The Atari ST was introduced in 1984 as a competitor to the Commodore Amiga.
At the time it was an advanced machine, way ahead of the then putative IBM. PC. Costing roughly the same in monetary terms as the present Psions it had a true 16 bit processor, a graphical user interface and a full half megabyte of memory upgrade able to 4 megs. This was at a time when most computers still only had 32 or 64 kilobytes of RAM. Unfortunately poor marketing and bad management led to Atari's demise and the company only exists now as part of a disk drive manufacturer. The ultimate (in both senses) Atari machine was the Falcon which is still being made under licence and can hold it's head up quite well even in today's world of high speed Pentiums.
If you wish to connect your Psion to one of these computers I have a couple of bits of bad news for you. Firstly, there is no way to avoid having to purchase a Psion serial link to make the connection. With Psion's current sales arrangement this means paying around £80 for a copy of Psi-Win which is of absolutely no use to you unless you also have access to a P.C. Secondly you will have to pay a few more pounds for a 9 pin to 25 pin adapter. The original 3-link was able to plug directly into the Atari but as Psion in their wisdom have decided to only fit a 9-pin connector to the newer serial links, you have no choice but to cough up the extra dough.
Before considering suitable software there is another problem. Most computers use a chip called a UART to drive their serial port. This deals with all the complex business of buffering and controlling the data from the port, and converting it into parallel data that the computer can understand. Atari for some reason used another method. The Atari serial port is almost entirely designed in software, with unused pins on otherwise unrelated chips used for the physical interface. This explains the Atari's relatively slow maximum data rate of 19,200 baud, but it also creates another problem. The serial port also needs what is known as hand-shaking. This controls the flow of data through the port, and is consequently often known as flow-control. The problem is that some versions of the Atari firmware did not handle this function of the port very well, resulting in data continuing to be sent after the receiving device has asked for it to stop. This results in corrupted data.
There are several cures to this problem, normally in the form of small software 'patches' which need to be run when the computer is first turned on. This is accomplished by copying them to the AUTO folder (sub-directory) on the disk used to boot the computer. If you do not already have one of these utilities installed in your machine, they are freely available on any bulletin board which supports the Atari platform. Even better is HSModem which completely replaces the built in serial port software. It is not easy to configure, but once working it cures all problems with the serial port and on newer machines allows them to increase their data rate above the normal limit of 19,600 baud.
There is of course no official link software available for the Atari range, but there are some excellent shareware products to link the two machines. The most popular is S3-ST written by Keith Baines, another option being my own contribution to the scene: STlink.
Both programs basically work in the same manner, but with totally different user interfaces. S3-ST simulates the normal Atari graphical interface by opening two windows, one displaying icons for the files on the Psion, and the other showing files on the Atari. Files are transferred by clicking-and-dragging them from one window to the other in the normal Atari manner.
STlink, on the other hand, uses a dual file-selector type of interface similar to that used by archiving programs like STZip. Files can be selected and then copied by clicking on one of the Copy buttons. Both programs have facilities for incremental back-ups and can carry out other file management functions such as creating directories and deleting files.
Which program you use is a matter of choice but I do have to admit that S3-ST is now the more advanced option. Impressively, both programs give better backup times than the official Psi-Win utility.
Unlike Psi-Win and the interface software for most other computers, neither S3-ST nor STlink use the built in remote link on the Psion. The disavantage of this is that the link can only be controlled from the Atari, and the Psion cannot directly access programs and data held on the Atari disc drives. It also means that a small application must be loaded and run on the Psion. This is a bit of a Catch-22 situation in that you cannot transfer files onto the Psion until you have transferred a file to the Psion. Thankfully both authors have accounted for this and provide an installation facility which assists you to set up the link. In both cases you run the installation software on the Atari and carefully follow the instructions displayed on the screen. These guide you through uploading a small OPL program which you translate and run. The translated program then takes over the link and completes the installation.
Once you've finally got the link up and running, what can you do with it? Unlike Psi-Win there are no file conversion facilities available for the Atari, but there is enough common ground between the two machines to make file transfer worthwhile.
S3-ST actually includes a program which can read your Psion data files on the Atari. Even without this, it is possible to transfer data files between the Atari and Psion as Tab or Comma delimited text files. Most Atari database programs can accept or export these and convert to and from their own formats. One advantage of the Atari is that unlike most alternative computers it basically uses the same disc format as a P.C. This means that provided they are of the same density, discs can be swapped between the two types of computer. I've made use of this to bring back databases from work, which I have been able to convert and upload to my Psion via my Falcon.
Spreadsheet files are a little more of a problem, but Data Interchange Format (.DIF) is common to both platforms. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that it is only possible to copy the cell values via a DIF file, formulae and cell formats will be lost.
Word files are easily convertible via the Rich Text Format. Older Psions do not support this format directly but RTF drivers are easily available which may be placed in your WDR directory. Virtually all Atari document processors (e.g. Papyrus) support the RTF format and allow Psion Word documents to be imported accurately. Older word processors such as First Word Plus can always import plain text files although care has to be taken with the interpretation of carriage returns and 'hard' spaces. In practice I find it far better to import Word documents and print from the Atari, than to print directly from the Psion, as it means that there is a wider choice of fonts available, and accurate Tab setting is far easier using the Atari's graphical interface.
The one built-in application which does not transfer, is the Agenda. Unfortunately I know of no equivalent software for the Atari and the Agenda is only capable of saving in its own format.
There is no equivalent of Psi-Print on the Atari, but a search on a bulletin board soon found a couple of utilities which allowed data received through the Atari's serial port to be redirected straight to the parallel port for printing. This allows the normal Psion printer drivers to be used. An alternative is to make the Psion print to a file which can be transferred to the Atari. The Atari can then print the file by double-clicking on it's icon.
If you use bulletin boards at all, or 'surf the Net' you will know that most software comes in an archived format, more often than not as a ZIP file. The Atari supports virtually all the current archive formats and in most cases does so far easier than on any other computer. This makes the Atari ideal for gathering programs to use on your Psion. You may even access the World Wide Web from the Atari using Crystal Atari Browser, and view the Palmtop pages.
With a few reservations the Atari and Psion computers work very well together and you might want to ponder the fact that "Atari" and "ST" are included in the Psion spell-checker dictionary, whilst "Amiga" and "Mac" are not!
S3-ST by Keith Baines available as S3-ST200.ZIP on Cix in atari.st/2listings STlink by Gary Bainbridge available on http://www.compulink.co.uk/~bainb/stlink.htm HSModem by ????????? available ???????