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I realized I had no idea what actual platform these were (I'm old enough to remember longing for one of these but never had one back in the day). It's powered
by unwind 3y ago
I realized I had no idea what actual platform these were (I'm old enough to remember longing for one of these but never had one back in the day).
It's powered by the NEV V20 [1] processor, which is a 16-bit chip that is code and pin compatible with the more famous Intel 8088. The NEC chip was launched in March of 1984 which is interesting given that the Psion 3a came in 1991.
It feels like today launching a product based on a 7-year old CPU is more rare.
It would be cool (but perhaps sacrilegious) to upgrade the existing motherboard to some Arm SoC/microcontroller, if possible. I thought of it now while writing this, so clearly someone has already done so.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_V20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_V20
- regularfry 3y ago> It feels like today launching a product based on a 7-year old CPU is more rare. Well. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 has an ARM Cortex-A53 SoC. The Zero 2 was released in October 2021, and the A53 line in October 2012. I don't think you'd struggle to find other A53 devices being released after 2019. It almost feels like the A53 line is a bit of a special case, but then again, so was the 8088...
- unwind 3y agoGood point, thanks! I guess the RPi's special relationship with Broadcom is shining through a bit there, or something.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThe operating system was called SIBO, which rather unimaginatively stood for SIixteen Bit Operating system. It is a direct ancestor of EPOC, which in turn was later renamed to "Symbian", as made popular on many Nokia devices.
- lproven 3y agoI checked after posting and I was partly wrong! Sorry! The Psion Series 3 range -- 3, 3A, 3C and 3MX -- ran SIBO, later renamed EPOC, later renamed EPOC16, a multitasking GUI OS written for 8086. SIBO = SIxteen Bit Organizer. Not OS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser#Subsequent_hand-held_devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Organiser#Subsequent_han... The Psion 5 range ran the later and largely unrelated EPOC32, a native ARM OS written in C++ which later became Symbian. But SIBO did not become Symbian. EPOC 5, later EPOS32, did. There was even more renaming than I realised.
- zokier 3y agoNEC V20 was also in one of my favorite palmtops, HP 95LX also from 1991. Later models switched to custom chip afaik. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX