The Last Psion | Alex
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thelastpsion.com
The Last Psion | Alex
@thelastpsion.com
380 followers 86 following 200 posts
Psion hardware/software hackery, especially SIBO/EPOC16 (Series 3, etc).

Made #PsiDrive, a USB Psion SSD drive. Slowly rewriting the SIBO C SDK.

⚠️ WARNING: Will sidequest ⚠️

🦣 https://oldbytes.space/@thelastpsion
🦑 https://github.com/thelastpsion
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thelastpsion.com
Sure, the iPhone is all well and good. But can you physically support an entire building with your pocket computer?

The Organiser II was built to last. This LZ64 is in amazing condition.

#Psion #RetroComputing
A Psion Organiser II LZ64, powered on, next to its leather case.
October 19, 2025 at 5:55 AM
thelastpsion.com
Got myself an upgrade for my #HaikuOS box - a Lenovo Tiny M75q gen 2 with a Ryzen 5 Pro 4650GE and 32GB RAM. It's not the fastest processor in the world, butPassMark says it's almost 3 times faster than the M93p with a Xeon 1275Lv3.

Let's see how it performs compiling #MAME.
Screenshot of a tmux session running on Haiku, viewed from a Kitty terminal session via SSH, running on KDE Plasma on Arch.
July 30, 2025 at 2:29 PM
thelastpsion.com
Ok, hear me out. A Lord of the Rings re-make, but with these two taking the One Ring to Mordor:
Gene Hunt and Sam Tyler from the TV series "Life On Mars".
March 12, 2025 at 7:49 PM
thelastpsion.com
"No income tax, no VAT, no money back, no guarantee."
Keir Starmer standing at a lectern in front of an American and a British flag. The subtitles show him saying “there’s a famous slogan in the United Kingdom”.
February 28, 2025 at 9:02 PM
thelastpsion.com
What now?

#retrocomputing #retrogaming #adventuregame #interactivefiction #Psion #Inform7
A Psion 3mx running Emily Short's Bronze.
February 21, 2025 at 8:56 PM
thelastpsion.com
If you want a #retrocomputing way of playing #Infocom games on the go, why not try a #Psion Series 3?

(OK, it's a screenshot of an emulator, but it runs really well on my own 3mx, too.)

cc @retroadventurers.bsky.social
The Infocom interpreter by Bryan Scattergood, running on an emulated Psion Series 3mx in MAME. The game is Infidel.
January 18, 2025 at 3:34 PM
thelastpsion.com
Success! #MAME #HaikuOS #Psion
MAME 0.273 running on Haiku. The top window is an emulated Series 3a. The main window is an emulated MC 400.
January 10, 2025 at 1:22 PM
thelastpsion.com
Here we go again! This is...

- #MAME 0.273, compiling on and for...
- #HaikuOS R1B5, running on a...
- Lenovo M93p Tiny with a Xeon E3-1275L V3 upgrade and 16 GB RAM, via...
- #tmux over SSH, viewed from...
- Konsole on #KDEPlasma 6.2.5, running on...
- #ArchLinux (btw)
Screenshot of a tmux session running on a Haiku box, viewed over SSH from a Plasma session in Konsole on Linux.
January 10, 2025 at 9:18 AM
thelastpsion.com
Good news! The #RaspberryPiPico 2 is a drop-in replacement for the original Pico in the #PsiDrive!

It seems that the pulldown issue-that-is-officially-not-an-issue doesn't affect this version of the PsiDrive board. I've tried dumping a ROM SSD and it worked with no changes to the code.

#Psion
Photo of the PsiDrive 0.0.1 with a Pico2 board fitted. To the left is an original Pico.
January 3, 2025 at 8:36 PM
thelastpsion.com
Did you write code for #Psion machines in the #80s or #90s?

This is a call for you to #opensource your code!

Our community is breathing new life into #EPOC16 & #EPOC32. New dev tools, apps, games, docs. Your old code will help!

OPL, C, C++, #assembly.

#retrocomputing #retrodev #x86 #16bit #32bit
A selection of Psion portable computers. In the background, a copy of DOSBox Staging running the SIBO Debugger. In the foreground, MAME running EPOC16.
January 1, 2025 at 8:43 AM
thelastpsion.com
Thought I'd give #ghostty a go. But I've hit a weird problem.

Can someone tell me why #KDEPlasma's System Monitor is showing 100% Total Usage on two cores whenever I run ghostty? I don't see it in htop or btop, and it doesn't happen with Kitty or Konsole.
December 27, 2024 at 10:48 AM
thelastpsion.com
I'm sure it can be improved upon. For now, though, it does the job.

