It ain't what you do (It's the way that you do it)

Or so the song goes, and there is very much a point of thinking that the same principal can be applied to wargaming as a hobby. No matter what period you prefer, historical wargaming must, almost by definition, use (to varying degrees), historically accurate rulesets. I mean, if you didn't, then it's just a dice rolling contest and if I wanted that, I'd play a board game.

After my recent review of Operation Warboard, it was decided that the next Saturday game would use these rules for a World War 2 scenario. Despite some last minute hiccups (we moved from Normandy to Africa due to model availability - this meant some tinkering during the actually game as the rules are pretty much built for post D-Day games), four of us duly arrived the the pub (would that make us a quartwat???) to give Mr Lyall's rules a go. In preparation, no expense was spared on the production of the MG, Shell Burst and Artillery templates:

The joys of acetate sheets... but practical and cheap.

Shaun was first out of the gate, volunteering to be the Italian commander, Andy took the British and Steve controlled the German forces. The scenario was designed to mirror (in spirit only), the initial ambush scenario in the book. As I was umpiring, the forces were selected by myself, so the British got three infantry squads with transport, four Matilda's, two Honeys and a couple of Universal Carriers and Dingo's. The Germans got two infantry squads with transport, three Panzer II's, a short '75 equipped Panzer IV and two Pak-36's with transport. The Italians comprised of two infantry squads, three light tanks (which for the life of me I can't recall what they were) and a very light tankette.

Scenario-wise, the British could see a hill that would give them commanding views of the area, they had to capture it and the Axis forces had to stop them. As the Germans and Italians were already there, their positions were marked on a map but not placed upon the table - it was time to see how Andy would approach this. They would only be revealed by firing or very close observation.

The British came on to the table obliquely and make straight for two clumps of trees at the base of the escarpment - two Dingo's with Honey's and a UC in support. Andy figured that there would be a gun line hiding somewhere near there - after all, they were his toys on the table and whilst he knew what he had brought, he did not know what I had allowed the Germans and Italians to have - not for once that day did the famous quote by Mr B. Bunny Esq ring out: "Ain't I a stinker!"

The top Dingo is very, very warm in this game of "Finding Jerry!"

Steve waited until the British were practically on top of him before firing. To no effect. The return fire incapacitated one Pak-36, but the next round of firing killed the attached Bren Carrier. The other Pak-36 tried its best but still had no effect on the other Honey. The British closed and managed to MG the gun crews with only one of the Dingo's being incapacitated. So far, things were looking up for the British.

At this point, I added a dice role for spotting as even though the German infantry were dug in on the slope of the escarpment, the British were that close, they could have spotted them, and so they did.

At this point, Shaun decided that he should do something, so the Italian armour started a long and majestic sweeping herd-like charge across the length of the table. It was magnificent. Sadly, with only 20cm to cover each turn, it took a while. Still, it was magnifico! Which was good, as his infantry were dug in where the armour started so wouldn't be joining in the fight anytime soon.

Il Magnifico Quartetto.

Not only that, but Andy had brought on the Matilda troop and had angled it to meet the on-coming Italians. At that point, that flank was in limbo as whilst the armour was present, there wasn't a decent gun between the lot of them and it would take close quarter battle to sort out the victor there. At the same time, Andy brought on on infantry in trucks, screened by the armour, heading for the trees which had just been cleared of the Pak-36's.

Steve was not overly happy with this and released his armour reserve that had been hiding behind the hill. With the Panzer II's leading the way, trouble was brewing for the British.

It's all go here, the British have gone defensive at the top of the picture, whilst the Germans are ready to punch through the flank.

Needless to say, it didn't take long for the Germans to get into position, by which time, the British had taken up defensive positions in the trees.

That Dingo looks very, very worried... but there is a Honey on the left - that speck of blue paint.

Top Pz II is incapacitated, right hand one is dead, the Pz IV is out for a Saturday drive and the last Pz II is not long for this world.

It wasn't long before the firing happened, and what a cock-up that was. Steve rolled consistently bad dice for the Panzer IV - as the range closed and the effect of fire increased, he rolled 1's. The same could be said for the British, who eventually rolled well enough over three turns to incapacitate and then kill two of the Panzer II's. The last one was finally incapacitated and ruled out of the game as there was nothing they could do. The addition of vehicle crew morale was needed as despite Lyall stating common sense would dictate a withdrawal, he hadn't considered the "Death of Glory" mentality that Saturday wargamers in a pub sometimes have. Also, the 20, cannon on the Panzer II's wasn't in the rules so that was added as an ad-hoc gun, beefed up a little by the rate of fire it had. Still, you had to get in close and to the flanks to use it but it was no good here.

