HP 95LX BUGS

[Excerpted from the 95BUDDY (ON DISK ICON) manual.]

Don't blame 95BUDDY for these 95LX bugs. The worst ones are listed first; I found them the hard way. This is very likely only a partial list. If you find more bugs, send them to me or The HP Palmtop Paper.

• When you cold boot (press (CTRL)-(<Shift>)-(ON)), one of your RAM disk files may be corrupted even if you answer "no" to the disk format prompt. (You will get an I/O error when you try to read it.) This is bad, very bad. The problem can be corrected with a small TSR program called UNRESET, available from ACE Technologies for $29. (This problem does not occur on 1MB units with a RAM disk size of 512K or less.)
• MEMO will claim your disk is full (when it is not) and destroy your file if you use cut & paste on a large file (over 30K). If this happens to you, don't panic. Cut as big a hunk out of your file as MEMO will allow, then save what's left (it should work). Then press (MENU) File New (F4) (PASTE), and save that piece as a second file.
• After deleting text in MEMO, you may see some little square symbols with holes on the middle appear in your text where some other characters used to be. Usually, they show up at the beginning of lines. This is not a major problem.
• Mistakes in your APNAME.LST file can cause all sorts of weird behavior, such as beeping when you push a blue key, or very slow operations.
• Lotus 1-2-3 reminds you to save your work if you quit without saving a modified file. However, if you call up another worksheet, Lotus will dump the one you are working on without saving it. Actually, this is not a bug; it's a Lotus-ism.
• If you set the Appointment Book default leadtime to other than 5 minutes (press (MENU) Settings Leadtime) an alarm with a leadtime of exactly 5 minutes will not sound an alarm.
• A particular use of the Appointment Book "Find" function can scramble the display of appointments. Specifically, if you have more than one appointment scheduled in a day, position the cursor at midnight or very close thereafter, and search for one of the appointments in that day using the "find" function, the appointments may get scrambled. Some appointments may disappear or be moved in from other days. This effect is temporary and will clear up if you go to another day and then come back.
• If you set an appointment alarm mode to "enable" and later change the setting back to "disable," the alarm will still go off as originally scheduled. Scheduling a later appointment will sometimes correct the problem, or you can reboot.
• If you use the Appointment Book's Remove function to clear out old appointments (press (MENU) Remove), the 95LX does not "think" you have modified the file. This means that if you quit APPT (press (MENU) Quit, MENU q, MENU @, or MassExit), you will not be reminded to save your file, and thus, will not update your appointment file. When you do "MENU remove," change/insert an appointment to mark your file modified.
• If you try to open a MEMO file that has no file extension, you get a file not found error. 95BUDDY fixes this problem.
• Sometimes, after exiting from DOS, the Filer display will look like an elevator that got stuck between floors. The Filer data is in the correct place; it's the display window that's too low. Close the Filer and your display will correct itself.
• The HP 95LX real-time clock is much more accurate than the System Manager clock. The clocks are controlled by different internal oscillators. The low-frequency oscillator (for the real-time clock) is more accurate. When the HP 95LX is left on, the System Manager clock drifts. The SysMgr clock is "reset" whenever power is cycled. Because the error is so large and consistent (1%), I wonder if the problem isn't really a software bug in the SysMgr clock logic. AnyBuddy want to disassemble the code?
• When using the IBM Proprinter driver (specified by pressing (SetUp) Printer Config Name), sometimes a few characters are output at the beginning of printing, followed by normal printing for about half a page, and then the printing stops. The solution is to set both your printer and your 95LX over to Epson emulation. Check your printer manual to see how to configure the printer. Use the SET UP instructions above for the 95LX.

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