I realized I had no idea what actual platform these were (I'm old enough to remember longing for one of these but never had one back in the day).
It's powered by the NEV V20 [1] processor, which is a 16-bit chip that is code and pin compatible with the more famous Intel 8088. The NEC chip was launched in March of 1984 which is interesting given that the Psion 3a came in 1991.
It feels like today launching a product based on a 7-year old CPU is more rare.
It would be cool (but perhaps sacrilegious) to upgrade the existing motherboard to some Arm SoC/microcontroller, if possible. I thought of it now while writing this, so clearly someone has already done so.
> It feels like today launching a product based on a 7-year old CPU is more rare.
Well. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 has an ARM Cortex-A53 SoC. The Zero 2 was released in October 2021, and the A53 line in October 2012. I don't think you'd struggle to find other A53 devices being released after 2019.
It almost feels like the A53 line is a bit of a special case, but then again, so was the 8088...
It's powered by the NEV V20 [1] processor, which is a 16-bit chip that is code and pin compatible with the more famous Intel 8088. The NEC chip was launched in March of 1984 which is interesting given that the Psion 3a came in 1991.
It feels like today launching a product based on a 7-year old CPU is more rare.
It would be cool (but perhaps sacrilegious) to upgrade the existing motherboard to some Arm SoC/microcontroller, if possible. I thought of it now while writing this, so clearly someone has already done so.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_V20