The Organiser Datapaks and Program Packs Devices Psion Datapak Formatter Manuals, adverts, etc.
The first Psion Organiser was released in 1984. This Series 1 had a 1-line display, and
only 2K RAM.
Also shown here are two rare rebranded versions. One is for the American market,
distributed there by Superior Systems Inc. and retitled the OTG-PC, the On-The-Go Pocket
Computer. The Psion logo on the keyboard cover is replaced by OTG-PC, and it has a slightly
different lettering on the keyboard, and uses the dollar sign $ instead of the
pound sign £. The other is the NUME Ececutive Lifestyle Pocket Computer. It
still have the Psion logo on the keyboard cover, and uses blue styling instead of red, and
has a keyboard that includes the dollar sign as well as some accented characters. NUME was
a Norwegian nutritional products company which made a deal with Psion worth £100,000
for branded organisers that would have software to help plan and track your diet. The only
reference to this machine I have found is a small article in the issue of
Popular
Computing Weekly magazine from 6th February 1986.
The Organiser's 4K ROM did not provide a lot of functionality, so most of that had to come from software packs. It was supplied with the Utility Pak as standard. Datapaks only came in sizes 8K and 16K. Most software packs had special circuit boards marked "PROGRAM PAC", in which the programming voltage (Vpp) line is not connected, so the pack could not be written to even though it contains an EPROM. The Link-Up Pack and the Software Pack used ordinary datapaks so that you can store your link settings and programs on the same pack.
The Organiser did not have a top slot for connecting devices. A comms link was produced, the Link-Up Pack, which consisted of one software pack and one pack with a ribbon lead connected to it with a DB-25 plug at the other end. By putting both packs into the organiser slots, the Organiser could communicate using the standard RS232 protocol with any other serial device such as a PC. Note that once the software was loaded and the correct settings selected, the software pack could be replaced by a datapak containing the data you wanted to send.
Also shown here is a magnetic card reader which has a pack connector, allowing it to be used with the series 1. A further pack connector is shown that used to have a bar code reader pen attached, but that pen was removed after it fell apart.
When the Organiser deletes data from a datapak, it is merely marked as deleted so that the data is skipped, but it still takes up room on the pack. The EPROM chips in datapaks cannot be wiped clean electronically. Instead, the formatter was used to empty the packs, which it does by shining UV light onto the window in the EPROM chip for half an hour.
This version of the Datapak Formatter has the style and logo matching the Series 1 Organiser. It was however also used for the series II for some time before getting replaced by a more compact formatter with the new logo and styling.
