Old Psion Organisers and Picaxe - anyone done anything interesting?

Whilst going through the junk in my loft I found my collection of old Psion devices, so I decided to dust them down and play around, I have a couple of the Organiser II's and a 3mx and a 5mx, also a old Visor palm OS PDA.

The Psion's are actually quite ahead of their time in some ways, and I really like the fact that they can be programmed quite quickly and on the device itself by the user, in OPL a sort of BASIC.

I searched on the forum and found a couple of references to people using them with Picaxe (Hippy in particular) I'm thinking that I would like to try interfacing them with the picaxe (08m2 or 14m2) - not sure exactly what the goal is, probably some kind of data logging or RS232 interfacing intially just for fun and learning and experimentation.

Possibly, and I'm probably showing my lack of knowledge here, using one to reprogram the picaxe "on the fly" not necessarily sending actual code but maybe setup routines or some-such, e.g the Picaxe has some code which can be configured to specific functions by RS232 data or something.

Ha, a little vague and open ended!

So my question is has anyone done any projects which combine Picaxe and Psion - if so I'd love to take a peek :)

Thanks for any pointers/examples/ideas!
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
I had written a terminal emulator which ran on a Palm so it could be used as a large LCD display. Beyond using them as a display or terminal there are only limited options.

http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?13513-Hacking-PDA-as-terminal-for-PICaxe

It is a shame to see perfectly usable devices go to waste but these days any experimenting in that direction probably has limited appeal and would only make sense as a personal 'for fun' project and even that could be frustrating as they are all now yesterday's products.

If only mobile phones and tablets had a serial port and an easy means of accessing that ...
 
I found some interesting info about the Psion here with regards to interfacing with the top slot http://archive.psion2.org/org2/topslot.htm Seems that there are still a small number of enthusiasts online.

It seems that making a small PCB to interface would allow the Picaxe to be powered from the 5v present on pin 13 of the Psion, but as you say it could be frustrating trying to get them to talk to eachother, maybe I will try some kind of terminal thing, here is a page with the serial info, max baud rate is 9600 http://archive.psion2.org/org2/mancomm3.htm

It would be fun to add some kind of analogue sensor(s) to the Psion by way of the picaxe sending it serial data, maybe a weather data logger or something, ha! a solution looking for a problem perhaps?

In any case the BASIC style "right on the device" programming means that with my super limited coding ability I might be able to have a chance of doing something, maybe.

It is a shame to see these old devices go to waste, and funny enough I bet in another 30 years time the Psions will still work, doubt any of my modern devices will, due to battery failures etc - the old stuff runs on standard AA, AAA or PP3 so as long as those are still available by that time :)

Thanks for the reply.
 

Buzby

Senior Member
I wish I could find where my Organiser XP has gone. Probably slipped into that time-warp gate in the deepest darkest corner of my loft.

As you say, OPL was brilliant !. I coded all kind of apps, before they were called apps. ( I had the SDK disk, but that's hiding a dark crevice as well. )

But as hippy says, not much use other than as a hard-wired terminal.

( A smartphone and a Bluetooth board gives a Picaxe wiings !. )


Ah well, it's nice to reminisce about the good old days, till you realise the hardware was not that good.

Cheers,

Buzby
 
Thanks Buzby, the limitations are actually a good thing for me, even my Picaxe skills are VERY limited, so as OPL is fairly similar it seems to be a good match conceptually at least.

I'd love a Picaxe version of one of these old Psion's - a simple handheld computer that can be easily programmed to do simple tasks, I seem to remember Sinclair did a Z80 based thing in the late 80's which was possibly the forerunner of that Amstrad Notebook thing.

What kind of things did you program in OPL? I'd love to hear more about that!
 

westaust55

Moderator
I had a Psion palm 3C (from memory) back in mid 1990's that I sold along with accessories around ~2005.
One of the bigger programs I wrote was called Psi-Mapper/Oz.
A bit like a pre version of google maps with roads on various levels from highways down to 4WD tracks.
Data included (with icons) for facilities such as fuel stations and caravan parks and more.

