First post, by yawetaG
Yesterday I picked up a complete with all paperwork in mint condition Psion Series 5 in its box for the grand amount of 1 Euro:
Its only big issue were a bunch of pretty crusty (and leaking) 20 year old AA batteries in its battery compartment, which caused some minor damage:
The rubberised casing is also shedding some of its rubber in places, and the screen doesn't really close well anymore.
Today I cleaned out the battery compartment, plopped in some modern NiMH AA batteries and a new CR2032, and pressed the on/off switch. Worked in one go.
I'll be posting some pictures of it working later on.
First, let's have a look at what this thing is, precisely. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on it.
Some essential bits:
- Fourth series of Psion PDA's (Psion series 4 doesn't exist due to Psion's fear of bad sales in Asia if they used "4" in the product's name).
- Launched in 1997, two decades ago.
- Powered by a 32-bit ARM 710-based CL-PS7110 processor running at 18 MHz (later 36 MHz).
- Comes with 4, 8 or 16 Mb internal RAM storage, RAM contents are kept alive when switched off via backup battery. Mine is the 8 Mb version.
- Additionally, it has a Compact Flash card slot that supports 10-30 Mb CF cards (officially), but can actually take many different sizes of CF card up to several Gb in size (up to 2Gb partitions).
- It has an infrared port for communication, that apparently won't work with PC IrDA ports without an additional tool being installed on the PC.
- It also has a miniature RS-232 serial port (needs special cable, normally included in the box) with which it can communicate with a PC using the PsiWin software.
- Half-VGA (640x200) monochrome 16 grayscales touchscreen with switchable (but noisy) backlight and adjustable contrast. The screen can be touched with your fingers, but a passive stylus is included (which can be stored inside the Psion).
- Various accessories were produced, including a modem set, printer connection set, etc.
- Comes with the EPOC32 operating system, which later became Symbian. The system is very user friendly and visually looks rather like Classic Mac OS.
- Includes very usable Word processor, spreadSheet, Database, Agenda, Calculator, Sketching program, Dictionary/word game (Spell), Programing editor to write your own programs, voice Recorder, minesweeper clone (Bombs), terminal program (Comms), alarm clock/time zone listing (Time) on ROM.
- Y2K compliant.
- Really good keyboard for such a small thing.
It comes in a slipcase, with a rather luxurious inner box with a cheap yellow plastic tray inside. Originally, it came with 2 AA and one CR2032 battery right in the box. Also included is the serial cable, the PsiWin CD-ROM with quick start guide in a CD case, a quick start guide for the Psion itself, a accessory catalogue, a warranty registration card, a warranty booklet, a service booklet, and a thick almost 200-page, pocket-sized manual.
The original price is still attached: 1699 Dutch guilders, or 772 Euros (not corrected for inflation).
More later...