In a previous news, an alpha version of the HP-Prime software leaked on the Internet from China.

Since, Hewlett Packard has authorized its partners to publicly host a newer version of this software. The message in question must have been misunderstood by some, as Klaas Kuperus has posted on HP-Museum not the HP-Prime software, but the login and password of the private FTP folder to recover it:

The problem being that on the 8th of August, this folder did contain other files which are still confidential:

• A 'firmware.zip' archive
  
• the HP-Prime version of the "HP-Conectivity Kit" linking software
  
• the calculator guidebooks in 7 languages (french, english, german, spanish...)

The 'firmware.zip' archive did contain:

• the SDK0.26 Operating System
• the V11 Boot Code
• an USB tool to install the above versions (having an interface letting you read/write images from/to any memory address - which is clearly not the final interface)

So some of those files may be very interesting for hackers/tinkerers and may eventually reappear on the Internet if the HP-Museum topic readers did get them in time.

Indeed, the day after the leak, HP took some actions with that folder:

• removal of the HP-Prime guidebooks which only reappeared on the 15th of auguts
• removal of the "HP-Connectivity Kit"
  
• overwrite of the 'firmware.zip' file with a new version including the new Operating System SDK0.30 and the new Boot Code V13, but whose extraction is this time protected by a password

Maybe they had set up some scripts which had been searching for the password for several hours/days, but the cnCalc.org website has finally published this morning a decrypted version of the above file. A great starting point to discover more about the HP-Prime. ;)




Beware, the usbtool tool which allows you to write or read any image to any memory address of the calculator seems dangerous. The operating system consists indeed of several ROM images, each one having to be programmed at a very specific memory address:

• APPSDISK.DAT
• armfir.elf
• BESTAARM.ROM
• BXCBOOT0.BIN
• MASTER.DAT

So HP-Prime calculators might be bricked permanently in case of misuse of that tool.



Crossposted from:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12867&lang=en
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12870&lang=en

Download:
ftp://primesw:[email protected]

Sources:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=247985#247985
http://www.cncalc.org/thread-9276-1-1.html

The password for firmware.zip is: Prime

Before any brute force or dictionary based attacks, simple guesses like this would have sufficed. It's probably what the cncalc member(s) did ?

I'm not sure why HP chose this that easily findable ^^ Maybe to encourage community buzz/development aroudn the platform. Good enough for me ^^

Careless, stupid or genius.

Ah, yeah, 6 chars Indeed, pretty fast

Ah,Ah... even faster, look closely using 'Google Translate' in the above cncalc link and you'll notice the guy explains how he got the 'Prime' password.

It feels like this is what the CSE should be: a very nice graphing calc with a color screen and an oldschool UI.

It feels like this is what the CSE should be: a very nice graphing calc with a color screen and an oldschool UI.

It actually is old school, the issue is just that the processor used is not suitable for that type of calc (although it would have been fine if there was graphic acceleration or something). Also I am glad that the 84+CSE lacks CAS support, because that way it has higher chances to be allowed in US tests.

But the gradient in the title bar makes it non-old school (although I guess you have a point when it comes to BASIC programming, which seems to let us make SNES-like games or at the very least Sega Genesis)