Psion Organiser II Re-creation
Posted: Sun Jan 21, 2024 10:58 am
After having a break from working on the re-created Organiser II, I'm starting to think about what to do next on it. What I do will depend on whether the re-creation is just for me, or is something that other people are interested in. So, is anyone interested?
The current state of play is that the LZ ROM emulates fine, and I can read small EPROM data packs. The main PCB has some serial I2C devices that are used to store the A: drive instead of battery backing it. This means that the A: drive is more like a flash datapack than a ram based drive. So, I'm wondering if it's worth adding full datapack support (including writing to EPROM and flash packs). I am intending to use the PicoW on the main PCB instead of the Pico as that has Wifi and Bluetooth capability and means that the 'power' PCB doesn't need a wireless module. I have made a new power PCB that has a 21V supply for EPROM programming, but I haven't managed to get it working yet. I also accidentally soldered a Pico to the PCB instead of a PicoW so need to build one with a PicoW so I can change the wifi code to use it.
If it is just me that is going to use this then I'd seriously think about not supporting EPROM (or maybe any) datapacks and use the A: drive for storage and maybe an external SD card datapack. Similarly, the top slot is totally different at the moment and supplies GPIOs from the Pico, so I2C and so on, rather than the Psion top slot protocol.
There's details about the recreation here:
https://youtu.be/v2YWStDrQIs
Any comments?
Andrew
The current state of play is that the LZ ROM emulates fine, and I can read small EPROM data packs. The main PCB has some serial I2C devices that are used to store the A: drive instead of battery backing it. This means that the A: drive is more like a flash datapack than a ram based drive. So, I'm wondering if it's worth adding full datapack support (including writing to EPROM and flash packs). I am intending to use the PicoW on the main PCB instead of the Pico as that has Wifi and Bluetooth capability and means that the 'power' PCB doesn't need a wireless module. I have made a new power PCB that has a 21V supply for EPROM programming, but I haven't managed to get it working yet. I also accidentally soldered a Pico to the PCB instead of a PicoW so need to build one with a PicoW so I can change the wifi code to use it.
If it is just me that is going to use this then I'd seriously think about not supporting EPROM (or maybe any) datapacks and use the A: drive for storage and maybe an external SD card datapack. Similarly, the top slot is totally different at the moment and supplies GPIOs from the Pico, so I2C and so on, rather than the Psion top slot protocol.
There's details about the recreation here:
https://youtu.be/v2YWStDrQIs
Any comments?
Andrew