Psion7 to Netbook

Victor Warner · Psion7 to Netbook

I would be grateful to know the following:

1. Is it (still) possible to buy a chip to turn a Psion 7 into a Netbook?

If so, it is possible to buy the chip in the UK?
If possible, does the Psion 7 with the chip become a true Network (ie run the same speed as a proper netbook).

2. Does the Netbook run XT Emulator any faster than the Psion 7. I run a number of DOS programs on my Psion 7 and some operations are paintfully slow (such as file access, file saving etc in particular programs (such as WordPerfect 5.1)).

If there any tips on improving performance of XT Emulator independently of the Netbook I would be very grateful to hear of them.

Victor Warner

MartinG

Hi Victor,

Answers:

1) Yes it is. You need something called a netBook personality module. Probably the best source for these is eBay but there are still some places selling them retail I think -

http://www.pulster.de/ isn't in the UK but Chris speaks good English and is reasonably priced (unlike some!).

Effectively yes, the 7 becomes a true netBook (although it's usually refered to as a '7Book' for obvious reasons). It runs at the netBook's full 199MHz instead of the 7's 133MHz. The standard module gives 32MB of RAM expandable to 64MB compared with the 7's 16MB expandable to 32MB. The only potential difference is that the machine is still using the 7's motherboard (obviously) and in theory this may not be able to drive some of the higher-powered PCMCIA cards as well as the netBook.

2) Yes, everything should run correspondingly faster. The file access issues you mention may be related to your CF card however. If you save to c: does the speed improve? If so, formatting your CF differently may improve things. Read my articles on CF cards on my site for more info.

Cheers,
Martin

MartinG · Update

Update::

See this thread for UK retail: http://pscience5.myfreeforum.org/sutra756.php#756

This is pretty steep however IMHO!

porkboy

Try www.expansys.com and search netbook.

They have the modules available but cost £113 Shocked

I understans they do turn the 7 into a netbook, in that the speed and memory are increased. This site has excellent detail on how it works.

Hope this helps

Cheers Laughing

Victor Warner

Martin

Thank you for the informative replies.

I have contacted pulster.de. They charge 49 euros plus 10 euros for delivery. Less than 1/2 the price at http://www.expansys.com.

(Pulster.de asked for a bank transfer which my bank would want to charge £21 for... Fortunately they also accept Paypal)

As regards the slowness, I have the wp and other dos programs all on a CF, but I have tried to save/open files in WP to the internal disk with no improvement. But I notice that files with lots of/some formatting codes take an in-ordinate amount of time to open/save. I will have to copy the program files to the internal drive and try the same exercise entirely from the interal drive. The problem may simply be a processing issue (ie WordPerfect takes a time to process files with codes which cannot be resolved irrespective of the drive the program files are located or where files are saved/open).

Victor Warner

MartinG

Kees vd Straten

Victor Warner

Kees,

The extra memory is a good idea, but previously I had bought 16 megabyte memory (bringing the Psion 7 up to 32 megabytes). I think that should be sufficient (and all I can afford) for the time being...

Victor Warner

scorpio · Not necessarily

Unfortunately, the 16Mb module that you have is incompatible with the netbook upgrade.

The netbook upgrade *does* include an additional 16Mb RAM, but this is swallowed up by the fact that the OS is loaded from CF card into RAM and takes up 18Mb.

This means that even though you have 32Mb, only 14Mb is available for you to use.

I would thoroughly recommend getting the memory upgrade - I've never looked back (bought from pulster.de)

Chaz

Victor Warner

I have now installed the netbook personality module, and it makes a large difference to the performance of running WordPerfect 5.1.

Most of the things which took a lot of time to perform are now substantially shortened. For example, exiting the part of the program where it is possible to redefine characters, used to take about 15-30 seconds, now happens in a second, ie there is a slight delay. Even opening documents with lots of formatting codes etc is substantially improved with a only fews seconds delay, etc etc

The instructions that came with the personality module appear to indicate that the additional 16 megabyte RAM will be recognised, but as indicated in this forum, it is not recognised.

Once again, thank you for the information.

Victor Warner

Psion7 to Netbook

Update

Not necessarily