Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

using a Psion Organiser. to
I realise just how quickly the
I
DataPacks can flit up. leaving one
d
desperate for more storage space,
o
e In the early days pleas tor help
brought s the PsiOn Comms-Link
package n to connect the pocket
maestro ' to a PC. but there has previously
t been no easy way out for
the
t
Amiga owner.
a
Look no further tor the answer.
k
You
e
will find a program on this month's
l Amigo Computing coverdisk
called o Psionlink which will enable
you n to transfer tiles to and from the
Amiga g and Organiser with ease
.
Unfortunately, the P5iOn Commisw
Link is still required to provide the
h
hardware
e
connection and the
Psion n COMMUNCOhOnS software aS
well as the conversion of Psion's
non
-dard
RS232 signals
sta This shouldn't be to much of a
nda
problem, because if you're serious
rd
about s connecting your Organiser
to e the outside world. the Cornms-
Link n is an essential buy in any case.
d
O
uPariez-vous
Amiga?
t
Why use a special program? You
p
might think that with a Comms-Link
u
pock t it would be easy to transfer
files t to the Amigo with the help of a
standard o comms program, but
you'd s be wrong.
t
The high occurrence of spurious
a
characters you get as a result of a
n
straight transfer makes this exercise
-
barely worthwhile, so a program to
iron Out the bugs soon becomes
more than welcome
If such a program is to be worth
the effort put into coding ft, howev-
er, it must do more than just allow
for file transfer and conversion. For
this reason. Psionlink will perform
several extra functions.
It will, for Instance, direcity read
and edit files, and automatically
convert a Psion Data File into whot
is known as an ASCII-delimited file
on the Amigo. These ore perfect
for direct Importation Into
SuperBase or any other Amiga
database
the major problem with PSiOnLirit4
was the inclusion of protocols, most
notably Psion's own protocol for
which there is no available docu-
mentation I decided to pursue this
and to include the same three pro-
tocols used in the Comms-Link's
own software - none, X-Modern.
and Psion. The -
norte
- b i t
i s
e1 4 aAmiga s y Computing
-
Dave Westwood finds his Amiga can
speek in tongues to a Psion Organiser,
and with a straight face, too
Tower of
Babel
what comes througn tne sera' port
is what you get in your tile. X•
Modem and Psionlink, however.
ore a bit trickier.
The X-Modem protocol works by
splitting the fi le to be sent into o
series of 128 byte Nooks. It numbers
these consecutively and transmits
them along with a checksum (a
special number derived from
adding all the bytes
together), which
the
I SS
4.41,:z
zi„,
Review
receiving machine uses to check
whether the data has arrived
intact if It hos been corrupted. the
transmitting machine is informed
and fresh attempts ore made to
successfully transmit the data until
It arrives in an uncorrupted state.
The Psion protocol was the real
toughie. As mentioned, there is no
published data on its structure,
and Psion were Initially reluc-
tant to furnish the relevant
details. This is a most Impor-
tant aspect of
the pro•
gram, however, and I persevered
until they were kind enough to give
me what I needed. After all, with a
third party already producing the
equivalent ST program, there's no
reason why the some facility
shouldn't be available on the
Amiga
The Psion protocol allows tor say
eral extremely useful extra features.
You can, for example, transfer
accidentally deleted flies from the
Organiser's DeloPacks to a new
host, and can transfer password
protected Notepods without first
having to de-protect them.
More usefulty, rt allowS the trans-
fer of OPL oblect code to and from
the Amigo so that Orgonser pro-
grams can be developed In the
much larger and friendlier environ-
ment of the Amigo
For programmers looking to
develop software for the Orgcrniser,
the advantages offered by not
having to ruin one's eyesight and
patience squinting at the dimrnu
tive Psion screen cannot be under-
estimated, The chance to use a
decent Amigo text editor when
coding is also a great boon.
For those not interested in programming,
the link allows for the
saving of invaluable data to fl oppy
disk for future use, and relieves the
burden o n over
-DataPock&
populated
Shareware
Unfortunately. I spent so much time
trying to scrounge the protocol
details out of Psion and sweated so
long and hard when oclucily pro-
gramming PsIonlink, the pro-
gram on your May
coverdisk is a
demo version only.
The full version.
including Psion pro-
tocol and my own file
editor, Is available if
you get in touch at the
actdress included in the
disk reodmecomms file.
On a fi nal note, I am
currently working on a
developer program which
Should make it possible for
users to write, test, debug,
arid compile OK programs on
the Amigo then bundle them
as a complete Data Pock that
will auto-boot Itself into the
Organiser's lop level menu.
Look out for more about this
future issues of Amigo Computing