Hints & Tips

Andrew "Sooty" Corbett wrote to tell me about his problems using a new Psion Series 5 with a Windows 3.1 PC. PsiWin doesn't support Windows 3.1, and requires that you have Windows 95 or Windows NT. Andrew uses RCOM, a free (and unsupported) download from the Psion web site (http://www.psion.com). RCOM was released with the Series 3 to support file transfer and communication with PCs, long before synchronisation was thought of or PsiWin 1.0 was available for the Series 3. RCOM runs inside a DOS box; it won't run on Windows 95 or NT at all. It works with the standard serial cable supplied with a Series 5 at 115kbps. Andrew says: "It can run under Win 3.1 and provides a shell that makes the Psion's drives visible. of course there's no conversion but with judicious use of batch files I can now print my work during the day to print files in a PRINT folder and then copy them to a C:\print directory on the PC and DOS PRINT C:\*.*

I can also move plain text between PC and Psion so for example, I can create long emails on the hoof and then paste them into my PC mail client when I get home. and do major text entry on the PC and import the results into Psion Word.

It's a slightly kludgy workaround (and eventually I will upgrade to Win 9x or NT - current hardware doesn't permit it ) but believe me, for a Win 3.1 or even DOS user it's nothing short of a *revolution* in functionality!"

Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: August 18, 1999