- Re: Connecting to XP with PsiWin 2.3.3

- Re: solun5.2b

- Re: XP & SP2 ..Firewall alert

- Re: The Digest V1 # 668

- Solun

- S7 to netbook conversion

- Connecting to XP,

- Long term review of Nokia 9500.

- Frontview for P910

- Leaving the digest / Winlink e-mail / Position reports

- Re: Spam Software

- Re: RMRalarm.opx

- no subject

- Re: Connecting to XP

Date: 5 Jan 2005 23:41:37 +0100
From: Alan Morris <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Connecting to XP with PsiWin 2.3.3

Melvin Woody <address truncated> wrote:-

> I have been unable to connect my Diamond Mako to my Dell
> Lattitude D600 laptop, which runs on Microsoft XP .... Can
> anyone advise me about whether this is a hopeless task? ....
> I learned is that one needs PsiWin 2.3.3 .... I can connect
> to my desktop O.K.

Melvin I had the same problem for almost 2 years - OK on the win98 desktop but failure on the XP laptop.

The cause of the problem was the Belkin USB/serial adapter.  Many owners of Belkins say they work OK and a few say they don't work.

I eventually got it to link at 9600, but this was completely useless.  This slow link working suggested to me that the fault in the Belkin (with a false excellent reputation) was due to a timing error.  A faulty design or a bad batch of crystals, (or some other component) causing the problem.

Recently I bought from Clove their USB Converter (PS5-USBC).
http://www.clove.co.uk
0870 7270037

I can now connect more reliably with XP than w98.  There is one but; however.  XP causes the Psion window to behave in odd ways.  Such as single clicks in all other windows, need a double click.  Folders with many files show the end off screen, so these hidden files can't be accessed.  But change from icon view to a list view and they can be accessed.  The scroll bars do not work correctly.

Files also appear in different ways - down, then left to right.  Or across and then to the right - most odd.  But usable.

--
Alan R Morris, G4ENS.
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.
Using a Psion netBook & Nokia 6210e.

Date: 6 Jan 2005 00:50:24 +0100
From: Jack <address truncated>
Subject: Re: solun5.2b

Alan Morris  wondered:
> I've got Solun 5.2 on my 5mx and understand that the highest version > is 5.43.
> But www.piecafe.demon.co.uk is not active anymore.
> Any suggestions?


Hi
there is v5.2B
http://www.freepoc.org/download.php?id=39
Jack

Date: 6 Jan 2005 07:45:44 +0100
From: Michael Robins <address truncated>
Subject: Re: XP & SP2 ..Firewall alert

Melvin

SP2 for Windows XP sometimes enables its own (XP) firewall when installed, which could be the problem.  The firewall only blocks incoming traffic (contrary to what some people may believe) but that would be enough to kill the Psion link. Try right click on My Computer, select Properties and I think you want the Advanced Tab and look for Firewall being ticked (sorry to be vague her but I havn't got an XP PC in front of me). (Another way to get there is to go via Control Panel, Network Settings and properties of each particular type of network.)

MikeR


>
> Date:  5 Jan 2005 05:51:12 +0100
> From: Melvin Woody <address truncated>
> Subject: Connecting to XP with PsiWin 2.3.3 and SP2 Upgrade for XP
>
> .....
> I seem to recall that SP2 causes a variety or problems - and I can't recall whether any of them have to do with connecting Psions through PsiWin.  Does anyone know whether there's a good reason to stall about instlling SP2?  I searched the archive on XP a few days ago - but didn't discover what I was searching for. Can anyone advise me about this?  It seems extremely odd that I can't connect with either of my Psion machines. >
> Melvin Woody

Date: 6 Jan 2005 09:16:56 +0100
From: Bernard Hill <address truncated>
Subject: Re: The Digest V1 # 668

In message <address truncated>, The Digest <address truncated> writes
>   In the midst, Windows wanted to send an error report and upon doing so, wanted to install System Pack 2.  It tells me this once a day.  But >I seem to recall that SP2 causes a variety or problems - and I can't recall whether any of them have to do with connecting Psions through >PsiWin.  Does anyone know whether there's a good reason to stall about instlling SP2?

Service Pack 2 can cause existing software to stop working. That's all I
know in detail. But a recent UK computer magazine columnist recommended
people not to install it for that reason.

I am a software author (not Psion related) and I know that sometimes my
software won't load existing files after SP2 installed. Fortunately a
re-install of my software after the SP2 installation makes it work again
but I am very unhappy because I don't know why. It simply refused to
open any file on disk with no sensible reason. And only on some
computers.

