PocketFS

Hi,

It has just occurred to me. The Beagle has a serial port. I have a PocketBook II (and a 2Mb 3a). I’ve let them languish as my current machine (the eeePC) has no serial port.

And let me tell you – Android phones are great at helping you consume – YouTube, no probs. Video? MP3s? Streaming radio over a crappy EDGE network? Working out how to propose to a cute girl you just met in a language you know nothing about? It’s all possible.
But can you create using an Android phone? Well, sort of. Short emails, videos of people being stupid, photos, that sort of thing. But you find me a text editor that can apply styles without it all going horribly wrong somewhere, or maybe it will work, but it’ll work but it’ll work in a way alien to everything else.
You find me a reliable spreadsheet. And then a database that isn’t stuffed with in-app advertising.

Compared to the simple efficiency of the Psion 3a, the modern smartphone that is powerful enough to be able to completely emulate a 3a (via DOSbox) is, for want of a better word, a completely retrograde step when it comes to productivity.

Therefore, I would be willing to look at taking a crack at porting Acorn’s PocketFS. Are the sources to this part of the Acorn→Pace→Castle→ROOL stuff? If not, does anybody know who might have them?

Best wishes,

Rick.

Two screenshots to amuse:

Why not ask Alex Thoukydides for the sources for PsiFS? IIRC, it was a lot better than PocketFS.

Why not ask Alex Thoukydides for the sources for PsiFS? IIRC, it was a lot better than PocketFS.

Yes, yes, yes!

I contacted Alex some time ago (checks – 2006 ooer!) about issues running it on my RPC. Problem is that PsiFS won’t work with 32 bit CLib. To get round it on my Risc PC I would have to substitute CLibs and restart the machine.

He thought at the time that he could try to reverse engineer the then new Shared C Library and update CathLibCPP (whatever that is) but seemed a lot of work and maybe not possible. Alternatively, he thought it might be easier to rebuild PsiFS as a 32 bit application.

He was disinclined to deal with it at the time because of the amount of work involved and the need to buy Castle’s development kit. His last comment was that he was headed for Asia.

I can’t see that we have the sources to PocketFS, I’m afraid. There were patches for it included on disc with RISC OS 3.7 though, which rather suggests that Acorn didn’t have the rights to distribute a StrongARM version of it, implying it was a third-party product.

There’s also no signs of it in the allocations database list of filing systems, so I can’t even say who registered it. It might have had a name change at some point during development – there’s one allocation by Computer Concepts that might be a likely candidate, but that is just a guess.

Googling confirms Computer Concepts. Gordon Taylor formerly of CC was at the Cambridge Raspberry Jam the other week – might be worth asking him (his details are on the event page).