Emulation

Mike Coon <Mike@@mjcoon.+.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Oh, dear, I wondered if you would ask that! The problem is that it is only
> partly in OPL which is easy; the fast Life-algorithm routine is in C++[/color]

I thought it was a bit fast for OPL!
[color=blue]
> when I retire next Spring I won't have access to Visual Studio unless I buy
> myself a copy (or maybe I can manage to get agreement to "liberate" an out
> of date version from work).[/color]

So any bug reports need to be sent quickly! I've noticed a few errors
with the life algorithm. Last time I played with, some gamma-shaped
blocks of three dots were stable, which I'm sure shouldn't be the case.
They should form themselves into square blocks. I've also seen a lone,
hollow square block of eight dots behave differently on three
occasions.
[color=blue]
> Must see if I can find the source, too...[/color]

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

--
Damian Walker
Add SAUSAGE to the subject of email replies to avoid my spam trap

Frank Peelo <f32pnospam@eircom.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> There's an Apple][ emulator as well, PsiApple, and one for the Sinclair
> Spectrum, but I didn't use them as much.[/color]

Frodo (C64) has been ported for the Series 5 and there are two "video
games" emulations: GOBY (Gameboy) and EMAME.

--
Oliver

Oliver N. Kuehlwein <News041006@kuehlwein.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Frodo (C64) has been ported for the Series 5 and there are two "video
> games" emulations: GOBY (Gameboy) and EMAME.[/color]

As well as EGnuBoy, also for the Gameboy.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Damian Walker <damian@snigfarp.karoo.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hello everyone,
>
> My brother gave me a 2GB CF card last weekend. I decided to put it in
> my Series 5mx, as that's the machine I use the most. But I've always
> been happy with a 64MB card up till now. EPOC software is so compact
> that I've rarely used more than half of that amount. So what can I use
> all that space for on a 5mx?
>
> I've partitioned the card into four sections: 64MB for applications,
> 64MB for games, 384MB for static or rarely-changing data I might use
> regularly. That leaves a partition of 1.5GB to find a use for. I save
> regularly updated files on C: and use a trio of 16MB cards for backup,
> so it would be pointless using the 1.5GB partition for those things.[/color]

Did you partition your card with linux?
[color=blue]
>
> I thought about putting all the downloads from the EPOC32 Games
> database on there (about 60MB), or perhaps an encycopedia, as someone a
> while back mentioned there's a downloadable Wikipedia available. I
> could put a good amount of Project Gutenberg on there. But all these
> are just filling the space for the sake of it.
>
> Are there any other suggestions for ~1GB clumps of data that could be
> useful on a Psion?
>[/color]

You can store all the maps from Tomtoms Citymaps. The worst part will
be to extract them from the 2 cds.
Please give us some feedback if you really accomplished to install a
recent version of Wikipedia. My impression was that there isn't a
version for Epoc any longer.

--
Oliver

Damian Walker <damian@snigfarp.karoo.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> Oliver N. Kuehlwein <News041006@kuehlwein.net> wrote:
>[color=green]
> > Frodo (C64) has been ported for the Series 5 and there are two "video
> > games" emulations: GOBY (Gameboy) and EMAME.[/color]
>
> As well as EGnuBoy, also for the Gameboy.[/color]

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of it.

--
Oliver

Oliver N. Kuehlwein <News041006@kuehlwein.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Did you partition your card with linux?[/color]

Yes. It took a few tries, once because of my error and once because
Atelier's EDU trashed the partitions it didn't like. I've since found
that it doesn't like partitions whose size isn't a number in the binary
system (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8...) so I'll remember not to let it loose on my
384M and 1.5G partitions again.
[color=blue]
> You can store all the maps from Tomtoms Citymaps. The worst part will
> be to extract them from the 2 cds.[/color]

I thought about putting more maps from TomTom's old Street Planner (
which I bought a while ago) but decided against it as I don't travel
that often, and the maps are getting out of date now. What exactly is
Citymaps?
[color=blue]
> Please give us some feedback if you really accomplished to install a
> recent version of Wikipedia. My impression was that there isn't a
> version for Epoc any longer.[/color]

I haven't yet found one, but to be fair I haven't looked since I'm not
yet sure what I'm going to do with the partition.