It's also my first #NeoVim plugin, so... yay. 🎉
December 23, 2024 at 4:05 PM
thelastpsion.com
#Pascal autocomplete and snippets in #NeoVim? Don't mind if I do!

This is thanks to blink-cmp, using the snippets JSON file from the Pascal plugin for #VSCode, plus the pasls #LSP, and #Treesitter.

The LSP is incomplete, but it's better than nothing.

#LazyVim #ObjecPascal #FreePascal
A close-up of a NeoVim window, showing the blink-cmp autocomplete menu with a list of snippets. On the right is a preview of the snippet. A close-up of a NeoVim window, showing the blink-cmp autocomplete menu with a list of functions. On the right is the name of the unit that the currently selected function is in.
December 22, 2024 at 10:10 PM
thelastpsion.com
Here's a small #NeoVim #Lua snippet to duplicate the current line, turn the first one into a comment, and put your cursor at the start of the second one.

vim.keymap.set("n", "gcp", function()
vim.cmd.norm("yyP")
vim.cmd.norm("gcc")
vim.cmd.norm("j")
end, { desc = "Dup line and comment" })
keymap.set("n", "gcp", function() vim.cmd.norm("yyP") vim.cmd.norm("gcc") vim.cmd.norm("j") end, { desc = "Duplicate current line and toggle comment" }) An example of what happens after running the snippet. Two identical lines, but the top one is commented out and the bottom one has the cursor on it.
December 19, 2024 at 10:31 PM
thelastpsion.com
For those of you with #Psion Series 5mx units with broken screen flex cables... Someone has made free #Gerber files so you can order new ones!

bs0dd.net/index.php?la...

#retrocomputing
Many flex cables, recently ordered from JLCPCB. Order page for JLCPCB showing a 5mx flex cable. 5mx in parts on a table, using the new flex cable.
December 12, 2024 at 8:13 AM
thelastpsion.com
I'm away for a day or two and suddenly have 219 followers?!

Er, hi! Here's a photo of a #Psion MC400. Yes, Psion did make laptops.

#retrocomputing
Photo of a Psion MC400, a 16 bit laptop from 1989. It is running an early version of EPOC16, Psion's proprietary operating system.
December 11, 2024 at 8:50 PM
thelastpsion.com
Tiny bit of #retrocomputing for me today, although not as retro as normal. Also, more #retrogaming than normal!

I invested a whole £16 in an IPS screen for my #Sony #PSP 1000. Big improvement over the original - still a little ghosty, but nowhere near as bad as the original. And it's much crisper.
Brand new IPS screen for a PSP1000, sitting on some bubble wrap inside a box. Resting on top of the screen is a small flex adapter. The PSP under a cheap USB microscope. In the background is a monitor showing what the microscope is looking at - the two pads ready to be bridged. The upgraded PSP, sitting on a wooden table.
December 11, 2024 at 8:40 PM
thelastpsion.com
Done! Time to push to GitHub and raise that pull request.

#MAME #HaikuOS #Psion #tmux
Two copies of MAME 0.272 running on Haiku, viewed through a VNC connection (TigerVNC). In the background is the tmux session from the screenshot in the previous post, but the compile has completed.
December 5, 2024 at 7:15 PM
thelastpsion.com
And we're off!

- #MAME 0.272, compiling on and for...
- #HaikuOS R1B5, running on a...
- Lenovo M93p Tiny with a Xeon E3-1275L V3 upgrade and 16 GB RAM, via...
- #tmux over SSH, viewed from...
- Konsole on #KDEPlasma 6.2.4, running on...
- #ArchLinux (btw)
A screenshot of MAME compiling.
December 5, 2024 at 2:51 PM
thelastpsion.com
The Curse Of The #ThinkPad continues...

Bought what was listed as a "genuine" battery on eBay. The photo was, indeed, of a genuine battery. However, what I received...
Back of a Lenovo battery that might not be genuine... Over-sized "e" in Lenovo logo. Extra space in the "ASM P/N" line between the Chinese characters and the closing parenthesis Back of a Lenovo battery that might not be genuine... Typo: "EU conlact" instead of "EU contact" Back of a Lenovo battery that might not be genuine... The US & Canada "Recycle" logo - the symbol in the middle is so low-resolution that none of the details can be made out Back of a Lenovo battery that might not be genuine... No production date on the bar code label. Bar code doesn't include the ASM P/N
December 2, 2024 at 9:04 PM
thelastpsion.com
To be continued...
A UGREEN RS232 to USB adapter that's been relieved of its plastic tomb. The removed casing is to the right. To the left, a scalpel.
November 23, 2024 at 10:13 PM
thelastpsion.com
I seem to have accumulated 100 followers here without trying, so... hi!

