Psion Organiser Recreation Repositories

[amenjet]

I've just made the Psion Organiser re-creation (I wish I could think of a snappier name for it) repositories public. This is very much a work in progress and these designs may not work at all, or may not work a bit. Having said that I have built several units and they do run the emulator with the LZ or XP ROMs. You do need to change some settings in the code and rebuild it to run XP vs LZ ROM emulations.

There is also not a lot of tutorial documentation. There's comments in the code, but this was very much a project for me, so ask a question and I'll answer it for you and maybe even start a document or two to put the answers into.

The code repository:

https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-org2-recreate

This has the code that you build and program onto the RP Pico that runs the recreation. i don't use Eclipse any more as it is slow and also lost all the configuration data for my projects a couple of years ago. I now use emacs and the command line tool (make). i then either use a picoprobe ot program the Pico or mass storage and copy the .uf2 file to the Pico. Much faster than Eclipse.

The repository with the PCB files:

https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-org2-main

This has all of the recreation PCB files. There are dead end or unfinished PCb designs in here, the latest one is the

https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-o ... using-pico

and in there there is the main processor PCb that uses a Pico and the 'power' PCB. The connector pinout for the power PCb is the same for all power PCB designs I did, so you can swap the hardware about. The code has to be compiled to work with whatever hardware is on the power PCB that is plugged in. Originally the Wifi was supplied with an ESP Wroom module which was on the power PCB. I'm moving to a PicoW for the wifi which frees up PCB space on the power PCB for other things. Although I have used the PicoW on another project, it is quite a job adding the Wifi or BT support for the PicoW to an existing Pico project.

Also, as documented on this forum, I'm moving towards a native code (Rp Pico C SDK) implementation of the Organiser code. So, the power PCB will have to be re-designed to add the more modern hardware and interfaces, and the ROM emulation will be dropped (or, if space allows be there as an option) either at compile or run time, to be replaced with a re-creation of the OS code as well as the hardware. This will allow faster development and use of SD cards, wifi, BT and hardware interfaces like I2C in a much easier way. Datapack support will be dropped in future power PCBs.


Related repositories.
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There's the Psion organiser 2 assembler which means you can assemble machine code natively on Linux and probably Windows, or any platform that runs Tcl.
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-org2-assembler

There's a repository with Psion Organiser information in it:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-o ... nformation

A bluetooth adapter for the top slot:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-o ... th-adapter
This was done during the chip shortage and so I had to use whatever ICs i could find, and they weren't what I wanted. i think using the PicoW is a more promising approach, with a separate device in the top slot that has a Li-ion battery, or maybe a USB socket for power so an external battery pack can be used, or a USB socket on a PC or charger.

The Pak Gadget:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/pak-gadget
This is an RP2040 in a datapack. It works but there is a problem with supplying power. The original organiser removes power when not accessing the datapacks, so the RP2040 turns off. The RP2040 also takes time to turn on, so this pack doesn't work too well in some ways. It does allow you to have an SD card with every piece of code ever written for the Organiser on it, though, in a datapack format, so it has promise. With the new approach of dropping support for legacy code and hardware this datapack will be able to be used in a more integrated form.

An adapter for the top slot, using the RP2040/Pico:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-org2-top-slot
This can be used to interface arbitrary hardware to the Psion.

The datapack tool that is a joint project with MartinP:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-org-datapack-tool
Already useful, it could do with a code tidy-up and more support for larger datapacks. I have used it for some datapack related tasks though, so definitely useful.

A replica/new design speech adapter:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/psion-speech-adapter
This works, but you will also have to make your own SP0256 IC (https://github.com/blackjetrock/pico-sp0256) as originals are very hard to find. Of course, if you have a drawer full of them you won't, but I didn't.

NewOPL, which is a recreation of OPL, but hopefully still being compatible with the original OPL that the organiser compiles:
https://github.com/blackjetrock/newopl
This has only just been started, so not much to see so far.

I might have left some things out, I'll add them as i find them.
Have fun, and please let me know if you add anything as I'd like to keep everything in these repositories. It's all out there now, though...

[Zenerdiode]

Thank you so much for this Andrew, really appreciate your efforts. From a coding standpoint an awful lot of work has gone in to this. One thing that I’m really lacking of right now that is hindering me from diving right in - and it’s something only I can sort out - is time…

[amenjet]

Thank you so much for this Andrew, really appreciate your efforts. From a coding standpoint an awful lot of work has gone in to this. One thing that I’m really lacking of right now that is hindering me from diving right in - and it’s something only I can sort out - is time…

Time is definitely a limited resource. Hopefully you will be able to find some and have a look...

I'm updating the first post with some more repositories that have things for the Organiser, just as an index...

[Daren]

Continually amazed by your efforts Andrew, amazing work (goes for your other projects too) Will these be available as kits or ready made or is it strictly a DIY affair?

[amenjet]

Continually amazed by your efforts Andrew, amazing work (goes for your other projects too) Will these be available as kits or ready made or is it strictly a DIY affair?

When I look back on some of the projects, I'm quite surprised too sometimes. You can get a lot done if you keep going, and regularly work on things.

I think I will make them available, probably not as kits, though, that's almost as much work as making a PCB. Bare PCBs aren't a problem, but it is a fairly challenging build with some surface mount components.
I need to redo the power PCB, as I said, once I work out what I want attached to it. With the PIOs on the Pico, running a few GPIOs out of the top slot without committing to any hardware interface at all becomes possible, the PIOs can be programmed to generate whatever is needed.

[xchris]

Do you really need an RP2040/PICO for the recreation of the organiser 2?

What about ESP32 ?
check this: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5sta ... -m5stamps3

[amenjet]

Do you really need an RP2040/PICO for the recreation of the organiser 2?

What about ESP32 ?
check this: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5sta ... -m5stamps3

The code is written for the RP2040 but is just really code (maybe C++in the libraries). It could probably be ported to almost anything. I use the Pico/RP2040 as it is very cheap and the SDK works well for me. At £4 for the Pico and 89p for an RP2040 it really is quite difficult to beat, quite apart from the mass storage programming plus programming and debugging with another Pico (picoprobe). I think the most expensive thing in the recreation hardware is the display.
But no,it's not required.