Had Gutenberg published more of their books in PDF format I might have
put some of those on the card; the TXT files will more than fill it but
I find unformatted plain text files uncomfortable to read. I keep
meaning to look into EPOC compatible e-books but other things
constantly take up my time at the moment. Hopefully I should get
chance to look further during this week.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Oliver N. Kuehlwein <News041006@kuehlwein.net> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
> > As well as EGnuBoy, also for the Gameboy.[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of it.[/color]

EGnuBoy is better than Goby if you have a S7, as it supports Gameboy
Color games. But neither is really fast enough for most games on a 5mx
or slower machines.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Oliver N. Kuehlwein wrote:[color=blue]
> Damian Walker <damian@snigfarp.karoo.co.uk> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>Hello everyone,
>>
>>My brother gave me a 2GB CF card last weekend. I decided to put it in
>>my Series 5mx, as that's the machine I use the most. But I've always
>>been happy with a 64MB card up till now. EPOC software is so compact
>>that I've rarely used more than half of that amount. So what can I use
>>all that space for on a 5mx?
>>
>>I've partitioned the card into four sections: 64MB for applications,
>>64MB for games, 384MB for static or rarely-changing data I might use
>>regularly. That leaves a partition of 1.5GB to find a use for. I save
>>regularly updated files on C: and use a trio of 16MB cards for backup,
>>so it would be pointless using the 1.5GB partition for those things.[/color]
>
>
> Did you partition your card with linux?[/color]

Do you use Psion CF cards with Linux?

I have Mandriva 2008.0, and the vfat driver seems to have problems with
cards formatted on the Psion. A 512MB card which was readable in Windows
and on a MAC had garbled directories under Mandriva. I was surprised;
don't know if the Psion has a slightly different format to what the
linux driver expects, or if there might be a problem with the card.

Frank

Damian Walker wrote:
[color=blue]
>I thought about putting more maps from TomTom's old Street Planner (
>which I bought a while ago) but decided against it as I don't travel
>that often, and the maps are getting out of date now. What exactly is
>Citymaps?[/color]

Latest version is from 2003 and I find it still pretty good, even in
London.

Since they switched from their own special format to (semi-)standard
..cab files, you can even install the maps without having to go through
the official installer - I wrote a program to convert the install
packages into .SIS files. (Thus meaning you don't have to squeeze them
down the serial link from a Windows machine.)
[url]http://firedrake.org/roger/psion/citymaps2003.html[/url]

Roger

Frank Peelo <f32pnospam@eircom.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Do you use Psion CF cards with Linux?[/color]

Yes. I have the same problem of garbled directories as you do much of
the time. You can get around this if you have the mtools package ("...
a collection of utilities for accessing MS-DOS files ...") installed.
This has been installed with all Linux versions I've used so far,
though I'm still on Fedora 4. The included tools mdir and mcopy have
worked flawlessly with all the cards I've tried.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Roger Burton West <roger+cspm200810@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Latest version is from 2003 and I find it still pretty good, even in
> London.[/color]

Thanks, I'll have to take a look at that, then. Is it possible to
install later CAB maps onto it, or are you stuck with the ones supplied?
[color=blue]
> I wrote a program to convert the install
> packages into .SIS files. (Thus meaning you don't have to squeeze them
> down the serial link from a Windows machine.)[/color]

I would probably stick them straight onto the CF from the Linux box,
which would be the easiest way.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Hello everyone,

So far I like the mapping idea, but not being a driver or a regular
visitor to other cities, I'll probably settle for keeping my home city
and environs on there, and install other cities ahead of a journey.

Not having found an encyclopaedia yet, I've started to download some
electronic books. I'm looking forward to a time when Project Gutenberg
has the full 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica available for download in
text format. For usefulness it doesn't match a modern encyclopaedia
but I'm often searching for historical information.

