Hello all

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jbuc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:02 pm

Hello all

Post by jbuc »

New here, although not terribly new to Psion organisers - IIRC I got the Organiser II by way of:
Series 5 - which very annoyingly was broken (the screen at least) by a badly designed case before I'd used it much
Series 3 - fun for games, screen a bit small
Series 3a - nicer screen...better games
Series 7 - screen cable eventually failed, leading to
Netbook - still struggling on, although I'm very aware that every open/close brings it a little closer to death!
Siena - numeric keypad seemed like it would be useful. Hinge broke so in the end it wasn't!
Workabout - numeric keypad again, but never really found a use
5mx - still lurking "safely" (as in, I don't know where any more) somewhere running Linux off a CF card
Organiser IIs - I may have got "a bit carried away" with the Organiser II....at one point I realised it was cheaper and easier for any small microcontroller projects requiring a keyboard & screen that an Organiser II was cheaper (back in the days of sub-£5 organisers flooding ebay) than an equivalent screen and keypad, with the added bonus of time-keeping, datapak storage etc.

Thus I ended up with far too many Organiser II's, and every few years (such as now) I come across some and remember they exist again. With the current advances in cheap PCB production and assembly I'm tempted again to try and actually finish some projects (they work, but mostly resemble a Psion with a ton of wires coming out of the topslot to a breadboard and various circuits and/or microcontrollers). If you ignore the irony that the Psion is mostly controlling a far, far more powerful PIC/Atmel MCU then it works quite well. Whether I'm going to be able to figure out what is wired where and why, or decypher the Psion machine code I'd previously written is another matter, but time will tell!
Daren
Posts: 78
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2023 10:03 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by Daren »

Hello! Interested to hear about those projects, I have just started experimenting with some (very) rudimentary projects with microcontrollers, just using the comms link turning LEDs on/off and reading sensors with the microcontroller and sending the value to the Psion terminal.
jbuc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:02 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by jbuc »

Not a problem (although I don't have vast amounts of free time currently to experiment, so don't expect anything very soon).

I quickly moved on from "a Psion would make a cheap keyboard/LCD" to aiming for a topslot addon that allowed the Psion itself to do various things using a combination of digital and analogue I/O via the adapter. I could therefore easily use datapaks (or RAMPak) to store results and tweak the program easily in OPL as needed if I found an unexpected issue or just wanted to do things a little differently. It also worked out easier due to now only needing 2 small machine code routines for the Psion to write commands / read data from the topslot device.

The latest iteration (see photo below) was for an 18650 Li-Ion battery profiler/tester that could plot the charge/discharge graph and test capacity of cells. Unfortunately (and as with most projects it seems!) once it was sufficiently working I tested everything I needed to test, and then stuck it in a drawer and never finished it off.
PsionProj1.jpg
As an added bonus some of the wires have come out of the topslot so I need to figure out where they were connected before I can even test any more cells with it :(

Once I get it figured out I plan to replace the Arduino with something a bit more modest (PIC perhaps) and make either a PCB that will fit in a Psion topslot housing (as for the charger or comms link), or if I'm feeling brave, exploring 3d printing and trying to make something a bit more custom to house it. Currently I'm still trying to figure out where I saved either the Psion side or the Arduino side of the programming, both having been done on a PC that has been replaced several times over since, but whose files should be saved somewhere.
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Martin
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Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2023 5:18 pm

Top Slot Adaptor Cases

Post by Martin »

Hi jbuc

I love seeing these 'projects' I don't undersand them but I'm always facinated.

As for the top slot 'cases' with Oliviers ealier USB Comms Links and now Andrews version the cases have become very rare. Andrew and Νίκος actually considered having them 3D printed (here). I know Νίκος had an original scanned and has the STL. He hasn't visited for a while so if you're interested in the STL I could email him and ask him to post it here.

Sincerely Martin

PS Here one that I was working on before my printer crashed - printing it in 3 pieces got over the need for supports ans worked ok.
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3DCommsLinkCover.gif
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amenjet
Posts: 334
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2023 7:54 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by amenjet »

I had a go at getting JLCPCB to 3D print a case, but they couldn't do it, I think the wall thickness was too small, if I remember correctly. They have now added more fabrication methods, so maybe they can do it now. I think a model that is essentially a scan of the original case won't work too well for 3D printing as the requirements for the original injection moulding process are different to the 3D printing process. So, a new model is probably needed and lots of prototypes...
amenjet
Posts: 334
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2023 7:54 pm

Re: Top Slot Adaptor Cases

Post by amenjet »

Martin wrote: Thu May 09, 2024 11:21 am Hi jbuc

I love seeing these 'projects' I don't undersand them but I'm always facinated.

