Abacus 2.03 Copyright(c) 1997-2000, Dovcom All Rights Reserved Thank you for trying Abacus. Abacus is an RPN Financial calculator based on the HP-12C. It is also shareware. The evaluation period is 30 days. If you continue to use it after 30 days, you are required to register. ---------------------------- How to Use an RPN calculator ---------------------------- RPN(Reverse Polish Notation) is a convention by which values to be calculated are placed on a stack before being calculated. With an RPN calculator, you enter the values you wish to calculate before the operator. For instance, the simple calculation 5+10 on a standard(algebraic) calculator would be entered as: 5 + 5 = While on an RPN calculator, you would enter: 5 Enter 5 + Some more examples: 6 * (3 + 2): 3 Enter 2 + 6 * (6*2)+(9*5)+(23*2): 6 Enter 2 * 9 Enter 5 * + 23 Enter 2 * + It may seem awkward at first, but once you get the hang of it, RPN feels a lot more natural than algebraic. Example financial calculation: To find the payment for a $100,000 loan over 30 years at 8.25% interest, enter: 100000 PV - stores $100,000 as the 'present value' 0 FV - stores 0 as 'future value', how much you will owe after the term of the loan 30 Enter 12 X n - multiplies number of years(30) by the number of months in a year(12) and stores the result in n(term of loan) 8.25 Enter 12 / i - divide annual interest rate by the number of months in a year PMT - calculate payment Stuff you might miss: Tap on 'End' to toggle to Annuity due, tap on "Begin" to toggle back to ordinarity annuity. Tap anywhere else on the display to toggle between the segmented font and the normal Pilot calculator font. For the latest version of this and other Pilot apps, visit the our web page at: http://www.dovcom.com/ ------------ Registration ------------ The registration fee for Abacus is $14(US). Registration entitles you to unlimited future upgrades of the registered version of the Abacus shareware product. There are a few ways to register: Credit Card: ------------ Credit card orders are processed for us by PalmGearHQ. They offer several payment options, listed below. Web: http://www2.viaweb.com/pilotgearsw/abacus.html Email: software-orders@palmgear.com Phone: (800)741-9070 or (817)461-3480 Fax: (817)640-6614 Mail: ----- To register by mail, send a check or money order for $14(US funds only) to: Dovcom P.O. Box 580 Provo, UT 84603-0580 NOTE: If you register via mail, you MUST include an email address or an additional $2 to cover the cost of the diskette and postage. ---------------- Revision History ---------------- 2.03 - Bugfix * Fixed a couple "special case" bugs in the 'n' and 'PV' functions 2.0 - Enhancement * Fixed a bug that could cause the IRR function to fail * Added a second keyboard to support several new functions * Split shift key to access original shifted keyboard as well as the new one * Added factorial button * Added amortization button * Added depreciation buttons (straight line, sum of years digits, declining balance) * Added stats buttons (mean, weighted mean, standard deviation) * Added backspace support - graffiti backspace character will delete last entered digit * Better support for values and operations entered via graffiti 1.11 - Bugfix - limited distribution * Fixed a bug that would return incorrect values when solving for i in certain circumstances. 1.10 - Bugfix/Enhancement * Fixed a bug that didn't allow entry of very large values (greater than about 4.2 billion) * Added cashflow buttons (CFo, CFj, Nj, NPV, IRR) 1.02 - Bugfix * Fixed a bug in the e^x that could return incorrect results when used with values less than 1. Functions affected: e^x, y^x, SQRT, financial functions. * Improved the speed of the exponential functions. Some calculations that took a couple seconds are now nearly instantaneous. 1.01 - Bugfix * Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect values to display for small numbers (<.1) 1.00 - First non-beta release * Converted source to "official" MetroWorks compiler, requiring substancial recoding of math functions. * Substancial performance improvements. The 'i' function, which used to take >6 seconds on a typical calculation, now returns a value in less than one second. * Substancial improvements in precision. Most calculations now result in a precision that is higher than the number of displayable characters.(15+ significant digits) * Added a "Places" menu which allows you to specify the number of decimal places to round the display to. * Added buttons to keypad: %Total, %Difference * Moved existing buttons around somewhat to accomodate the new buttons * Added a "shift" button and secondary keypad for additional functions * New buttons on secondary keypad: 12x, 12/, SQRT, e^x, LN * Fixed stack roll button - rolls down instead of up now * Clear All now clears X register as well as other registers * 'n' calculations now round up to nearest whole number to follow the 12C model * Calculations can now be made on the result of financial calculations without pressing "Enter" first * Error messages have been added for several invalid operations, such as Divide by Zero or Overflow * Minor cosmetic update made to LCD bitmap so that values entered by the user appear in the same location as values returned by Abacus 0.85b - Update/Bugfix * Improved interest rate function greatly much more robust * Added a "Working..." indicator so you can tell when Abacus is busy calculating a problem * Added a flashing 'UNREGISTERED' reminder to the shareware version 0.81b - Minor bugfix * Implemented interest rate function - a little slow, but faster than my 12C * Fixed percentage-button bug - for some reason I forgot to hook it up to anything so nothing happened when tapping on the button 0.8b - Initial public beta release