iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 10/08/2026

I need to learn gdb or some other debugger, so I can see what's actually going on in my code. Hopefully this will help me with memory management, too.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 10/08/2026

I don't fully understand when Free Pascal passes pointers or values. This is embarrassing. I need to know when I need to manage memory and when FP is doing it for me, and how to do it properly. FP docs aren't great on the "how" or examples, so I'll need to experiment.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 10/08/2026

CTRAN's code is a mess. Too many long functions, too many globals, not enough segmentation. Even the ECOBJ code I threw together the other day reads better. The current code encourages bad practice. I need to fix this before I add any more features. More units, possibly classes to neaten things up.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 10/08/2026

After tearing my hair out on Saturday trying to work out why something was happening in CTRAN vs ECOBJ (hint: values vs pointers), I went to bed disheartened. Sunday I woke up and realised I had learned three lessons.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 10/08/2026

Playing with #FreePascal in #CompilerExplorer. Lines 22 and 23 produce less machine code than lines 25 and 26, yet end up with the same result - trimming the last character from the last item in a TStringList. #Pascal

Screenshot of Compiler Explorer showing the code. The lines of Pascal mentioned are:

s := Result.Pop();
Result.Add(Copy(s, 1, Length(s) - 1));

Last := Result.Count - 1;
Result[Last] := Copy(Result[Last], 1, Length(Result[Last]) - 1);

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 05/08/2026

Done! You want a tool that takes a 16-bit OMF (.OBJ) file compiled by TopSpeed C and moves the class descriptor data from the DATA segment to the CODE segment? You want it to run on basically everything? Well, this might do the job. codeberg.org/thelastpsion... #ECOBJ #SIBOSDK #Psion #retrodev

Summary text from Codeberg (because the link previewer doesn't work with Bluesky).

thelastpsion/ecobj 0.0.1
2026-08-05
0 downloads

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Shane McKee @shaneir.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Inevitable Psion 5mx screen ribbon failure, repaired thanks to the Psion.community Discord crew (especially Bs()Dd) and the remarkable fabrication lab of JLCPCB - soldering required a very steady hand!

Psion 5mx - oh no! The screen ribbon has gone, leading to lines across the screen!

JLCPCB to the rescue - uploaded the gerber files for a ribbon replacement, and here they are!

New ribbon soldered on, and the screen is working again! (actually this was an older ribbon, but the principle is the same)

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Shane McKee @shaneir.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Shane, step away from ebay. You do not need more Psion computers. Well, maybe you do some day, but not right now. Leave them for other people who will learn to love them as you do, care for them, fix them, change the world with them.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 31/07/2026

This won't get old for me. The TopSpeed C compiler 3.10, running on #HaikuOS via emu2, compiling #EDisAsm, a native #Psion #EPOC16 app. The compiler also has to call a number of tools from the SIBO C SDK.

Screenshot of `tsc`, the TopSpeed compiler (a 16-bit DOS app) running in a terminal on Haiku OS. Below this is neofetch showing the Haiku box's system specs.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 31/07/2026

I assume the text in the link preview is anti-scraper gibberish. Trust me, there's a release behind it.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 30/07/2026

One of my other hobbies is collecting old travel books. By "old", I mean 100+ years. Most are from the "Peeps At Many Lands" range, published between 1904 and 1934. I started it on a whim. Now it feels like an act of rebellion. #BooksSaveLives #Shelfie #Booksky

Collection of old travel books, on a pine shelf with a dark varnish. To the right is a pair of fluffy highland cow doorstops, slowly being squeezed out by the collection.

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Colin Hoad @colinhoad.com · 28/07/2026

Pascal *and* a portable computer with Psion ancestry? Perfect!

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 27/07/2026

It's been 9 months since I moved from GitHub to #Codeberg. I'm happy with the move and have absolutely no desire to move back, or anywhere else. My old repos are archived on GitHub. They all have a link to their new homes on Codeberg, but most are well out of date. Is it time to delete them?