Out of curiosity I just did a search and in archives it is still there:
https://archive.org/download/tucows_158651_Psi-Mapper_Oz
 

Buzby

Senior Member
I can't remember all the 'apps' I coded, but I do remember programming a car racing game. It was based on one I'd written for the MK14, and that was based on one I saw years before running on a calculator/games machine from Dixons. ( Does Printztronic mean anything to you ? )

Nowadays it's apps for phones, and if you want to get into that I recommend B4A ( Basic for Android ), dead easy to use 'Bluetooth to Picaxe'.

I've had a look, but can't find my XP, either I've sold it, or lost it.

Cheers,

Buzby
 

Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
The Psion 3 was pretty powerful for it's size, mine is still here on a shelf, but I've not used it for a couple of decades. I remember when I first got it I wrote a programme to predict the water entry point of an air launched weapon, taking account of airspeed, wind speed, track, Coriolis, height and the retarded weapon still air trajectory data. On one trials sortie, where I was sat next to the Tac Nav in a Nimrod MR2, we had a competition to see who could produce a weapon release point prediction the fastest. The Psion beat the Nimrod Tactical Computer hands down, despite me having to manually key all the data in.
 
Wow some pretty interesting replies, thanks guys :)

Feel free to chime in on other forgotten pocket computers as well, it is an interesting subject I think, despite the massive power increase in modern equivalents, the user experience seems much more toned down in that you can't really "get under the hood" unless you want to go down the SDK route, although that B4A app looks quite nice, I guess there must be others for other platforms, but to my knowledge no mainstream modern portable devices allow on device programming right out of the box, a great shame.
 

Jeremy Harris

Senior Member
FWIW, I found that converting a GWBasic programme to run on OPL was pretty easy - the trajectory programme was originally written in GWBasic, to run on an early DOS machine. I still have a copy of it and may see if I can get a Picaxe to run it. Should be possible with a 4 line LCD or OLED plus a keyboard. Fairly pointless, but it might be fun to see how the speed compares between a Psion 3 and a Picaxe. I'd guess that the Picaxe will run a fair bit faster, but will be hampered by the lack of a floating point capability and the native lack of signed numbers.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
to my knowledge no mainstream modern portable devices allow on device programming right out of the box
You are probably right and there are perhaps good reasons for that. With connectivity it's easy enough to download something to do that if one wants it, the devices are focused towards consumption rather than user programming and manufacturers' focus is on that consuming audience, there are often constraints on memory and storage and, unless a device has a large enough screen, a keyboard and mouse attached, can be made to feel like a laptop or desktop system, the task of programming can be difficult or frustrating.

If one has a modern browser installed which runs Javascript and can run device hosted web pages, and have a means of creating those, one could write programs in Javascript which can be developed on the device itself, but that's not the same as creating native apps.
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
Feel free to chime in on other forgotten pocket computers as well
There's the Amstrad NC100 range, not quite "pocket" being A4 sized but very slim and could easily slide into a briefcase. I have a couple of those somewhere. Only ever used them as terminals with a PICAXE but they include BBC Basic ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_NC100

Got a couple of these as well somewhere. 'Weighed a ton' but did run MS-DOS and supported floppy disks ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPC_512
 
You are probably right and there are perhaps good reasons for that. With connectivity it's easy enough to download something to do that if one wants it, the devices are focused towards consumption rather than user programming and manufacturers' focus is on that consuming audience, there are often constraints on memory and storage and, unless a device has a large enough screen, a keyboard and mouse attached, can be made to feel like a laptop or desktop system, the task of programming can be difficult or frustrating.

If one has a modern browser installed which runs Javascript and can run device hosted web pages, and have a means of creating those, one could write programs in Javascript which can be developed on the device itself, but that's not the same as creating native apps.
Yes I agree, consumption rather than creation seems to be the main priority with devices these days, and of course built in obsolescence by way of hard to repair/maintain hardware and in the case of among others Apple via software updates - my iphone 4s is almost useless since the last few updates, crashes galore, sluggish performance, forced upgrade.

I do think there exists a niche for simple to program mini computers, there seem to be a lot of people both young and older buying old C64, Amiga, ST, Speccy, etc and a lot of modern accessories are being made by small third party individuals, such as SD card floppy emulators and such - good stuff!

I guess though we are lucky to have easily programmable devices like Picaxe and others these days, where the point of entry is not overly technical for dabblers/hobbyists.

Still if RevEd ever decided to make a small self contained Psion/Palm like device I'd definitely pay a decent price, but perhaps I am in a very small niche.

