I think we can all agree that I've picked a particularly niche area of #retrocomputing. In fact, if you count the fact that I really focus on #Psion's 16-bit machine, one could say it's a niche within a niche within a niche.

In spite of this, there is still so much that I can work on! A lot of SIBO (hardware) and EPOC16 (software/OS) hasn't been explored for decades, if it ever was by the community.

And modern advances in technology make it so much easier to do things. For example, #PsiDrive would have looked very different and been much more expensive to produce 15 years ago.

Why am I mentioning this? Well, different parts of me want to do different things.

A new #Psion SIBO SDK is, from the outside, not something all that interesting to those who don't understand what an SDK is. CLI tools are boring. This is not a bad thing - they should be boring! They need to get out of your way. But it's hard to go to a #retrocomputing con/fest and show the work that you've done on recreating a C preprocessor. Compilers (one day, one day...) are only interesting to other developers, and generally only appreciated by those who understand how difficult it is to write one.

Hardware is easier for people to grasp, figuratively and literally. I'd like to show a thing. #PsiDrive is good for this. Physical PCBs that you can show working. I would like to revisit making an SSD with an RP2350 - that would be useful for all sorts of reasons.

There's also all the research on the platform that underpins all of these. Logic analysers attached to pins, the ROM dumps, the photos of the PCBs, the uncovered or recreated documentation. Again, this is hard for people to see.

There is, of course a not-so-subtle subtext in those three paragraphs. There are projects that I think are useful, and there are projects that are more likely to grab people's attention. Those two categories aren't mutually exclusive, but they do vary from project to project. And many clearly have less of the latter.

@thelastpsion@oldbytes.space I'm certainly interested - unfortunately, my parents threw my Series 3a in the trash 15 years ago, so it might be a bit tricky for me to acquire hardware ^^;