How do I put a number, as an example: 987654321 so that all the digits are in a list?  Say I want to pull out the 7th digit, which in this example happens to be 3.  Or let's say I want to find out what the 473rd digit in Pi is.

I'm optimizing a procedure so that it can work as fast as possibly can. 

How do I find out how long it takes for maple to make a calculation?

I did evalf(3^1000000,1000) or something like that on a laptop.  It was taking a long while so I pressed the interupt (stop hand) button.  Nothing happened, it didn't stop.  It did finish what it was doing but it didn't immediately stop.

Unless it was trying to update the screen with all the numbers I think maple should have just stopped whatever it was doing and give me back control.  

Sorry if I posted in the wrong spot.

I have an old laptop I'm giving to my daughter to play around on and I'm installing Maple V version 3 on it.  Yes, laugh it's a 486 DX4 toshiba laptop, but I got it for free and I don't mind if the kids play around with it. 

I had Maple V version 3 so I installed it on the laptop.  I don't think any of the newer versions above ver.5 would work with a 486, maybe version 6 but I have 5 so I'm using that.

Just following through the 'Why is the minimum payment on a credit card so low' application and I get to plot and it doesn't work.  Why doesn't it work?  If I run through these lines as shown in the application I end up at plot as unable to evaluate. 

restart;

balance := (n, r, p, b)->b*(1+r)^n - p * sum((1+r)^i,i=1..n);

balance(12, .015, 30, 1000);

solve( {balance(n, r, p, b) = 0}, n);

N := unapply(%, r, p, b);

N(.02, 30, 1000);

plot( N(.02, p, 1000), p = 1..50);