That NC-100 from Amstrad is the one I think was related in some way to the Cambridge Z88 thing?
 

tmfkam

Senior Member
To add not very much to the thread...

I loved the Psion Organisers, and OPL (Organiser Programming Language) in general. I had a break from 'computing' after the Spectrum/Oric 1 type machines had faded from view. I eventually had a requirement to store a database of over 5000 entries containing the common faults and remedies for the television repairs I'd amassed over (too) many years repairing TV/VCRs. I got a Psion CM (the two line 16x2 LCD type) and slowly started entering the list of faults. I soon upgraded to a Series 3 with it's better keyboard and superior display. From there I went on to have a 3a, 3c, Series 5, 3mx (I know, backwards, but the Series 5 had a poor contrast display that I never much enjoyed, the 3mx was simply superb) then on to a revo. The revo was a wonderful machine, if rather poorly made and saddled with a fitted battery that wouldn't retain it's charge so back to the 3mx again. I still have all of those machines, along with a Psion siena, Oregan Scientific Osaris, 5mx, infra red modem, Psi-Fax (as the name suggests, it allows sending a fax from a Series 3) MC600 (lovely laptop sized machine which came before the Series 3) . I also have a Sinclair Z88, Amstrad NC100 and the Amstrad PDA600 (though I can't see the PDA600 or Z88 for a minute...).

I wrote rather a lot of programs for them, mainly for maintaining the database of 5000+ TV faults. The database program I wrote (DataSel - for Data Selector) ended up with a feature I was really pleased with called 'Insta-Search'. If whilst viewing an entry you started to type something, after a short pause in typing, 'Insta-Search' would be initiated, searching the database for the next entry containing that phrase. If after typing a phrase Shift+Enter were pressed, the database would be searched in the reverse direction. My database program was written for almost all versions of the Psion (as I often swapped back and forth between them) and had a virtually identical feature set, whether running on the Series 3, siena or 5mx, something I was rather proud of at the time. I also wrote a number of programs that allowed the database to be viewed on a PC, originally in Visual Basic 3 (YUK! Hated it.) then in Borland's Delphi (YUM! Loved it.). I wrote some simple utilities that allowed me to calculate microwave power and free UHF channels for setting the modulators on videos so they wouldn't clash with incoming signals, these should be a minimum number of channels higher and lower than any incoming signals in order to minimize potential beat frequencies being generated.

A UK company called Sendo made a mobile 'phone called the Sendo X that had an in built programming language similar to OPL as it's OS was based on Symbian 60 which was the name Psion adopted for it's OS marketing shortly before they were swallowed up by Motorola. I actually had one. It was awful. Nokia made their communicator series of 'phones some of which (essentially) incorporated a Psion into the 'phone so they too could be programmed 'on the fly', but I'm not sure if they sold well as they didn't last that long and I never saw one.

Whilst it seems like a great idea to have the ability to program a device while out and about it seems as though it has limited appeal in the wider world. RFO Basic has the capability to run on Android 'phones, it can build graphical interfaces to make it look like a 'real' Android app, there is also an App builder that (I believe) wraps a version of the program up with the BASIC interpreter into one, self contained Application that looks like a genuine App to the end user. I downloaded it, wrote a few simple 'Hello World' type programs but never went any further. As I am someone who now writes code and designs electronic circuits for a living, I would have thought I would have been more interested in using an App like RFO Basic than most, the truth is, I simply couldn't find any reason to write anything for my 'phone that I wanted, or hadn't been done better already without the need for me to spend hours learning another programming language and syntax, then any other number of hours honing the results into something that worked any better than I could buy for a few pounds, saving myself many sleepless nights into the bargain.

It is still possible to get the Series 3a (3c?) emulator to run on modern PCs (or macOS) using DosBox, if I need to look something up that I had on my Series 3mx I do sometimes fire up my virtual Series 3a and have a look for it. I wrote an article for Psion Journal detailing how this worked, along with another article that was never printed due to the magazine going out of circulation.
 

stan74

Senior Member
I've still got a psion organiser II.I don't have a memory cartridge so it loses all programs when the battery goes.I keep it with an early motorola phone. One day they'll come back like vinyl records. I don't know why they don't make led valves with ic's inside like they make led filament edison light bulbs :)
 
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