#psion — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #psion, aggregated by home.social.
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You’re probably real tired of these same-same photos but I am still working on the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) despite less crowing about it. It is very nose-to-the-grindwheel stuff and abating the distractions is paramount to getting anything done, which is why this 25 year old AA-powered palmtop slams your average Android tablet to the floor.
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You’re probably real tired of these same-same photos but I am still working on the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) despite less crowing about it. It is very nose-to-the-grindwheel stuff and abating the distractions is paramount to getting anything done, which is why this 25 year old AA-powered palmtop slams your average Android tablet to the floor.
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You’re probably real tired of these same-same photos but I am still working on the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) despite less crowing about it. It is very nose-to-the-grindwheel stuff and abating the distractions is paramount to getting anything done, which is why this 25 year old AA-powered palmtop slams your average Android tablet to the floor.
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You’re probably real tired of these same-same photos but I am still working on the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) despite less crowing about it. It is very nose-to-the-grindwheel stuff and abating the distractions is paramount to getting anything done, which is why this 25 year old AA-powered palmtop slams your average Android tablet to the floor.
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You’re probably real tired of these same-same photos but I am still working on the book (https://camendesign.com/nomad) despite less crowing about it. It is very nose-to-the-grindwheel stuff and abating the distractions is paramount to getting anything done, which is why this 25 year old AA-powered palmtop slams your average Android tablet to the floor.
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My latest eBay purchase. It's complete apart from the 3.5" software disks (it does have the 5.25" software disks).
I don't have any way of reading 3.5" or 5.25" disks, so the missing disks don't bother me.
It was sold as untested, so I'll see if it works later. It was very well packaged, so if it doesn't work, it won't be due to damage in transit.
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Dinner came to an end, and several of the assembled knights opened up their refurbished Psions and Apple Newtons to commence the evening's jestposting.
Our Lady Joan Mastodon finished her bowl of rhubarb crumble (she loved rhubarb crumble and always took seconds), then she spoke:
Remember, my friends, we toot for The Now. Don't toot for the archives. There's no chisel and marble in the Fediverse, my friends, only our frail temporary voices, heard in the moment, then forgotten. Jest away. And thank you, Sir Alfred, for tonight's rhubarb crumble. It was very good. You've surpassed yourself.
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A British classic
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Had a good day with my eldest. We went to the National Museum Of Computers at legendary Bletchley Park. I've been before, but he hadn't.
Despite his anxiety, he lasted a couple of hours which was better than I expected.
Photos attached.
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Had a good day with my eldest. We went to the National Museum Of Computers at legendary Bletchley Park. I've been before, but he hadn't.
Despite his anxiety, he lasted a couple of hours which was better than I expected.
Photos attached.
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Had a good day with my eldest. We went to the National Museum Of Computers at legendary Bletchley Park. I've been before, but he hadn't.
Despite his anxiety, he lasted a couple of hours which was better than I expected.
Photos attached.
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Had a good day with my eldest. We went to the National Museum Of Computers at legendary Bletchley Park. I've been before, but he hadn't.
Despite his anxiety, he lasted a couple of hours which was better than I expected.
Photos attached.
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Had a good day with my eldest. We went to the National Museum Of Computers at legendary Bletchley Park. I've been before, but he hadn't.
Despite his anxiety, he lasted a couple of hours which was better than I expected.
Photos attached.
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My Psion Series 7 is now *fixed* - temporary fuse bridging, awaiting a replacement 750mA fuse. It joins the happy ranks of @thelastpsion's Netbook in being fully operational. For those at the back, these are fabulous Distraction-Free Writing Devices (DFWDs) - if you have one sitting at the back of a drawer, *get it out*! And if it doesn't work, *we can fix it* (well, we can try...)
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#Psion SSDs are basically made up of a single #ASIC and between one and eight storage chips. These chips could be ROM, battery-backed DRAM, battery-backed PS-RAM, or two different types of flash.
Psion used two different custom ASICs for their SSDs. The earliest ones use ASIC5, the later ones ASIC4.
