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Working on unit testing for CTRAN
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Working on unit testing for CTRAN
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thelastpsion/README.adoc

The Last Psion

I’m Alex and I have a PDA problem.

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.

In 2018, after 16 years of using various Psion portables, I decided to try my hand at developing hardware and software for my beloved Series 3c to help me with journalling and creative writing.

6 years and repeated sidequests later, I’ve ended up doing a lot of research into the SIBO/EPOC16 platform, and done my best to document it when I can. I’ve also nudged former developers into open sourcing their old Psion apps.

My current main projects are:

  • PsiDrive, an RP2040-based USB drive for SIBO SSDs.

  • Rewriting the Psion SIBO (16-bit 8086) C SDK, including updating the docs (with AsciiDoc) and rewriting the original DOS tools as FOSS apps. I’m currently using Free Pascal to create a drop-in replacement for CTRAN, the Psion OO C preprocessor. (I want to eventually write a new compiler targeting EPOC16. Eventually.)

  • Anything else that tickles my bouncy brain.

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.

Outside of retrocomputing, I’m your common-or-garden British nerd. I’m a Linux user - mostly Arch, but I dabble with others. I also like a bit of Haiku OS and I’m planning on giving FreeBSD a go soon.

I used to be a senior computer monkey, specialising in on-prem SME infrastructure (I lament the loss of vSphere). Now I train others to become computer monkeys, for better or worse. As a result, sometimes you’ll see me wrestling with old Cisco ASAs, Ubiquiti APs, or modded kit running OpenWrt.

Generally, I like making things do stuff, especially if it’s stuff that the thing wasn’t originally designed to do.

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  1. psion-doc-project psion-doc-project Public

    The content of the (new) Psion Documentation Project.

    8 1

  2. libsibo libsibo Public

    A collection of Arduino libraries for communicating with peripherals compatible with Psion's SIBO range of computers.

    C++ 11

  3. sibo-ssd-dump sibo-ssd-dump Public

    The SIBO SSD Dumper, an app with two parts - an Arduino sketch to talk to the SSD, and a C companion app to talk to the Arduino.

    C 7 2

  4. fefstool fefstool Public

    Tool to manipulate FEFS volumes (Psion Solid State Disk images). Currently only extracts files from FEFS images. (Formerly siboimg.)

    C 9 1

  5. edisasm edisasm Public

    An exploratory tool developed for investigation into Psion's 16 bit SIBO architecture and EPOC16 operating system. Designed to work on the Psion Series 3a/c/mx, Siena, Workabout 1, Workabout mx, Ac…

    C 8 1

  6. ctran ctran Public

    Recreation of CTRAN.EXE, the Psion OO C preprocessor from the SIBO C SDK.

    Pascal 6