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Matthew Slowe @fooflington.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy · 27/07/2026

Well today's #xkcd certainly maxes out the legacy-geek-o-meter xkcd.com/3277

xkcd.com

Forth

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Dr Johnny Blanchard @onlyretrofans.com · 27/07/2026

To be very clear this is happening because the current government believes AI is the future of UK science, because, like the previous few governments, their opinions are entirely formed by think tanks and lobbyists www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope faces axe in science cuts, BBC understands

Astronomers warn it would tear the heart out of UK science, and leave a generation untrained.

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Shane McKee @shaneir.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

In addition to being an outstanding writerdeck, the Psion netBook is great for playing classic text adventure games. Here's Infocom's 1983 banger "Infidel"... #retrocomputing #interactivefiction

Psion netbook running Infocom's "Infidel" text adventure game #InteractiveFiction

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 26/07/2026

TFW you find a bug in one of your projects when using to generate files for a different project. In totally unrelated news, I've just fixed a bug in #CTRAN and shall now carry on with #ECOBJ. #SIBOSDK codeberg.org/thelastpsion...

codeberg.org

Category files with no external references causes CTRAN to throw exceptions when generating new files

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

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Eniko Fox @enikofox.com · 25/07/2026

people ask me why i'm making a DOS version of You Have Died (And Been Reincarnated As A Fox Girl) and 1. it's because i can and it's fun for me 2. it's much more likely to continue running properly in a DOS emulator than on modern systems lmao

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 22/07/2026

Welp, it looks like I last looked at #ECOBJ on 2026-01-01. This, of course, leads to a lot of me thinking, "Oh, I wrote that code, did I? Interesting..." I'm going to need a refresher on the IBM OMF format. #SIBOSDK

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 19/07/2026

There's a bit more to do to get the user experience to where I want it to be. But the big challenge for me is to get automated tests working so that I can easily check a raft of edge cases. That's going to require quite a bit of refactoring, but it'll be worth it.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 19/07/2026

Seriously, though, I'm pleased with this release. It's working at least as well as the original, and better in quite a few ways. Plus, I've learned a lot about making my code "right", not just "work".

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 19/07/2026

Finally, after months of eager anticipation from all corners of the internet, #CTRAN 0.1.0 is out. Please, everyone, contain your excitement. codeberg.org/thelastpsion... #Psion

codeberg.org

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 18/07/2026

Once that's done, I can move on to #ECOBJ and start manipulating some 16-bit object files! Again, I can sense your excitement.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 18/07/2026

CTRAN's got a nice new feature - path lists for subcategory files! I can tell you're excited. Anyway, I wanted to get this done before releasing #CTRAN 0.1.0. Tomorrow I'll check my work, squash-and-merge, update the README, add any comments for Future Me, bump the version and release 0.1.0.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 18/07/2026

I've been using Mastodon as a rubber duck. Be grateful.

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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

No apologies for sending this out a few times over the next week. Our son is looking for a year in industry/placement as part of his Software Engineering degree in Southampton. He's in line for a First, very capable and good at digging into problems. However roles are rare right now. Can you help?

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 18/07/2026

Good morning! I wish to make it known that, as amazing as #Psion were, there were times when they should have f**king known better, This message is brought to you by Too Much Time In Their SDKs.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

But just because it's no longer relevant, does that mean I shouldn't offer it? After all, I'm (re)building an SDK for a platform that, according to most people, lost relevancy 25 years ago. When I get there, I'll try solving a handful of the same problems in both languages, see which one sticks.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

Exactly this. The point of the new SDK is to remove the need for DOS. I wanted my new tools to be DOS-compatible so that I can test them as part of the original SDK. Once everything's replaced and I've achieved the SDK of Theseus (or Trigger's Toolchain), that requirement is no longer relevant.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

It's not a decision I have to make any time soon, but it crossed my mind so I thought I'd write up my thoughts.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

But I've been thinking about OCaml for a while now, a language known for being great for compiler development. I guess the question is, how many people will want to develop EPOC16 apps on DOS?