Why 5 then 4? From what I gather, ASIC4 and ASIC5 were planned at roughly the same time, but ASIC4 went through a few changes before production, so was delayed. ASIC4 was originally meant to be a cut-down ASIC5 with just the storage parts remaining - things like the RS232 interface were removed. However, as time went on, ASIC4 had a few features added. It kept compatibility with ASIC5's storage mode, but added some more ASIC4-specific modes for use with peripherals.
I actually have two Psion Games 2 SSDs - one with ASIC4 and one with ASIC5. This is great for testing. However, these ROM SSDs didn't show up the edge case that cause this fault, as we shall see.
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Had a dream that I came across an unreleased prototype of a #Nokia palmtop / netbook computer from the early 2000s. It was small like a #palmtop but had a squarer profile like the #Psion 7 so when you opened it up it had a 4:3-like screen but its ultimate party trick was the complex internal hinging mechanism whereby as the device opened the calm shell separated from the frame, leaving a few mm gap all the way down the back of the screen and under the device. Why? They had invented a printer only a few mm thick that lived in the spine and it could print an A5 page. Just pure engineering insanity because they could. Peak 2000s Nokia
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Current main projects:
- #ecobj: Another piece of the #Psion SIBO SDK rewrite puzzle.
ECOBJ.EXEtakes an Intel OMF file (.OBJ) for a class and moves the class descriptor data into the code segment. I think I might be able to get this working by the end of the year. - Get my website running #GoHugo (this is almost done!).
- #CTRAN: Still haven't started writing unit tests. Also, complete a full write-up of what it took to get the thing working.
- Research into compilers: I'm nowhere near ready to start yet, but I'm learning as much as I can.
Upcoming projects:
- #siboimg: Rewrite in Pascal, and add the ability to create and modify FEFS images.
- #plptools: I'd like to see two-way transfer working for EPOC16 -- I'm sure I'll need the help of the rest of the maintainers to get this working. I can't do much with the #HaikuOS port until the USB serial drivers are "fixed" (hardware flow control added) -- I don't think I have the skills for this, so it'll have to wait until some kind soul has the time to work on it.
- #PsiDrive: Add a ~17V boost converter to allow writing to Flash SSDs.
- NAS/home server: Rebuild or replacement of DEATH, my Microserver gen8. It's been over 18 months since DEATH's RAID died. It's lead me to thinking that maybe I don't need the sort of server I thought I need. TBD.
Maybe next year, maybe not:
- New Psion SSD with RP2350: I doubt I'll get anything made, but I'd like to experiment to see what can be done with the protocol.
- Rewrite the rest of the SIBO C SDK tools.
- Compiler: Recreation of the JPI/Clarion TopSpeed C compiler, targeting the SIBO/EPOC16 platform (8086 and V30). I was hoping to get going with this around July this year, but it just didn't happen. This is my Everest. I know I'm not ready yet. I need to train for it.
- Vine: New word processor for EPOC16. Trying to start this project in 2023 lead me to rewriting the SDK, so we're quite some way away from getting this done.
- Research into Objective-C: Not Foundation, just the syntax. For compiler shenanigans.
I've really struggled to get going with projects this year. That's fine, these things happen. But I'd like to find better ways to cope next year so that I can make a little more progress.
- #ecobj: Another piece of the #Psion SIBO SDK rewrite puzzle.
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Just 👏 bring 👏 back 👏 the 👏 #Psion 5 👏 you 👏 bloody 👏 hipsters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hV8xfhdk7c -
Тестируем скорость SSD 1993 года выпуска. На КПК Psion Series 3c, с операционной системой SIBO 16, на языке OPL
В середине 2000 я купил Psion 3c для коллекции. Лет через 10 увидел, что его комплектный диск называется SSD — Solid State Disk. На волне тестирования NVME возникла идея, а не протестировать ли скорость SSD-1993? И спустя 20 лет после покупки на этой машинке была написана первая программка. Что вышло…
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Mini-rant ahead:
I'm delving into #cmake to try to make it build a
compile_commands.jsonfile to work with #retrocomputing C header files, specifically the #Psion SIBO C SDK (from the early 90s).I don't actually want cmake to do anything but tell clangd what to do, so that I've got a working language server in NeoVim.
