protection against third-party OSes and OS validation is very weak. It reminds me of PRIZM add-ins checksum. People hacked Casio PRIZM add-ins before the calc even came out lol. The main issue, though, is that making a new OS is incredibly hard. Even on the 83+, after 15 years there are still no third-party OS other than games and unfinished OSes with limited functionality. http://www.ticalc.org/pub/83plus/os/

Actually, what would be a good idea is if HP releases no firmware and the community just modifies the latest one to fix bugs. Adding program commands might not be a good idea, though, since people would make games and programs for the third-party OS and those games would not run on the official firmwares. I'm thinking more about full RPN or bug fixes.