Every now and again, you may run into a problem with the DIY Calculator. Before you start emailing us with gusto and abandon, please take a moment to peruse and ponder the following questions and answers to see if we’ve already addressed your query.

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Is Max Really Outrageously Handsome?
You betcha!


 
Why Does Nothing Happen When I Launch the DIY Calculator?
Let's assume that you've been experimenting with the DIY Calculator and you've exited out of it. In some cases, when you try to launch (run) the DIY Calculator again, its "Splash Screen" appears and disappears, but nothing else seems to happen.

Well, the good news is that we've fixed this problem in DIY Calculator version 3.0.0 and above; you can download the latest version of the software from the Download page on this site.

If, however, you don't wish to download the new version of the DIY Calculator at this time, there is a fix as discussed below. First of all, we really don't understand exactly what's going on here and why the earlier versions exhibited this problem. It seems as though the main operating system is not terminating the program correctly, but we don't understand why this should be. As far as we know, this only occurs on systems running Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (please let us know if you are experiancing this problem on another operating system and/or service pack combination).

The solution is to press the <Ctrl>, <Alt>, and <Delete> keys all together to launch the Windows Task Manager application. Then select the Applications tab, then click the "DIY Calculator" entry in the task list, then click the End Task button, and finally dismiss the task manager dialog. You should now be able to re-launch your DIY Calculator without any problems.



 
What Does the "Install a Program" Error Message Mean?
A visitor to our site posed the following question:

After installing the DIY calculator, when I click on the buttons, an error message appears that says I must install a program for the buttons to work. What is the name of the program I must install, and where can I get a copy?

Unfortunately, this visitor had missed the point of what we are doing here. We explained that the DIY Calculator is a virtual 8-bit computer/calculator that runs on one's real computer. The idea is that you have to write your own programs (in our simple assembly language) and then run these programs on our virtual machine. We also explained that in order to get an idea for how all of this works, one should perform the following steps:

1)   Go to our main website at www.DIYCalculator.com
2)   Click on the flashing button market "DEMOS" on the front page.
3)   Maybe play the Flash or AVI versions of the demo.
4)   Go to the section that says "Step-by-Step Demos", download the two PDF documents entitled "Reading Buttons and Writing to the Display"and "Workbench 101"; these provide step-by-step instructions in creating simple programs and running them.