Pscience5 Forum

Phil Aypee · Joined: 01 Aug 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Bramley, Surrey, UK

Hi,

I’ve posted this on the Pscience5 forum, the PsionPlace forum and comp.sys.psion.misc - and anyone can post it elsewhere if they want.

It seems EPOC32 - ER 1-5 - is now considered dead by a number of organisations (a lively corpse in my opinion). PsionPlace has reduced its software archive, TUCOWS will probably follow. PocketIQ has now gone the way of Neuon (and will be similarly missed).

I suppose Martin Guthrie is now the principal archiver of EPOC32 software. But I doubt either he or his site can archive it all.

Would it now be reasonable to hope that a proper archive could be made and copies placed in a few places? An obvious candidate would be Yahoo! Groups, but several of them (and, yes, I know the EPOC warez people use Yahoo! Groups).

But surely there are other places!

The thing is that a proper archive needs duplicates so it cannot easily get lost. I don’t have enough space to be any real use (either on the web or at home) - I’m a bit of a dinosaur anyway. Also I’m a sad disabled and unemployed nerd (but not, definitely *not*, in my opinion). But I’d offer what help I could.

I’m not suggesting that any still registerable or buyable software be archived - though it might be separately archived against the possibility of it’s being abandoned. But this stuff must be kept available.

The thing is that this has happened before. A vast amount of SiBO software was on the Imperial College site and would have disappeared if I hadn’t scooped the site. That isn’t many megabytes compared to an EPOC32 archive so my small hard disk can store it all easily. But I may well be the principal archiver now (and there is still the occasional person new even to SiBO). But now most erstwhile shareware for SibO is now unregisterable!

RMR retain their SiBO software still (good old RMR!) and it’s likely they will also retain their ER 1-5 stuff. FreEPOC is still very active, though veering understandably towards ER 6 and later (as is RMR). But they are pretty well alone now.

I do realize that most of us have all the software we want - well, I do - but this is about the few, not the many. Just as there have recently been a few new to SiBO so there will be a few new to ER 1-5 over the next decade.

Richard · Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:52 pm Post subject: Safe the software!

Hi Phil,

Yes, it seems Psion is to dissapear more and more. Only the few 'hardcore' Psionusers/fans will stay around, but they will also be fewer and fewer. One day the most of them will go on with other systems like Symbian, Windows, Linux or even some other OS.

In this time it's great to have great people around like the famous Martin Guthrie (www.Pscience5.net) who still keep up a site with a lot of software and documentation regarding Psion; both Sibo and Epoc. Unfortunately even his site, as great as it is, has not all the software in one place (freeware, shareware, abandonware or whatever it's called) so we all have to browse the Net for any special, missing files.

Why do you say that even Martin Guthrie can't archive all these files on his site? As for the Yahoo!groups, I don't think it would attract the new or even the old Psionusers. I find these groups to be very 'uneasy' to search through and as you state yourself, it's also a source of warez. Can be hard to seperate the real files from the not so legal warezfiles.

I personally would be very happy to see all Psionsoftware, documentation and other files, videos and pictures in one place. Maybe second exact copy in some other place to stay as a sort of 'back-up'.

How much space would all this take up on a server? With all I mean both Sibo and Epoc related files and maybe even older Psionstuff (like the Organiser One and Organiser II ) and the newer Symbian stuff. How much money would be involved (per year) to let such a server run?

As I told you before it would be nice to see a list of all the files you have from the Imperial college site; as I'm sure there's still software missing in my own Psioncollection. If there's any way of having this list, please?

Another idea that comes across my mind is the following. Why not setting up a "hidden" directory on this same server for anysoftware which at the present time is still being sold, but if abandoned in the near future, can be added if permissin is granted by the programmer or seller. So at least there is a real file available and you don't have to search for it anymore.

It might even be possible to safe different versions/builds of the files to be sure you always can find just that one file-version that works with for example your Osaris where newer builds might not be supported anymore.

As a Psioncollector I feel very sad to see all this files dissapear.

Many Psiongreetings from Holland!

Richard van Stappershoef

scorpio · Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 17 Location: London

I'd be keen to get involved in this, but as an aside is anyone prepared to make a guess as to how many applications we're talking about?

Also, there are some commercial applications that I would love to see freely available (Money, Citymaps, Route, etc).

I've got some hosting space and bandwidth available so I could probably support the archive, or at least a mirror of Martins site.

Chaz

lohtse · Joined: 29 Jul 2005 Posts: 37

There are hundreds if not thousands of applications available. Would happily suppport a Full archive etc and believe it would be a great help to all.Am also happy to host files linked to an archive as have 1gig of online space available to use plus have 3 DVDs of software. As to commercail apps on an archive ycheck with author etc for permission first just like those on Pscience5 to make sure there would be no problems etc...

regards
Andrew

Kees vd Straten · Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 209 Location: The Netherlands