I believe you can uninstall SP2 OK.
--
Bernard Hill
Braeburn Software
Selkirk, Scotland

Date: 6 Jan 2005 10:41:08 +0100
From: Phil Aypee <address truncated>
Subject: Solun

Hi Folks,

Alan (Morris), FreEPOC (http://www.freepoc.org) also have most (all?) David Rushall's programs and they have Solun 5.2 for EPOC (ER5). Perhaps version 5.43 has not been released.

Dave's site (http://www.piecafe.co.uk, demon no more) is apparently being revamped.

Happy days,
Phil.

"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes.
This may be the purpose of the universe."

http://www.philaypee.co.uk/

Date: 6 Jan 2005 10:48:56 +0100
From: Ian Chapple <address truncated>
Subject: S7 to netbook conversion

Bruce,
>>2. Re: recent news of easy conversion of S7 to NetBook: Would that conversion write off a 16MB memory expansion in the S7? (I suspect that it would.)<<

If you could fit your S7 memory expansion, then you can definitely fit a netbook personality module. Just make sure that you remove all batteries before doing this; some people report doing these kinds of upgrades without removing power, which is *absolutely* not
recommended. Unfortunately, you are right in guessing that the S7 16MB expansion will not work; I know, because I've just done this myself:-(

Cheers, Ian.

Date: 6 Jan 2005 13:46:18 +0100
From: Itamar Engelsman <address truncated>
Subject: Connecting to XP,

Answer to: Melvin Woody

Re.: Connecting to XP - I upgraded to SP2 both at home and at work and still am able to connect without problems. It could be the problem lies with the COM port Psiwin is trying to use. It might be that you installed another program that keeps the COM port occupied not allowing Psiwin to use it. And of course a very stupid question, but are you sure you set Psiwin in properties to the right COM port ?  Under baut rate enter maximum attainable.

Best regards,
Itamar Engelsman
London, UK

Date: 6 Jan 2005 14:13:00 +0100
From: Steve Litchfield <address truncated>
Subject: Long term review of Nokia 9500.

Thought you might like to read through my long term 9500 test. Written very much from an ex-Psion point of view 8-)

http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/reviews/nokia9500.htm

Steve Litchfield

Date: 6 Jan 2005 17:14:22 +0100
From: Itamar Engelsman <address truncated>
Subject: Frontview for P910

Recently I downloaded a new program called Frontview. It replaces the view of the P910 with the flap closed from the boring standard view to a more attractive one with more functions. Even though I have a theme installed on my P910 I can still have a nice photo when the flap is closed (currently a fitting winter landscape). The standard screen shows at the top the next appointment in the diary as well as where you are (see further down). Just above the flap it show a list of data giving the number of open programs that could be closed, available RAM, free space on the internal disk and memory stick, estimated time left on the battery and probabillity of motion and area recognition (unnecessary for me). Jsut above it are the time and date.
You can switch on the key lock by pressing the # button only, * gives you all the data of the bottom row in clear view, the back button returns you to the standard standby view. Turning the dial away or towards you brings you a list with the options "Call list, Messages, Contacts, Calendar, Tasks" . Pressing the dial down changes the top line of the view to a operator (vodaphone), To do or Note. When in the standard view the internet button will bring you back again to Frontview. As a screensaver it has a larger clock than the standard view and an indicator for missed calls and received SMS's.

This is not a program you really need, but it does make the standard view look nicer, and that is the one you look at the most in the end, and it does enhance the available functions on the standard view.

I found two annoying things about it. First of all I would like to have the option that the screensaver will not come on if the phone is connected to the mains or car. Secondly every minute the screen jumps from the Frontview to the standard view and back, and I don't know why. I have contacted the Company but did not yet receive an answer

Best regards,
Itamar Engelsman
London, UK

Date: 6 Jan 2005 18:14:48 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Leaving the digest / Winlink e-mail / Position reports

Dear everyone.

There has been some speculation that the reason I'm now leaving the digest for good is the re-emergence of the Thought For The Day debate. Let me assure you all that this is not the case.

I did consider leaving the digest a year ago, but back then the TFTD debate was only part of the reason. Using a GSM connection with a PAYG card to receive e-mail is an expensive luxury for someone operating on a shoestring budget. If I had left the digest a year ago, I would now have had more money to spend in Brazil, but it is not easy to part with a community where I've been a member for so many years. Common sense would imply that I should have left back then and the TFTD debate brought me a bit closer to making that decision, but not quite close enough.