I'm not doing a huge amount of #Psion stuff at the moment, because $dayjob. But here's a photo of my "daily driver" 3mx from the summer.

Nerdy service will resume as soon as humanly possible.

#RetroComputing #16bit #portable
November 22, 2024 at 10:51 AM
thelastpsion.com
One more vintage software development book added to the collection!

I'm writing compilers and preprocessors using #FreePascal, so this will actually prove useful.

Before anyone says anything, it doesn't list itself in the bibliography.

#Pascal #Recursion #RetroComputing #RetroDev
A picture of a book. "Recursion via Pascal" by J S Rohl. At the top of the front cover, it says "Cambridge Computer Science Texts 19".
November 21, 2024 at 1:25 PM
thelastpsion.com
Maybe I should do an #introduction?

I'm Alex and I have a PDA problem.

For a quick summary, take a look at the alt text for these photos and the hashtags below. I also wrote a longer intro here: oldbytes.space/@thelastpsio...

#retrocomputing #Psion #RP20240 #Pascal #HaikuOS #PCB #MAME #16bit
Photo of a fully constructed PsiDrive 0.0.1, including a Raspberry Pi Pico mounted on top. There is a SIBO solid state disk (SSD) plugged into the 6 SIBO-SP pins. A microUSB cable is plugged into the Pico. To the left of the PsiDrive is 128K Flash Psion SSD. A screenshot of a KDE Plasma desktop, running on Arch Linux. The main window in the background is Konsole running an SSH session to a Haiku box, which is running tmux. In the foreground is a Remmina window, connected a VNC session on the Haiku box. On the Haiku desktop, three copies of the MAME-based Psion emulator are running - a Series 3, a Siena and a Series 3mx. The 3mx is running the game "Horace In THe Mystic Woods." A screenshot of KDE Plasma running on Arch Linux. The background window is Kitty running tmux. In the main tmux pane is NeoVim showing some CTRAN-ng source code, written in Object Pascal. In the smaller pane on the right is CTRAN-ng's help output. In the foreground is a copy of DOSBox Staging, also showing CTRAN-ng's help output. Both have been compiled with Free Pascal. My stand at this year's RetroFest at the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, UK. On the right you can see: an MC400, a GeoFox One, a Siena, a Revo, a Shelly (Revo prototype), a selection of Series 3 machines (3, 3a, 3c, 3mx), a Series 5, a 5mx, two Organiser II units, an HC120, two Workabouts, a Workabout mx, PCBs for the 3a, 3c, 3mx, a 3c (with two gold star stickers) and some SSDs. On the left is an EPOS unit running Linux (openSUSE microOS Kalpa) with three copies of the SIBO emulators, based on MAME. In the middle is a boxed Workabout, a Workabout mx in a dock, a 3mx with a non-working 4MB mod, a working PsiDrive, and some PsiDrive PCBs, dotted around the table are various Psion-branded cardboard boxes.
November 15, 2024 at 4:42 PM
thelastpsion.com
What, you haven't heard of TopSpeed and their #compiler suite?

They were a group of #Borland employees who left in 1987, after Borland bought Wizard C (to roll it into Turbo C) and essentially canned their compiler project.

It's written in #Modula2, you know. Not a big leap from #Pascal.
From Wikipedia: In 1987, Borland purchased Wizard Systems and incorporated portions of the Wizard C technology into Turbo C. Bob Jervis, the author of Wizard C became a Borland employee. Turbo C was released on May 18, 1987. This drove a wedge between Borland and Niels Jensen and the other members of his team who had been working on a brand-new series of compilers at their London development centre. They reached an agreement and spun off a company named Jensen & Partners International (JPI), later TopSpeed. JPI first launched an MS-DOS compiler named JPI Modula-2, which later became TopSpeed Modula-2, and followed up with TopSpeed C, TopSpeed C++, and TopSpeed Pascal compilers for both the MS-DOS and OS/2 operating systems. The TopSpeed compiler technology still exists as the underlying technology of the Clarion 4GL programming language, a Windows development tool.
November 14, 2024 at 8:52 PM