I don't need it to build any Makefiles, I don't need it to tell a compiler what to do. I just want clangd to treat my old 16-bit real mode code correctly, and that the header files are in
~/dosbox/sibo-c/SIBOSDK/include/.Note that I can't point it at the compiler, because the compiler (TopSpeed) runs in DOSBox. There is no modern compiler that will work.
So... Do I have to fake it somehow? For example, do I have to tell cmake that it's actually using a different compiler (e.g. #Watcom) to make it behave correctly? And if I do, will that matter to clangd?
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REPOST (JAN 2024): My first thoughts on #Psion's dialect of Object Oriented C for the Series 3 and related portable computers.
Includes the JPI/Clarion #TopSpeed #compiler, a proprietary preprocessor, the Eiffel programming language, and a handful of calling conventions.
Also, did somebody say Objective-C?
This is an old blog post from the beginning of the year. If you've been following my journey in recreating #CTRAN, this was written a week before I decided to take the plunge.
(Yes, I did say in the article that I definitely wouldn't be writing a compiler. I did say that.)
#RetroComputing #EPOC16 #CDECL #Clarion #TopSpeed #TopSpeedC #RetroProgramming #RetroDev #Smalltalk #ObjectPascal #preprocessor #Eiffel #OOP #ObjectiveC #compilers #ObjectOriented
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ICYMI: My first thoughts on #Psion's dialect of Object Oriented C for the Series 3 and related portable computers.
Includes the JPI/Clarion TopSpeed compiler, a proprietary preprocessor, the Eiffel programming language, and a handful of calling conventions.
Also, did somebody say Objective-C?
#RetroComputing #EPOC16 #CDECL #Clarion #TopSpeed #TopSpeedC #RetroProgramming #RetroDev #Smalltalk #ObjectPascal #preprocessor #Eiffel #OOP #ObjectiveC
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Reading through the first manual in the SDK has reminded me what the "pure small memory model" is.
The ES register is never corrupted (DS=ES=SS).
#TopSpeed C implemented this, which was one of the main reasons why #Psion used it for the SDK.
I've heard that it's possible to implement this with #Borland C (and maybe #Watcom?), but I don't know how.
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Found a way to get files on to the #MAME #Psion #SIBO #emulator without building any new tools!
#EPOC16 can read FAT volumes. So... mtools!
1. Make an empty file of, say, 2MB.
2. Use mtools to "format" it with FAT.
3. Use mtools to make directories in it and copy files into it.
4. Point MAME at the image.Mtools is available for pretty much every Linux distro. And there's a version for Win32, too: https://github.com/foone/mtools_win32/releases/tag/4.0.23
Here's #EDisAsm 0.0.5 running on an emulated 3mx.
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Did you write code for #Psion machines in the #80s and #90s?
We're calling for you to open source your code!
I'm working with a group of enthusiasts, building a library of information about the SIBO/EPOC16 platform. Your old code could give valuable insight, as well as encourage people to write new code.
We're especially interested in old C and #x86 #assembly.
Upload it to your public repository of choice, and set it free!
#retrocomputing #retrodev #16bit #pda #laptop #epoc16 #sibo #oldcode
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This is the case for the Sidecar printed in ColorFabb NGen Silver Metallic. I'll be doing the write up for the final part of this in the next few days.
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This is the case for the Sidecar printed in ColorFabb NGen Silver Metallic. I'll be doing the write up for the final part of this in the next few days.
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This is the case for the Sidecar printed in ColorFabb NGen Silver Metallic. I'll be doing the write up for the final part of this in the next few days.
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This is the case for the Sidecar printed in ColorFabb NGen Silver Metallic. I'll be doing the write up for the final part of this in the next few days.
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This is the case for the Sidecar printed in ColorFabb NGen Silver Metallic. I'll be doing the write up for the final part of this in the next few days.