I am now preparing to leave the Canary Islands to sail to Cabo Verde, Brazil and points beyond. The passage to Cabo Verde will take around one week, the crossing from Cabo Verde to Brazil around three weeks. Obviously, GSM phones do not work in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, so I will not be able to get my e-mail using the Psion and GSM phone like I've been doing since the day the old Ericsson SH-888 came on the market. Instead I'll be using a Pactor 1 modem connected to my HAM (amateur radio) SSB transceiver to send and receive e-mail via the Winlink system. Unfortunately, there is no Winlink software for EPOC, so I will have to use my Toshiba. Thankfully, it's very easy to import and export messages to the Airmail software as text files, so I can still write my messages on the Psion and just transfer them to the Toshiba for sending.

The way the system works is that a connection is made from my Toshiba via the modem and radio transmitter to a remote station somewhere on land. The remote station is known as a PMBO and consists of a similar setup of SSB transceiver, modem and computer and has a broadband Internet connection. It will send my outbound mail out on the Internet upon receipt from me (via a dedicated SMTP server) and connects to the central Winlink server at regular intervals to check for inbound messages so that they will be on the PMBO computer the next time I connect.. The system is simplex which means that both stations switch automatically between transmitting and listening on the same frequency.

The remote station or PMBO will typically monitor three to six different frequencies on different bands and once I am connected to a PMBO, nobody else can connect to that PMBO on ANY of its frequencies until I'm finished. This also means that while the PMBO is occupied on another frequency, I will not be able to connect even if the frequency I'm using is free. It's a bit like an ISP having only one modem.

The Winlink service like all Amateur radio services is free of charge. It is illegal to make money off amateur radio (excluding of course the people who sell the hardware...). The PMBO's run their stations as a hobby on their own time and money. Considering that the cost of the SSB transceiver, Pactor modem, computer and antennas needed to up a PMBO would run well into four figures in euros, pounds or dollars, it is quite amazing that there are several PMBO's scattered around the world, many of them operating more than one radio, computer and modem to allow two or more users to connect at the same time (on different frequencies of course).

As the transfer speed is considerably slower than a plain vanilla GSM connection, it follows that bandwidth is very limited. It would take several minutes to transfer the e-mail you are reading now. To avoid one user keeping a PMBO occupied so nobody else can get through, each user is limited to 30 minutes connection time per day. When I connected to Winlink just now (via VE1YZ in Canada), I had three outbound messages totalling 3225 bytes and one inbound of 326 bytes. My connection time was close to 10 minutes. Considering that a typical Digest is 15-25kb, it becomes obvious that I can not receive daily digests via Winlink. If I'd been able to afford a Pactor 2 or 3 modem, transfer speed would start to approach that of a plain vanilla GSM connection.

If I was receiving daily copies of The Digest, I would get into a situation where the amount of inbound mail on the server was increasing beyond what I would be able to receive in the time allowed and I would always have a backlog of inbound mail. There will also be days when radio conditions are bad and I will not be able to connect at all and with a daily digest coming into my mailbox, I would have a very big problem if I was unable to connect for a few days. There is also the consideration that The Digest could be seen as commercial traffic which is illegal on amateur radio. The other alternative would be using a Satellite phone for e-mail, but the call charges would be prohibitive.

An SSB transceiver is a power hungry beast, and it will take my solar panels several hours on a good sunny day to put back into my batteries what I use up for the transceiver and computer on a 30 minute connection. In other words, I will limit my Winlink traffic to short personal messages to friends and family and my Winlink e-mail address will be given out on a need to know basis only (though anyone who knows my HAM callsign can figure out what my Winlink e-mail address is).

If you wish to monitor my progress across the ocean, you can do so by going to www.winlink.org and clicking the "Station locator" button. You will need to enter my call sign which is LA7QZ. There should be a couple of position reports there now, so you can have a look and see how it works. My position will also be on Shiptrack which can be found on www.mmsn.org (but there are no position reports from me on Shiptrack yet).

Digest members wishing to contact me can still do so through my Frisurf address <address truncated>. My mother will be monitoring that address and forwarding anything that looks important enough and short enough to send on to my Winlink address. I'll unsubscribe from the digest in a couple of days time, but will send a private e-mail to the digest team when I set sail so that you guys will know that I'm out there on the big blue yonder.