I found a neat little reader, ERead, which reformats text into a fully-
justified 2-column format which is nice to read. It simulates a 2-page
spread a bit like Agenda. Unfortunately, when it saves bookmark files,
it doesn't re-read them from the CF ("File corrupt"). I don't remember
whether I tested this from C: or not. It may be a CF issue or possibly
an issue about the size of the original text (the two I've transferred
so far are 1.5MB and 3MB in size).

What's the best reader generally available? Contrary to my earlier
thoughts I'm now interested in plain text books, especially if there's
another more reliable reader that can reformat those books in an
attractive way. I seem to remember one reader program has a sideways
mode.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Damian Walker wrote:
[color=blue]
>Thanks, I'll have to take a look at that, then. Is it possible to
>install later CAB maps onto it, or are you stuck with the ones supplied?[/color]

I have no access to later maps, so I don't know. If the format hasn't
changed too much...?

R

Damian Walker <damian@snigfarp.karoo.co.uk> was inspired to say[color=blue]
>Hello everyone,
>
>So far I like the mapping idea, but not being a driver or a regular
>visitor to other cities, I'll probably settle for keeping my home city
>and environs on there, and install other cities ahead of a journey.
>
>Not having found an encyclopaedia yet, I've started to download some
>electronic books. I'm looking forward to a time when Project Gutenberg
>has the full 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica available for download in
>text format. For usefulness it doesn't match a modern encyclopaedia
>but I'm often searching for historical information.
>
>I found a neat little reader, ERead, which reformats text into a fully-
>justified 2-column format which is nice to read. It simulates a 2-page
>spread a bit like Agenda. Unfortunately, when it saves bookmark files,
>it doesn't re-read them from the CF ("File corrupt"). I don't remember
>whether I tested this from C: or not. It may be a CF issue or possibly
>an issue about the size of the original text (the two I've transferred
>so far are 1.5MB and 3MB in size).
>
>What's the best reader generally available? Contrary to my earlier
>thoughts I'm now interested in plain text books, especially if there's
>another more reliable reader that can reformat those books in an
>attractive way. I seem to remember one reader program has a sideways
>mode.
>[/color]
Oh, I assumed you knew your way around Psion software!!

I download Gutenberg books, compress them for convenience in a little
program by Andrew Giddings called TCR (PC based simple multipass
routine) that gives around 50% compression,
[url]http://www.cix.co.uk/~gidds/Software/TCR.html[/url]


then in Psion use e-book to read them.

See... [url]www.geocities.com/ebookepoc/[/url]
....But I'm not sure if this version is suitable for the Psion 5mx.

This is conveniently in column format, paging by means of the shift key.
It is simple to read single handed using ones thumb to turn pages. I
always have a book on it and yank it out whenever I have a wait.

Somewhere I have the original ebook program archived...!
<Arrrgh - now on a hard disk removed from the old computer and
physically archived!!!>

Mike

--
Michael J Davis
<Please note that the Reply-To: address will remain in use for at least 30
days, but the sender and from addresses are not valid.>
<><

Damian Walker wrote:[color=blue]
> Frank Peelo <f32pnospam@eircom.net> wrote:
>
>[color=green]
>>Do you use Psion CF cards with Linux?[/color]
>
>
> Yes. I have the same problem of garbled directories as you do much of
> the time. You can get around this if you have the mtools package ("...
> a collection of utilities for accessing MS-DOS files ...") installed.
> This has been installed with all Linux versions I've used so far,
> though I'm still on Fedora 4. The included tools mdir and mcopy have
> worked flawlessly with all the cards I've tried.[/color]

You don't need to mount the drive with vfat first? Good. Another thing
for me to google over the weekend...

Strange that there would be a linux package which successfully reads
vfat CF cards, if the vfat driver doesn't. I would have thought the same
bugs would be in both.

