Hello all
Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 11:29 pm
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!
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!