The “Saturn” is able to reason in BCD natively, and with 64bit can handle a dozen significant digits and a three-digit exponent (15 nibbles): In addition, the calculator reasones using BCD logic (binary-encoded decimals) whose greatest usefulness is that you can use them without having to convert between binary and decimal and have rounding problems. The architecture is “little endian” like the x, so the less significant nibbles are stored before the most significant ones. RTSK -> “Return STacK”, 8-position hardware stack at 20bit R0-R4 4 support registers on which calculations cannot be performed (always at 64bit) It can then route up to 512 KB of “normal” RAM or better 1 MB of nibbles ArchitectureĪ-D - 4 generic 64bit registers (GPR- General PuRpose registers that are sophisticatedly structured) The Saturn routes 5 nibbles (20bits) and is based on 4bit serial buses. It is a chip common to all HP calculators of the time. The operating system of the HP42S (64KB ROM) is also derived from the previous calculators.Īt one point (in 2003) HP implemented a Saturn emulator with an ARMv4 chip as Samsung could no longer produce it (!) with its factories. Of course, the ARMv4 also came out of production and therefore the Saturn architecture was officially abandoned around 2015, when the HP Prime was born which can be found around 150 € and still contains the RPN system with reverse Polish logic, much loved by admirers of HP calculators (myself included). The HP 42S uses a chip called Saturn (at 1Mhz) that thinks internally at 4bit (nibble) but has 64bit registers (here you will find a somewhat elementary manual, poorly written but at least lists all the instructions of Saturn). The hardware design is truly refined, and the processor is able to operate natively with the required precision (and this can be seen from its computational speed). There is a new implementation based on the open source Free42 (DM42) software but it costs a huge amount, more than the HP Prime which is the latest version of this generation of calculators. matrices, complex numbers, dry text, etc.) and provides everything you need for a general-purpose engineer (numerical integrations, solvers, etc.). The HP 42S is quite easy to use, allows you to use mixed data types (e.g. It still works, and lately I have discovered that it has an internal “monitor” and the ability to set a “FAST” mode. I risked losing her towards the penultimate year of University, but the fate (and honesty of a colleague of mine) brought her back to me. I bought it on December 5, 1992, paying it 229,000 lire, a year before I started university (about 200€ now considering inflation * ). It is just type what you want and press the desired function key.The HP 42S accompanied me throughout my university career, secretly designed for me some function graphs and with its 7KB alphanumeric also managed to make me keep some secret notes. Anyway there is another way to enter data in RPN. In my opinion we could have a simpler RPN style. This is a feature, a bad feature I think, of the HP RPN style of 42S (also in 33S, 12C, etc but not in HP48 or 49). So if you do 2 ENTER + you will have 4 as answer. iv)The content just entered goes to line y and line x. iii)The content of line x goes to line z. ii) The content of line y goes to line t. I) The content of lines t and z are lost. When you enter a number (say 2 ENTER) what happens is the following. So the stack is something likeīut as the calculators display has only two lines just x and y lines are visible. (actually the name of the last two is not so important). There are four lines labeled x, y, z and t. But in other models like 32SII, 33S (in RPN mode) and 42S the input data have to fit in a “stack” of four lines. In some models like HP-48 or HP-49 the amount of input data is limited only by available memory. In algebraic calculators the “( )” are limited to a given number depending on the model. No calculator can store an infinite amount of data. We will discuss the others menus later too. The MODES menu has another line but we will discuss this later. We will see this more in detail when study complex numbers. REC actives rectangular mode (x,y) and POLAR actives polar mode (r,θ). Why the result is not exactly zero? Answer: Because the number that calculator entered was not exactly π but 3.14159265359. GRAD is not so useful and correspond to 400 degrains for a circumference.įor example: In degrees we have sin(90°)=1 and in radians we have sin(π/2)=1. RAD actives radian mode and in this mode a circumference has 2π radians or just 2π. In this mode a circumference has 360 degrees. (MODES is above +/- key).ĭEG actives degree mode for trigonometric functions. Here, in this manual, I suppose the calculator using '.' for decimal point. Again the active mode is followed by a ■ sing. Make the calculator to use ',' for decimal point and by pressing RDX.
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