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From: richwood on 27 Aug 2007 13:36
On Aug 27, 10:10 am, Michael Heinz <ObviousTr...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 26, 11:53 pm, richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Sorry to hear of the Mac program compatibility problem as I thought
> > they had tried to preserve backwards compatibility. That is a
> > difficult task though when the computer system has used three or so
> > entirely incompatible processor families over the years.
>
> > Rich W
>
> Rich - what backwards compatibility? HP has never supported their
> calculators on the Mac, and the Mac hasn't had RS-232 ports for at
> least ten years. Until I wrote HPConnect in 2004 Mac users of HP
> calculators were completely out of luck. I chose to only support HP's
> USB models because, frankly, that's what I owned at the time. I had
> owned an HP48G previously, but a coworker talked me out of it.

My error. I have never owned a Mac but remember reading years ago
that the operating system included emulators for the older processors
so that old programs could be run, even is somewhat slowly, on later
Macs. Apparently with the latest operating system version this is no
longer true. It may have never been true for drivers and programs
which handled hardware.

Rich W

From: Michael Heinz on 27 Aug 2007 13:39
On Aug 27, 1:36 pm, richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> My error. I have never owned a Mac but remember reading years ago
> that the operating system included emulators for the older processors
> so that old programs could be run, even is somewhat slowly, on later
> Macs. Apparently with the latest operating system version this is no
> longer true. It may have never been true for drivers and programs
> which handled hardware.
>
> Rich W

They do. But since HP never wrote a program to support Macs in the
first place, there's nothing to run in "backward compatibility mode".

From: Raymond Wiker on 27 Aug 2007 13:45
richwood <astronut1001(a)yahoo.com> writes:

> On Aug 27, 10:10 am, Michael Heinz <ObviousTr...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 11:53 pm, richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > Sorry to hear of the Mac program compatibility problem as I thought
>> > they had tried to preserve backwards compatibility. That is a
>> > difficult task though when the computer system has used three or so
>> > entirely incompatible processor families over the years.
>>
>> > Rich W
>>
>> Rich - what backwards compatibility? HP has never supported their
>> calculators on the Mac, and the Mac hasn't had RS-232 ports for at
>> least ten years. Until I wrote HPConnect in 2004 Mac users of HP
>> calculators were completely out of luck. I chose to only support HP's
>> USB models because, frankly, that's what I owned at the time. I had
>> owned an HP48G previously, but a coworker talked me out of it.
>
> My error. I have never owned a Mac but remember reading years ago
> that the operating system included emulators for the older processors
> so that old programs could be run, even is somewhat slowly, on later
> Macs. Apparently with the latest operating system version this is no
> longer true. It may have never been true for drivers and programs
> which handled hardware.

Apple has actually been quite good at supporting previous versions:

- The PowerPC processors could emulate the 68K family
processors they replaced.

- The first versions of Mac OS X could run OS (System)? 9 programs

- The current HW (Intel Core Duo processors) can run programs compiled
for PowerPC processors - in some cases, at a higher speed than what
the original HW was capable of.

Note that this covers 2 changes to completely different processor
architecture, and 1 change to a completely different OS architecture.

As far as HP48 support goes, it should be relatively easy to get it
running under Mac OS X. You'll need one of those USB-to-Serial
adapters, but you can get one of those for less than 10 these days. I
got one made by "Manhattan", and have used it with Minicom to verify
that I can talk to my HP48GX from my Mac.
From: Virgil on 27 Aug 2007 14:52
In article <1188234615.516842.158890(a)r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>,
Michael Heinz <ObviousTroll(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> On Aug 26, 11:53 pm, richwood <astronut1...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry to hear of the Mac program compatibility problem as I thought
> > they had tried to preserve backwards compatibility. That is a
> > difficult task though when the computer system has used three or so
> > entirely incompatible processor families over the years.
> >
> > Rich W
>
> Rich - what backwards compatibility? HP has never supported their
> calculators on the Mac, and the Mac hasn't had RS-232 ports for at
> least ten years. Until I wrote HPConnect in 2004 Mac users of HP
> calculators were completely out of luck. I chose to only support HP's
> USB models because, frankly, that's what I owned at the time. I had
> owned an HP48G previously, but a coworker talked me out of it.

Actually. as soon as the hp series allowed SD cards, you could transfer
stuff between a card and the Mac, and between that card and the hp.

This allowed even upgrading the system files through a Mac via the SD
card.

But HPConnect makes everything else between Macs and HP49/50s (except
for such upgrades) much easier.
From: Michael Heinz on 27 Aug 2007 16:29
On Aug 27, 2:52 pm, Virgil <vir...(a)comcast.net> wrote:

> But HPConnect makes everything else between Macs and HP49/50s (except
> for such upgrades) much easier.

Heh. A year or so ago, I was encouraged by someone (whose name escapes
me at the moment) to add firmware support to HPConnect, but fear of
bricking my calculator has been holding me back. :-(

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