My first attempt at getting my Psion MC400 “online” via an attached Raspberry Pi had partially failed due to good old RS232 hardware handshaking issues when using my custom shortened Psion serial cables (the FTDI USB-serial modules I’d selected didn’t expose DTR/DSR/DCD signals, these are needed by the Psion Link/MCLINK.EXE file sharing protocol). I could still open a serial terminal session to the Pi but not establish the “Link” for file sharing. My aim was to use the MC400 basically as a text processor and save text files to the Pi – from where they could then be synced to cloud services (gdrive etc. via rclone) or processed automagically by scripts on the Pi into tweets/SMS/emails/whatever.
UPDATE: more elegant scripting and screenshot image file conversion 😎
Now things are working much better thanks to some pl2303 modules that do have all the necessary signals; soldered on to the ends of the shortened Psion serial link cables that will also work with Series 3/3a/3c “soap-on-a-rope” 3Link.
As noted in the comments there are a few different versions of Psion serial cables around and some have different colour schemes for the internal wires. If you’re thinking of adding USB/Serial modules to a standard Psion serial cable I strongly recommend actually buzzing-out your cable with a multimeter to make sure your connections are correct.
My MC400 has 2 x serial ports – port A (on the left) is used by the terminal to log in and start/stop scripts etc. on the Pi and port B (on the right) is used by The Link to access the DOS file-system emulated on the Pi. Running MCLINK.EXE in dosbox-x on the Pi and starting the Link application on the MC now allows the MC to load/save files directly from/to the Pi. /home/pi/mc400 is mounted as REM::C:\ on the MC400. I’ve created subdirectories on the Pi like /home/pi/mc400/TWEET, /home/pi/mc400/NOTES, /home/pi/mc400/EMAIL where I can save files to directly from the Psion. I’m currently refining some scripts on the Pi that run as cron jobs every few minutes and will tweet/sync-to-gdrive/email based on what they find in the above subdirectories.
I added a cheeky little PSION logo inside the Pi’s transparent lid (cut from the cardboard box of an old Series 3 mains power supply)
A particularly nasty script runs every 2 mins on the Pi (via crontab) to see if a file TWEET.TXT exists in /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/INBOX then simply tweets the contents of the file via rainbowstream before moving TWEET.TXT to /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/OUTBOX adding the date/time to the filename.
#!/bin/bash
if test -e /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/INBOX/TWEET.TXT ; then
content=`cat /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/INBOX/TWEET.TXT`
printf "\nt $content\nexit()" | /usr/local/bin/rainbowstream
sleep 15
mv /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/INBOX/TWEET.TXT /home/pi/mc400/TWEET/OUTBOX/TWEET`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S"`.TXT
fi
Next step will be to refine a simple OPL program I’ve written on the MC to get the tweet text and IOOPEN/IOWRITE/IOCLOSE the file directly to REM::C:\TWEET\INBOX\TWEET.TXT
This is currently very much a proof of concept, and mostly one-way (mainly MC –> Pi) but I’m planning on making it a little more two-way, with the Pi parsing incoming emails/tweets and placing text versions in the /home/pi/mc400/ directory structure that can be read directly on the MC. I’ve already got a really simple RSS/XML parser that creates a “BBC_NEWS.TXT” text file containing the top 15 BBC headlines, updated every 15 mins.
I’m powering both the MC400 and the Pi from the same USB battery (MC via a USB-to-12V converter). I might mount the Pi on the MC’s lid with some velcro at a later date to make things look a tiny bit more streamlined. My Pi has the Sense Hat installed and I’d planned on using the 8×8 RGB LED display to show some basic status of the MC link connection etc. but haven’t quite got there yet 😁
– maybe it’s a “minicomputer or mainframe” 😉
Room 7609 
Hi, whta’s the trick to get RTS/CTS etc. working on DOSBOX, I allways get some warings like : treid to activate hardware handshake, I’m trieing to copy files via Lapliking from an moderm win10 PC to an old DOS PC both have REAL comports, but hardware handshake is not working.
best regards
Frank
Hi – hardware handshaking can be a nightmare but it’s not clear to me what you’ve got connected to what. If you have a Win10 PC and an old DOS PC where are you running dosbox? It might just be a case of the physical cable(s) you’re using not having the handshaking lines connected through.
Win10 is running dosbox and LapLink is running on both sides.
It’s likely the software will try to set/read the states of the RTS/CTS + DSR/DTR signals and if it detects any failures/inconsistency it will raise the “Warning: tried to activate hardware handshake” error. Do you see the same error if your serial cable is not connected to the win10 pc? I’m no expert on Win10/dosbox though, doesn’t windows have Microsoft’s NTVDM virtual DOS machine? Might be worth trying with that.
Hi Christian – I’ve grabbed a couple of your suggested (Series 3) Psion cables, a couple of the identical USB-RS232 converters and was just about to make the cables up (while on a call at the same time – Multitasking never works) but wanted to check on your suggested pinout in the end here : https://zedstarr.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/20210908_121358.jpg
On the USB end, I’m presuming :
————————————
RI Black
CTS Purple
5V – Not Connected
DCD Yellow??
GND – Green
DTR – Brown + Blue ?
TX – Red
RTS – Grey
RX – Orange
DSR – Yellow??
————————————-
It looks like you’ve got two yellows??
Did you happen to take a pic of the end-state of the USB adaptor end?
Thanks in advance
Andy
I don’t think I have photos of that end, but your layout above agrees with some hand-written notes I have. And yes – yellow connects to both DCD & DSR at the USB end. Beware though as not all Psion cables use the same colour scheme – I have seen variations. Best to buzz out with a multimeter to make sure the signals from the USB end are going to the correct pins in the Psion-9-pin end 😉
On the USB Serial Port End
Here’s the colour-scheme I’ve found to work so far. Thanks for the plug pinout! (I buzzed out these Psion Series 3 cables as suggested!)
—————————————-
RI – 9 – Grey
CTS – 7 – Orange
5V –
DCD – 4- Green
GND – 5 – Black
—————————————-
DTR – 1/6 – Red / Purple
TX – 2 – Blue
RTS – 8 – Brown
RX – 3 – Yellow
DSR – 4 – Green
—————————————-
The above works to send and receive terminal messaging – But I still can’t get a Psion 3A or MC400 working on this with PSI-WIN 2.3… Anything I’ve mucked up above? (Any hints greatfully received!)..
PsiWin can be fickle – how are you running it?
I would try the DOS based MCLINK.EXE (which seems to be more robust/less picky about what hardware/OS it’s running on) to prove your cable. If you can transfer files using MCLINK then you know your cables are OK and PsiWin issues might be s/w compatibility. If MCLINK won’t connect either then the cable/wiring has to be suspect.