Regards, and thanks for being such a great crowd!

Owen, LA7QZ and Tita the ship's cat.

Thought for the day:
The two most beautiful things in life are
a ship under sail and a woman in love.
Be their master, and they will guard you faithfully.
Be weak, and they will surely take you to hell.
And if to hell I must go, then give me a ship!
--
Owen H. Morgan
Yacht "Naomi J.", LD-9311 / LA7QZ-MM

On the hard @ 27°46.9'N 15°42.6'W
Puerto Rico de Gran Canaria

Phone and SMS:
In Spain: +34 620520079
In Norway: +47 92053097
http://home.no.net/naomij

Date: 6 Jan 2005 18:15:00 +0100
From: Owen H. Morgan <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Spam Software

Howdy!

G Y Reyes wrote (> ):

> One of the best I heard about from an IT Manager
> was spam software that asks you to register
> legitimate email addresses.  Once it encounters a
> new email address, it sends out a prompt allowing
> the user to confirm acceptance of the email
> address.  All unaccepted are treated as spam.

This is is possibly the worst of all! I have several times received an e-mail, replied to it and got a message back that I have to go to some web site to confirm that I'm a legitimate person because the user had not put my e-mail address on his whitelist. The only way I could visit that website is to get in my dinghy, row ashore and walk to an Internet café. I know my situation is special, but I'm not the only mobile user in the world. I'm now in the process of switching to only using Winlink e-mail via SSB radio. This has the advantage of working even from halfway across the Atlantic, but it is an EXTREMELY slow system and there is no web access.

I'll repeat again. I NEVER EVER receive spam. I am not using any spam filters. My ISP is not using any spam filters. I have simply been very careful with my e-mail address. As I have not received any spam at all for the last couple of years, I can state categorically that in spite of using no antispam software, I do not receive spam as a result of being on this digest. QED.

> This friend brought his spam rate down to
> practically zero from thousands a day with no loss
> of legitimate messages.

How do you know there was no loss of legitimate messages?

Any system which requires the user to check the "spam" messages regularly to see whether a ligitimate message has been marked as spam is in my opinion more trouble than simply dealing with the spam.

Owen

Thought for the day:

The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of:
1. a date,
2. his wife,
3. a better looking and richer male friend.
--
Owen Morgan
Yacht "Naomi J.", LD-9311 / LA7QZ-MM
On the hard @ 27°46.9'N 15°42.6'W
Pueto Rico de Gran Canaria

http://home.no.net/naomij
Phone and SMS:
Spain +34 620520079
Norway +47 92053097

Date: 6 Jan 2005 18:59:32 +0100
From: "Eric de Bruijn" <address truncated>
Subject: Re: RMRalarm.opx

Vlad A <address truncated> wrote:
> I found the following in my collection: Alarm.sis < Alarm.sis is in my collection too. This is a Symbian OPX if I'm not mistaken. Tnx anyway.

Chris S Handley wrote:
> I'm pretty sure that no WINS version was ever released - certainly it isn't included in the official(?) RMR WINS OPX zip file. If you *do* ever find a WINS version, then please could you send me a copy? < I feared it was so. I'm trying to contact the author now, let's see what happens...

Greetz,

Eric de Bruijn,
Rotterdam

Date: 6 Jan 2005 21:24:30 +0100
From: andrew searle <address truncated>
Subject: no subject

Hi

I have a Psion revo plus I notice that on the rear ofthe machine there are what look like two small holesnumbered 1 & 2
Could some one enlighten me as to what these do, Iassume they are re-set buttons of some sort

regards

Andrew

Date: 5 Jan 2005 01:10:00
From: Rolf Vonau <address truncated>
Subject: Re: Connecting to XP

Hi Melvin,
I stated, that PsiWin was very slovenly developed, what causes, that, even when you close PsiWin, some processes are not closed at the WindowsXP- PC.
Try to solve this problem by the following actions:
1. open the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del),
2. go to the register processes,
3. kill the following processes (Del + Enter) in the given order:
Copyany.exe
Elogerr.exe
Expdlg.exe
Psconsv.exe
Wprntsvr.exe
PRC32ENG.exe
All these processes were opened by PsiWin and partially not closed. If you not close PRC32ENG.exe at last, it will appear again.
4. Close the Task Manager
5. With the cursor go over the PsiWin icon and the CopyAnywhere icon in the system tray, so that they disappear.

I'm  always solving this problem at my laptop by this way.

--
BR
Rolf