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

Abandoning DOS support would allow me to consider other languages. I do love Free Pascal - it's got just the right balance for me, and I really enjoy creating with it. I certainly wouldn't be upset about using it for this, and it wouldn't be the first compiler written in Pascal.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 17/07/2026

A future compiler that targets SIBO/EPOC16 doesn't *have* to run on DOS. The compiler is the last piece of the new SDK puzzle. By the time I get around to it (likely years from now), I'll have rewritten all the other tools in the SDK. There's no need to keep supporting DOS. But *should* I?

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Kai RetroHoosk @retrohoosk.tv · 15/07/2026

The Psion WaveFinder is a wonderful bit of early-2000s oddware which works as a USB DAB radio receiver for 98/2000/XP machines. Here it’s picking up and playing out BBC Radio 1.

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Tom Humberstone @tomhumberstone.com · 16/07/2026

The Luddites loved technology. They owned looms at home and would ‘mod’ them to count threads. Their battle was against worker exploitation. The degradation of their rights, safety and wages. They were against a handful of rich businessmen owning the means of production. Sound familiar?

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Dr Johnny Blanchard @onlyretrofans.com · 16/07/2026

Ok, it's very incomplete but i've decided to upload my CPC+/GX4000 library for SDCC, CeePCee. codeberg.org/Jonn-reenthu... #IndieDev #RetroDev

codeberg.org

CeePCee

An SDK for the Amstrad CPC Plus and GX4000

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Nigel Barnes @pernod70.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The Psion MC600 has been emulated in MAME for awhile now. We weren't aware of any software specifically released for it ... until now. We found mention that some DOS apps were released on SSD, ie. Lotus 1-2-3 and dBASE III, then promptly found an SSD image of both apps, licensed to Psion!

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 16/07/2026

I'm definitely not a fan of the AI industry, but I would accept someone using Claude to re-engineer VB6 as a Rust IDE.

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 16/07/2026

Alternative universe: - Borland Turbo FoxPro - Sun Microsystems C# (or colloquially known as "sun-sharp") [H/T @kroc.bsky.social] - Microsoft Visual Rust

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 14/07/2026

I'm tempted to go back to my rewrite of ECOBJ.EXE, another tool in the #Psion SIBO C SDK. It modifies 8086 Object Model Format (.OBJ) files for classes on EPOC16. I don't think it'll take me more than a few weeks to have something that works, even if it's not perfect. #SIBOSDK #ECOBJ

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The Last Psion | Alex @thelastpsion.com · 14/07/2026

I think I'm going to try to improve path management in #CTRAN, make a release and then take a break from it. After that, most of the other TODOs are pretty small anyway.

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Shane McKee @shaneir.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

These yokes were aimed at the industrial market - warehousing, data logging etc. But they're actually pretty capable devices - I'll be exploring some more... #Psion

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Kroc Camen @kroc.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

My own code, running on a #psion 5mx, a plain-text editor for the little #writerdeck that could. #retrocomputing

$Photo of me holding up a Psion 5mx "palmtop" computer, open, with the electroluminescent backlight on, display some text on the screen which reads: "Permission is expressly denied for the use of any part of this book in connection with the development of any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system. The author asserts that no AI, of any kind, \ was used in the production of this book."$

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Matt Lewis @semiprime.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy · 27/06/2026

I've just released v0.3.9 of my WIP agenda/calendar application "Pygenda". It's based on #Psion #PDA Agenda apps and designed to run on keyboard #LinuxMobile devices like Planet Computers' #GeminiPDA & #CosmoCommunicator. Written in Python/GTK, it also works on Linux desktop & possibly other […]

mastodon.online

Original post on mastodon.online

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Nigel Barnes @pernod70.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

In the next MAME 0.289 release we have the rare Psion 618C emulated. It's a Psion Revo for Traditional Chinese regions. The standard Revo has 8MB ROM but this has 16MB which adds a couple of games and English<->Chinese translators. There's also a Psion 618S with Simplified Chinese yet to be found.

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