🚀 go-pugleaf

[This is crossposted- check your Newsgroups: line before requoting]

Nick Macro wrote:
> 
> My psion 3a's microphone is broken.  How  an I fix it?

Give it to Psion and say "Fix it.".

> While I  am   in the  case,  is  there a  modification  that Psion can
> recommend that gives me  headphone  out and  microphone in, as  I feel
> that the Psion 3a rather lacks these.

Probably. Buy an electronic engineering book, study, and then when you feel 
competent enough, go for it.

> What is needed is an analog synth with digital filters.  I am going to
> look into porting sapphire<sp> to the  Psion 3a from Unix. This renders
> a digital filter pipeline into a .wav.

Er... I think you are taking this sound thing *far* too seriously. The Psion 
plays essentially 8-bit sound, through a speaker which is designed to 
support beeps. You can get a feel for the limitations of the frequency 
envelope by writing a program which BEEPs through all frequencies (starting 
higher gives a better idea, IMO). Loud sounds lose a great deal of 
resolution because of the encoding algorithm. There is *no bass*. Add to 
this that the Psion is no powerstation, and you simply don't have a good 
basis for a music workhorse. Still, each to his own.

> Any ideas/clues for a hopeless acidcore fiend?

I'm tempted to say "Get real.", but you seem to have admirable conviction, 
so I'll instead say "Yeah- go for it- I'll believe it when I see it.". I 
sincerely wish you all the luck in doing whatever music manipulation stuff 
you do- be sure to tell us all about it here, won't you?

> I have  been copying each Psion 3a  2M file system incarnation into my
> home   directory.   Anyone interested   in having  these   on the  net
> somewhere  as a sort of online  running 'Nick's Psion cache directory'
> sort of thing. So far I have:

Why not put it on your web page? That way, anyone even remotely interested 
in what you do can take a look for themselves.

[scads of stuff removed]

That was weird. You have an NFS server and a dissassembler for the Psion?

> My current theory is that the 2M of Psion RAM  is just the local cache
> of all the packages I have on the Linux box, and hence the Internet.

I see.

> Wow, that would be sexy. Getting closer to Java all the time.

Er... great. That *is* great, isn't it?

> Anyway, any  sign  of the  TCP/IP stack?  Unix  compatible C compiler?
> Terminal program? Modfile player?

What's a unix compatible C compiler? Otherwise, yes (probably), yes, yes, 
and no. Have you actually *looked* for any of these things?

> Insidentaly,   the    reason freeVT sucks is     that  is doesn't have
> Xmodem/Ymodem support.  Upon reading   the manual in Psionics  it says
> that Xmodem/Ymodem is  built into the  EPOC  OS  as  layers on a  device
> driver, so it shouldn't take much to get it working. Sort it out, eh?

Why don't *you* sort it out if it sucks so badly? Or presumably you believe 
the rest of the Psion community is at your beck and call?

> Why has nobody given me a copy of the SDK yet, warez  style?  Go on, I
> can't afford to buy it, not on 35 pounds a week Giro  (the Psion was a
> gift) and the newsgroup is full of people just  begging those with the
> compiler to  'O please compile up something  you powerful  rich people
> with the means   of production.' You  might even   get some java/Psion
> crossover ported stuff.

The newsgroup is also full of people that recognise that piracy kills 
platforms. I notice that you've crossposted this to an amiga newsgroup too, 
a platform blessed with having plenty of pirates. We (Psion users) are 
blessed that there quite literally a massive number of "great guys (and 
gals)" who will utterly bust a gut to help people out. I've personally had 
far more help from Ali Manson and his terrific support team than I deserve, 
the folks on CIS are superstars when it comes to answering any question from 
the simplest to the most complicated, and the contributors to comp.sys.psion 
graciously wade through mountains of crap (sorry- read "usenet") in order to 
expound their knowledge and help others. Why not use them, instead of 
stealing?

By the way- openly soliciting for illegal stuff is asking for trouble. I 
assume you knew that, but were having a momentary abberation.

But hey- if we break the law by giving you free software, we "may even get 
some java/Psion crossover ported stuff". I'd like to see you run some Java 
on the Psion- I really would.

> Come on Psion INC/PLC/Mega Corp, you are inhibiting the development of
> the  Psion with your  petty profiteering.  I will get  a copy of the C
> compiler one off someone else, anyway, but  it would be a nice gesture
> on your part.  ? How many copies have you  sold? Give it and info away
> for free or  Linux / GNU / Sun  / Java  / The-Whole-Damn-Internet will
> laugh and leave you behind, despite the best efforts of all these nice
> folks.

This is hilarious. You just told Psion that you don't care about them enough 
to steal from them, and now you're asking for free stuff. Cosmic. Your turn 
of phrase is par excellence. I *do* hope Psion get in touch with you.

> Do you even read  your  own newsgroup?

What do you mean? Psion doesn't have a newsgroup.

Neil.

-- 

+ Neil Brewitt  (neilb@cityscape.co.uk) +
 Client Software Development Engineering
+           A Speciality                +