Project PDA

Operating system used by the brand Psion PDA. The Epoc16 (16 bits) is the most basic of them being the superior version Epoc32 (32 bits), which enables multitasking and competes with Windows CE. Desktop utilities - and software for - portable devices such as PDAs (in particular Psions running EPOC), and portable media players (eg. MP3 and video transcoding).

EPOC1

EPOC16, originally simply named EPOC, is the operating system developed by Psion in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Psion's "SIBO" devices. All EPOC16 devices feature an 8086-family processor and a 16-bit architecture. EPOC16 is a single-user pre-emptive multitasking operating system, written in Intel 8086 assembler language and C and designed to be delivered in ROM.

EPOC32, Symbian OS

EPOC32 was originally developed for the ARM family of processors, including the ARM7, ARM9, StrongARM and Intel's XScale, but can be compiled towards target devices using several other processor types.

During the development of EPOC32, Psion planned to license EPOC to third-party device manufacturers, and spin off its software division as Psion Software. One of the first licensees was the short-lived Geofox, which halted production with less than 1,000 units sold. Ericsson marketed a rebranded Psion Series 5mx called the MC218, and later created the EPOC Release 5.1 based smartphone, the R380. Oregon Scientific also released a budget EPOC device, the Osaris (notable as the only EPOC device to ship with Release 4).

In June 1998, Psion Software became Symbian, a major joint venture between Psion and phone manufacturers Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia. As of Release 6, EPOC became known simply as Symbian OS.

The first version of EPOC32, Release 1 appeared on the Psion Series 5 ROM v1.0 in 1997. Later, ROM v1.1 featured Release 3 (Release 2 was never publicly available. These were followed by the Series 5mx, Revo / Revo plus, Series 7 / netBook and netPad (which all featured Release 5).

EPOC is based on an earlier operating system from Psion, the first major manufacturer of personal digital assistants (PDAs). The term is no longer in use and is now referred to as Symbian OS. 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.