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A comment on Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5.

Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by protomyth on Thursday November 30, 2017 @08:14PM (#15821187)
This machine falls into the same category as the TRS-80 Model 100 for me. An amazing battery life machine that I get my thoughts down with a minimum of fuss. The Psion 5 was a nice machine, but I would wish for a horizontal enter key as opposed to the vertical. I really wish a few more groups would take a look at this form factor because it is amazing.

On a side note, was there not a machine in this type of form factor from back in the day that had APL for a programming language?

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Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by jecel on Friday December 01, 2017 @11:23AM (#15824822)
Even the lightest old APL computers I am familiar with, the Ampere WS-1 (Japan 1985) and the MCM 70 (Canada 1974), were giants compared to the Psion 5.

http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=66 http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=346

I am pretty sure you weren't thinking of the IBM 5100.

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Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by protomyth on Friday December 01, 2017 @05:17PM (#15828195)
The Ampere WS-1 strikes me as familiar but I thought it was much smaller than that. Nice find.
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Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by lproven on Friday December 01, 2017 @04:55PM (#15827953)
Are you thinking of OPL?

OPL -- Organizer Programming Language -- was the default Psion high-level language bundled with all their EPOC machines. It's a block-structured BASIC-like language.

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Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by protomyth on Friday December 01, 2017 @05:17PM (#15828198)
No, I was thinking APL. I gotta look, it might have been one of the ones jecel showed in his comment, but I swear it was smaller.
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Re:Gemini PDA: 20 years on, meet the all-new Psion Series 5 by RodgerTheGreat on Friday December 01, 2017 @10:06AM (#15824177)
Haven't heard of anything like the APL-based device you mention. Sounds fascinating.
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