How to emulate your EPOC PDA under Windows

There are 3 steps involved in setting up the EPOC emulator on Windows:

• obtain the emulator
• install it correctly
• configure it to 'see' your backed up EPOC PDA data.

There's good info on these topics on this page, only quite spread out ;o) Also info about obtaining Win32 versions of common EPOC libraries.

Obtaining the Emulator

The emulator is distributed for free with the EPOC software development kits (SDKs) from the Partner Program at Psion Teklogix' website. Any one of the three language SDKs will do - the Java one is smallest, at only(!) 16.5MB.

Installation

N.B. I've paraphrased these instructions from Teklogix' site. It is crucial that you do this correctly, or the emulator won't work.

The SDK must be installed into the root directory of a drive. In order to do this, it may be necessary to use the DOS command SUBST to create a new virtual drive, which points to the directory where you wish the SDK to be installed. For example, if you want the SDK to be installed in c:\Psion\SDK, open a Command Prompt window and type "subst x: c:\Psion\SDK" [where x is an unused drive]; an X drive will have appeared as if by magic in Windows Explorer. Now extract the contents of the SDK zip file into a temporary location. Run 'setup.exe', and when it asks which drive you want it to install into, select your newly created drive letter.

Configuration

This configuration routine will make your Psiwin/EPOCConnect backup folder appear as drive P within the emulator.

First, you need to make a note of the pathname where your backup is stored. This path will include the name you assigned to your PDA when you first connected it via Psiwin/EPOCConnect, followed by '\Backup', and will be found on your boot drive under a folder entitled 'Psion' or 'EPOC'. In my case its 'E:\EPOC\iannetBook\Backup'. You need to insert this pathname appropriately into the sys.bat file that you use to run the emulator. Make sure you alter the correct sys.bat file. There is usually more than one in the emulator. Choose the sys.bat file that, when double-clicked, gives you a picture of the whole of your Psion screen in a normal fashion on your PC screen. This is usually X:\Epoc32\Tools\E32-sys.bat.

The following line needs to be inserted / edited in the sys.bat file:

SET _EPOC_DRIVE_P=<your pathname>

so for me this would read:

SET _EPOC_DRIVE_P=E:\EPOC\iannetBook\Backup

The resulting sys.bat file will look like this:

@echo off

SET _EPOC_DRIVE_P=E:\EPOC\iannetBook\Backup

REM change to drive and then directory of WSEXE.EXE

C:

cd \epoc32\release\wins\deb

epoc.exe -Mepoc --

When the emulator is run, my backup folder now appears as drive P on the Psion. Its so cool!!

Page last updated: October 28, 2003