As for the top slot 'cases' with Oliviers ealier USB Comms Links and now Andrews version the cases have become very rare. Andrew and Νίκος actually considered having them 3D printed (here). I know Νίκος had an original scanned and has the STL. He hasn't visited for a while so if you're interested in the STL I could email him and ask him to post it here.

Sincerely Martin

PS Here one that I was working on before my printer crashed - printing it in 3 pieces got over the need for supports ans worked ok.
.
3DCommsLinkCover.gif
So you did manage to print that case? Do you have photos? It would be nice to have the ability to make new cases for top slot devices and datapack.
amenjet
Posts: 334
Joined: Tue Jan 03, 2023 7:54 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by amenjet »

jbuc wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2024 7:23 pm Not a problem (although I don't have vast amounts of free time currently to experiment, so don't expect anything very soon).

I quickly moved on from "a Psion would make a cheap keyboard/LCD" to aiming for a topslot addon that allowed the Psion itself to do various things using a combination of digital and analogue I/O via the adapter. I could therefore easily use datapaks (or RAMPak) to store results and tweak the program easily in OPL as needed if I found an unexpected issue or just wanted to do things a little differently. It also worked out easier due to now only needing 2 small machine code routines for the Psion to write commands / read data from the topslot device.

The latest iteration (see photo below) was for an 18650 Li-Ion battery profiler/tester that could plot the charge/discharge graph and test capacity of cells. Unfortunately (and as with most projects it seems!) once it was sufficiently working I tested everything I needed to test, and then stuck it in a drawer and never finished it off.

PsionProj1.jpg

As an added bonus some of the wires have come out of the topslot so I need to figure out where they were connected before I can even test any more cells with it :(

Once I get it figured out I plan to replace the Arduino with something a bit more modest (PIC perhaps) and make either a PCB that will fit in a Psion topslot housing (as for the charger or comms link), or if I'm feeling brave, exploring 3d printing and trying to make something a bit more custom to house it. Currently I'm still trying to figure out where I saved either the Psion side or the Arduino side of the programming, both having been done on a PC that has been replaced several times over since, but whose files should be saved somewhere.
What sort of interface are you using here? Is the microcontroller appearing as a top slot device with ROM?
User avatar
Martin
Global Admin
Posts: 333
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2023 5:18 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by Martin »

.
Hi again jbuc
So you did manage to print that case? Do you have photos? It would be nice to have the ability to make new cases for top slot devices and datapack.
You will find a link to the images and 3D print files for the Top Slot Case (here). Pay particular attention to the ReadMeForScale.txt file. I'd be interested to know how you get on if you make a print. Also these is a 3D print for a datapak case on the forum somewhere.

Sincerely Martin
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UCL_Parts.png
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jbuc
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Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:02 pm

Re: Hello all

Post by jbuc »

amenjet wrote: Thu May 09, 2024 6:30 pm What sort of interface are you using here? Is the microcontroller appearing as a top slot device with ROM?
If I remember rightly it wasn't that advanced - I believe it was an 8-bit parallel interface + signalling where the Psion sent commands and read responses through the topslot. I did it all "properly" with regards to the Psion topslot interfacing rules, but no ROM involved, just a couple of tiny machine code routines in the Org2, loaded in to the memory to stay resident, and called as needed from OPL programs.
jbuc
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:02 pm

Re: Top Slot Adaptor Cases

Post by jbuc »

Martin wrote: Thu May 09, 2024 11:21 am As for the top slot 'cases' with Oliviers ealier USB Comms Links and now Andrews version the cases have become very rare. Andrew and Νίκος actually considered having them 3D printed (here). I know Νίκος had an original scanned and has the STL. He hasn't visited for a while so if you're interested in the STL I could email him and ask him to post it here.
I should have several of the old 'topslot charger' adapters which had the same case as the comms link, so that was what I was aiming at. My design ability for 3D printing is virtually nonexistent - I've had a little try and while I can make some fairly basic designs in OpenSCAD (that being a bit like programming, and less "arty" to me), I can't even picture how I would use that to make such an intricate shape of the very specific tongue that fits inside the organiser, let alone anything else! Lacking a 3D printer also rules out lots of trial and error if each print job takes a couple of weeks to appear from JLC3DP or similar :(

I'd like to give some kind of 3D printed case a go at some (waaaaay off in the future most likely) date - I was never particularly enammered with the Psion comms link case and always thought that the cases that stuck out less but were the same shape as the top of the organiser itself (e.g. a third party parallel link if I remember rightly) was a nicer idea and seemed less prone to being knocked when plugged in. Unfortunately I never managed to win one so am stuck for the time being on conventional comms-link style topslot cases.
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