page_title: Psion Organiser
section_title: Organiser II
hierarchical_section_title: Psion Organiser / Organiser II
caption_attribution_description: Psion Organiser II
context_page_description: The Psion Organiser was the brand name of a range of pocket computers developed by the British company Psion in the 1980s. The Organiser I and Organiser II had a characteristic hard plastic sliding cover protecting a 6×6 keyboard with letters arranged alphabetically.
  The Organiser II competed with the Filofax and can be considered the first usable Electronic organizer, or Personal digital assistant in that it combined an electronic diary and searchable address database in a small, portable device.
  Production of consumer hand-held devices by Psion has now ceased; the company, after corporate changes, now concentrates on hardware and software for industrial and commercial data-collection applications.
  On an episode of The Gadget Show, the Psion was pitted against the BlackBerry for a place on the show's Hall of Fame. Whilst the Psion was highly praised as a device that pioneered portable computing, the accolade was ultimately given to the BlackBerry.
  As of autumn 2017 several software features and hardware devices are still being developed and are available including a Javascript Emulator, Parallel Interface, USB Commslink, 32k and 256k RamPaks, and 512k FlashPak.
context_section_description: In 1986, the successful Organiser II introduced a number of hardware improvements, a better keyboard and display, a much larger ROM and either 8 KiB or 16 KiB of battery-backed RAM, and featured a capable newly designed single-tasking operating system. The first Organiser II models featured a two-line display. The new model supported a number of different types of improved DATAPAKs, containing either EPROM or battery-backed RAM storage, each storing between 8 KiB and 128 KiB of data. Later flashpaks (EEPROM) and RAMpaks were added to the range, capable of storing up to 256 KiB on each extension slot.
  The machine had vastly more application functionality, including a number of built-in application programs, an easy-to-use database, a diary and an alarm clock and featured end-user programmability in the form of the successful Organiser Programming Language (OPL), a BASIC-like language, which was compiled to intermediate code, in contrast to the interpreters, which were commonly available for other consumer computers of the time. More advanced users could reach into the system machine-code routines, either by direct machine code or by calls from OPL, and could manipulate the built-in address database, as well as create their own.
  The Organiser II was widely used for commercial applications in companies such as Marks and Spencer, where it was used on the shop floor, with their branding as opposed to PSION's and with only limited keys visible to the end user. It was also used in the world's first large-scale application of mobile technology in government, where over 3000 were used for benefit calculations by the Employment Services department of the UK government.
  The Organiser II also had an external device slot, into which various plug-in modules could be fitted, including a device that provided an RS232 port (called "CommsLink"), thus enabling it to communicate with other devices or computers. This "top slot" also supported various other hardware additions, such as telephone dialers, a speech synthesiser, barcode reader and even a dedicated thermal printer. This latter was used by several banks as a counter-top exchange-rate calculator for some years. As it was easy to get hardware specifications, numerous bespoke devices were developed by small companies such as A/D converters and even an interface to the entire range of Mitutoyo measuring equipment, allowing it to be used in quality control for various car manufacturers.  Later models in the Organiser II range offered other hardware improvements, with 4-line displays, and also models were introduced with 32, 64 and 96 KiB RAM.
caption: Psion Organiser II with cover
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