Thanks

Frank

Michael J Davis <mjdusenet@trustsof.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Oh, I assumed you knew your way around Psion software!![/color]

Only the games. I haven't been much interested in electronic texts
until I got the new CompactFlash, so I didn't pay much attention to the
software.
[color=blue]
> [url]http://www.cix.co.uk/~gidds/Software/TCR.html[/url][/color]

Thanks, I've downloaded that. Though at the moment I'm not much in
need of using compression!
[color=blue]
> See... [url]www.geocities.com/ebookepoc/[/url]
> ....But I'm not sure if this version is suitable for the Psion 5mx.[/color]

I've had eBook installed on the 5mx, but since my last post here I
discovered MobiPocket reader, which seems to do everything that eBook
does. I haven't checked whether it reads TCRs though.
[color=blue]
> This is conveniently in column format, paging by means of the shift key.[/color]

By column format do you mean the mode where you hold the Psion sideways?
Unfortunately ebook, at least the version I had, only did it in a
left-handed way which I found a bit of getting used to. MobiPocket
lets you choose orientation, as well as having the 2-column format that
ERead used.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Frank Peelo <f32pnospam@eircom.net> wrote:
[color=blue]
> You don't need to mount the drive with vfat first?[/color]

It occurs to me now that I might have automount enabled on the CF slot,
but I'm not sure about that - mtools might be reading the file system
directly. I do have to change the permissions on /dev/sda1 (to sda4 on
the partitioned card) each time I insert a card, as by default only
root can read or write to the card. That's something I need to look
into the mtools documentation for.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Roger Burton West <roger+cspm200810@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I have no access to later maps, so I don't know. If the format hasn't
> changed too much...?[/color]

Thanks, I'll do a bit of googling to find out what I can.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net

Damian Walker <damian@snigfarp.karoo.co.uk> was inspired to say[color=blue]
>Michael J Davis <mjdusenet@trustsof.co.uk> wrote:
>[color=green]
>> Oh, I assumed you knew your way around Psion software!![/color]
>
>Only the games. I haven't been much interested in electronic texts
>until I got the new CompactFlash, so I didn't pay much attention to the
>software.
>[color=green]
>> [url]http://www.cix.co.uk/~gidds/Software/TCR.html[/url][/color]
>
>Thanks, I've downloaded that. Though at the moment I'm not much in
>need of using compression!
>[color=green]
>> See... [url]www.geocities.com/ebookepoc/[/url]
>> ....But I'm not sure if this version is suitable for the Psion 5mx.[/color]
>
>I've had eBook installed on the 5mx, but since my last post here I
>discovered MobiPocket reader, which seems to do everything that eBook
>does. I haven't checked whether it reads TCRs though.
>[color=green]
>> This is conveniently in column format, paging by means of the shift key.[/color]
>
>By column format do you mean the mode where you hold the Psion sideways?[/color]
Yes.
[color=blue]
>Unfortunately ebook, at least the version I had, only did it in a
>left-handed way which I found a bit of getting used to.[/color]
Funny that, I find holding it in my left hand with the thumb hovering
over the spacebar works very well.
[color=blue]
>MobiPocket
>lets you choose orientation, as well as having the 2-column format that
>ERead used.[/color]

ISTR the two column format, I prefer the single column of ebook. (And
change the type size for the lighting conditions.)

Chaq'un a son gout!

Mike

--
Michael J Davis
<Please note that the Reply-To: address will remain in use for at least 30
days, but the sender and from addresses are not valid.>
<><

Michael J Davis <mjdusenet@trustsof.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Funny that, I find holding it in my left hand with the thumb hovering
> over the spacebar works very well.[/color]

Perhaps I should have said "right handed way": it had me holding the
Psion in my right hand, using the left thumb to press the space bar.
Very odd. Maybe there's a later version somewhere.
[color=blue]
> ISTR the two column format, I prefer the single column of ebook. (And
> change the type size for the lighting conditions.)[/color]

I'll probably end up using both. The sideways mode is good for sitting
on the bus or train, on curling up on the sofa, but the 2-column mode
will be better when you've got a flat surface to put the Psion on.

--
Damian Walker
The World at Strife - newly released - psion.snigfarp.karoo.net