PSIONs are awesome, I had an
Organizer II back in the '80s, I got the Comms Link to pair it with a Mitutoyo Digital Caliper that had a Computer Interface.
I've still got the Caliper, but the LCD is too dim to actually use now. I started out doing a project that I called OmniScale, which would allow a graphic artist to input a single measurement on a plan or graphic from the spec at whatever the caliper measured at the time. Thereafter, the Organizer II would automatically output the scaled size for every measurement made thereafter for that indexed scale. Naturally you would have been able to specify a scale and use the Organizer's readings to set the caliper half of the combo to size for making scaled drawings.
No offense intended, but it always seemed to me that most (and most certainly not all) Graphic Designers (at least of those I did sign work for or dealt with at NYMUG) couldn't use an architect's scale without mixing the scales up, had trouble using the circular slide rule specifically intended/designed for scaling graphics, and couldn't do scaled measurements with a regular ruler and a calculator without getting all glassy eyed a/o complaining of a headache. Some were really sharp, especially one (who became a friend) that was a trained architect.
My ex-partner on the Font Emulator project adopted and made off with my Organizer II, but I'd long since stopped trying to get the two toys to work together. My sign making machine's smallest useful scale output was 1/10th, where the previous generation had done 1/8th. I couldn't do .125 on my newer machine and .12 or .13 just doesn't cut it. When I realized that .10 was just fine with the Digital Caliper, I started moving the decimal point in my head and using a copier to scale artwork to .10 or .010/whatever. The caliper read my 1/10 scale plots with ease!
Those were the days . . . sigh . . .
)
p.s.They really were, part of why the shine came off the PSION was that I bought one of Sir Clive's Masterpieces directly from England . . . the
Cambridge Z88! Methinks this was the precursor of the AlphaSmart and several others.
p.p.p. I never did get that PSION 3! Nuts!
