Storing Aplets & Notes To The Pc; Overview - HP 39gs Master Manual

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Many users create elaborate collections of notes and aplets over time, particularly if they begin to share
resources with their friends. Students may load aplets onto their calculator at the request of a teacher and
wish to keep them to refer to later. As time goes by the calculator can become increasingly cluttered and the
amount of memory (234Kb) is such that it will hold a lot of information!
In view of this it is quite a good idea to save your notes and aplets onto a PC using the supplied cable and
software. By doing this you free up space on your calculator and, more importantly, you ensure that the
material is backed up onto a PC and is safe from accidental loss.
In addition to this, one of the nice features of the hp 39gs and hp 40gs is that when you switch it on it
resumes operation in exactly the state you left it. Not all calculators will do this and it is clearly highly
desirable but it also has its downside. Effectively it is somewhat similar to always placing your PC into
"Standby" mode rather than actually shutting it down. The advantage is that it resumes exactly as it was
when you turned it off but you would normally not do this on a PC day after day, month after month without
expecting to experience problems. The PC's operating system may be quite stable but any system that
complex needs to be completely shut down and restarted at least once a week or once a fortnight.
The same is true of the hp 39gs and hp 40gs. Its operating system is, of course, not as complex as that of a
PC but despite this if you continue to use it without shutting it down and restarting it periodically then it may
eventually become unstable after a long period. It should be stressed that this may not happen at all and even
if it does it will take many months or even years to occur.
If there is a problem it can appear in a number of ways. Some of the common
symptoms are that the calculator will freeze (lock up) or, worse, that it will
spontaneously reset itself, clearing its memory in the process. Having this
happen to you in the middle of an examination is obviously not desirable!
Fortunately the solution is fairly simple. Just as you should periodically back up your PC you should also do the
same on your calculator. Save any aplets, notes, lists or matrices that you want to keep to the PC and then
perform a hard reset (memory clear) to freshly reload the operating system from the chip. Then restore any of
the information that you need from the PC. See page 42 for instructions on how to perform a hard reset.
The pages which follow give instructions on how to use the supplied software to save material from the
calculator to the PC and back.
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