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27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

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Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#201

Post by KerrAvon »

6510 wrote: post #196
hedgehog wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings ou…

> So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. why? > I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). 2MB is 2 million bytes, The average book is something like 0.5 > I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. This is a bad thing? > Farther back I remember not having the spare c…

The person you're replying to was talking about the Apple II era, when floppies held less than 200k at best. Availability of 2.44 MB floppy drives was an extremely late development, and IIRC rare to actually find in the wild.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#202

Post by fragmede »

rebolek wrote: post #146
zozbot234 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What has vanished, is our ability to do general-purpose computing at ~8MHz. ahem https://xkcd.com/768/

I know there's XKCD for everything but I wonder if there should be.

It's in the name of efficiency. Instead of repeating the same conversation about, say, standards, you can just say 927 (which is 900, Yoda's age, plus 27 which is memorable because of the 27-club. Or also 3 squared = 9 and 3 cubed = 27), and everyone will know what you're talking about and you can skip that bit of conversation.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#203

Post by whartung »

hedgehog wrote: post #174
oliwarner wrote: post #49

Lots of focus on the hardware here but its form factor still exists in niches. What has vanished, is our ability to do general-purpose computing at ~8MHz. Consider the computers you had in the 90s. Windows 3.11 and Office ran on a 286 but I sit here with 12 cores at ~4Ghz just to post this crumby comment. We are spoilt. It really makes me yearn to do more with less.

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings ou…

Sure, but to that note, we've been at "enough computer" for a vast array of tasks for a long, long time now.

Obviously, things that move boatloads of bits (mostly media) have well benefited from the vast amounts of RAM and incredible bandwidth of modern machines. And, of course, video games, which will always push limits.

But outside of that, word processing, data collecting, "printing checks from AP", those peaked a long time ago. And, of course, I appreciate how businesses collect vast amounts of data today (because they can, because storage is free), but core business functions, transaction processing, that's pretty well plateaued as well.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#204

Post by dotBen »

jw1224 wrote: post #37

Psion 3c was what got me into programming! My grandfather gave me his old one when I was a kid. To an 11-year-old, a spreadsheet, world clock, and address book gets old pretty fast :) But the in-built OPL [1] language provided unlimited possibilities. You can see the icon for it in one of the screenshots. I remember printing off a copy of the 300-page language manual I found online (breaking dad’s printer in the proc…

This little comment thread made me smile! Psion 3 (no letter) was my first PDA when I was about 12 and then I upgraded to a Psion 3c. After graduating from BASIC on my father's Acorn A3000 and A5000 my first apps on my own computing device were OPL shareware. It's where I got my love of what would become open source for me. I also did work experience at the Psion Factory when I was 15 because I grew up nearby (yes, they were actually manufactured in Greenford in West London, in a warehouse behind the B&Q on the A40).

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#205

Post by hinkley »

wynck wrote: post #176
hinkley wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep wanting to fiddle with kubernetes on rPi class hardware. Even the minimalist versions want half a gigabyte per node. Admin software does not need half a gigabyte of memory.

If you want a kubernetes cluster to experiment, then k3s runs just fine on raspberry pi 4 hardware

It still wants half a gig on the nodes. They all want 500+MB

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#206

Post by [deleted] »

fluoridation wrote: post #184
hedgehog wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings ou…

In every example you listed the limiting factor is memory or storage size, not computing speed.

[deleted]

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#207

Post by semiprime »

predictsoft wrote: post #182
semiprime wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently writing an agenda app inspired by the Psion 3a/5 Agendas - because they were the best calendar apps I ever used. Github: https://github.com/semiprime/pygenda Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvQqFmlZ6nM If you liked the S5 agenda, I'd appreciate any feedback you could give. (Video shows it on a Gemini, but I also run it on my Linux Laptop. Running on Windows is probably possible, but I haven'…

Hi, if you could get it working on Android, I'd be willing to pay $5.

Planet Computers already did an Android Agenda app for their range of handhelds: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pripla.gem...

(I've not used it. I've seen people complaining that it's not very good, but people always complain on the Web, so that's not much of an indicator of anything.)

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#208

Post by steve76 »

tobiasbischoff wrote: post #5

I will never understand why we do not have this kind of device anymore. A small computer, running linux, proper keyboard, integrated LTE - it would be a messaging and writing dream. Back in the days i developed custom software for the Revo, the SDK was a dream to work with as well.

[dead]

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#209

Post by giobox »

wishfish wrote: post #134
tobiasbischoff wrote: post #5

I will never understand why we do not have this kind of device anymore. A small computer, running linux, proper keyboard, integrated LTE - it would be a messaging and writing dream. Back in the days i developed custom software for the Revo, the SDK was a dream to work with as well.

It's not Linux, but you can roughly get this form factor with mainstream devices without having to take a risk on small companies or crowdfunded projects. There are hinged laptop-style cases for the iPad Mini. iPadOS is generally good with keyboard shortcuts so that would be a decent combo as long as you can put up with the limitations of the OS. Zagg sells a hinged keyboard that works with 7 inch tablets. I bought o…

> There are hinged laptop-style cases for the iPad Mini

This still makes for a very different form factor to the original Psion devices, which are much more letterbox shaped than most small tablets, more akin to phones. Doing this you end up with something more like a modern "netbook".

You could slip a Psion 3a comfortably into the inside pocket of many suits, not a trick you can do with many 7 inch tablet toting a keyboard case as well.

Arguably a typical touchscreen phone with a hypothetical hinged clamshell keyboard case would be a lot closer, but of course not everything works in landscape on an iPhone.

The short-lived Motorola Droid is some of the closest anything in the smartphone era got to the spirit of the original devices for me:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#210

Post by toyg »

thorncorona wrote: post #188
bayindirh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I use previous generation Raspberry Pis and low end SBCs like OrangePi Zeros. Doing things in a constrained environment is fun and rewarding. Being able to run a full-fledged server with 512MB or less RAM is a great exercise and very enlightening to see what's possible. When one can able to run code on these systems fast, it runs fast everywhere. Running with razor thin free space makes you prevent all me…

> Doing great things with today's hardware is still possible, but laziness, "We needed this yesterday, I don't care about its efficiency, hardware is cheap anyway" mindset is killing things fast. It is, but realistically features will increase business long before efficiency starts to hamper it.

"let's MAKE MONEY now, fuck the energy we waste and the planet we kill, goddammit"
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