Given the losses to the German armour, I forced a morale check on the Pz IV - which he passed with style and off he trundled past the now de-bussed British infantry, shrugging off two volleys of rear-shots from the Honeys (two 1's from Andy at exactly the wrong time!). Truly, this was a blessed tank. Of course, Steve had a plan - approach the Matilda troop from behind! Sneaky Bugger!!!

The Panzer IV makes a break for freedom and aims to be tiresome to British Matilda's.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch flank, the Italians closed the gap, whilst the British remained steadfastly stoic. Long range fire was pointless for both sides so wait we did.

Add your best elevator muzak and that's what this felt like.

But now the waiting was over, and this is where is got a bit sticky for the British as whilst Andy incapacitated one of the Italians, the rest of his shots were 1's! By this point, the Pz IV had finished its handbrake turn and was fast approaching the rear of the British armour who themselves had to deal with the remaining Italians passing through their ranks! The British even reversed half a move - the Italians (and Shaun) went wild. A rendition of Nessun Dorma was heard from the Italian infantry - although quietly as they didn't want the British to know where they were.

At this point, the British were whistling their own tune - the Benny Hill Theme. You see, whilst the Italians were racing through the British and the Pz IV was in position, the British had a Honey following the Pz IV! It would have been farcical except for the firing. Oh, wait, that was too. At least partially. The Pz IV killed a Matilda, who in turn killed another Italian tank.

All we need now is a milk cart...

Sadly for the Axis, it wasn't a long lived success. The Italians were finished off and whilst the Pz IV killed three of the four Matilda's, (incidentally, forcing a morale test on the remaining Matilda, which it passed), it in turn was incapacitated by a rear shot from the pursuing Honey and finished off the next turn.

Whilst all that excitement was happening, the British infantry had continued its wandering, two squads in the trees and the third storming the first line of German infantry.

If you go down to the woods today...

The British go in, the Germans have already taken two casualties.

With Dingo, UC and Honey support, the British soon took the first trench line, albeit with some casualties - rifle fire and MG fire killed seven Germans, their return killed five British. Still, they took the first line and paused, to wait for the other two, untouched, squads to arrive before pushing on. It was all over for the Axis.

I had some idea as to how the game would work but what I did not expect was how easily it flowed. Really, there were no long gaps for rule book searching to find something out, no real issues with game mechanics and ad-hoc elements were slotted in very easily as expected, nay, demanded by the rules themselves. Since they felt right for the period, the way that we did it mattered more than what we did, and that was surely the point.

We'll definitely be using these again, though maybe with less stuff on the table, and probably fewer tanks as these rules are very infantry-centric. What was also noted is that despite the forty plus year gap, the machanics are very similar to Team Yankee - proof that there is nothing new under the sun, no matter how may pretty pictures you fill a book with. We all enjoyed the afternoon and, as always, the Consett Ale Works Pale Ale was superb, as were the beef butties! Thank you very much, Jean!

There won't be another gathering of TWATS until the demo game at the Durham Wargames Group show in June which will be me again, this time with Team Yankee (plus my additions) using Steve's wonderful 20mm Moderns. No doubt there shall be a report here.

Handspring Visor - oh, so close!

As I have said before, I used a Palm m515 for quite a while back in the early noughties to keep track of personal and professional commitments and very quickly got used to dropping it into my pocket and having it on hand on a daily basis. But it was not the only palmtop device at the time and, indeed, not the only Palm-based device either. Starting back in 1998, there were licensed hardware manufacturers for the Palm OS and some of the best devices came from Handspring.

Handspring was a company created by the original inventor of the Palm Pilot and the founders of Palm Computing, unhappy at the time of the way Palm was being ran by their corporate overlords. What they did was take the basic concept and take a slight left turn to create this: The Handspring Visor.

The Handspring Visor - looks just like a Palm device.

Screen cover, Visor and leather case

Looking pretty similar to the original Palm Pilot, the Visor had a few differences that made it stand out from the crowd. Yes, it ran using the same Motorola Dragonball processor with either 2 or 8Mb of memory. Some models had a translucent plastic casing (Jonathan Ive has alot to answer for!) but the device I have has a very simple black casing that hasn't really aged at all - not like the beige of home computers from the time. And yes, it ran on two replaceable AAA batteries that lasted up to two months(!).

Back of the Visor, SpringBoard to the top, battery compartment and dock connector to the bottom.

But what the Visor range offered as a unique selling point was the SpringBoard slot. On the back of the device was an expansion slot that offered a variety of options that could add to the Visor's usefulness.

The cover is in the background

Whilst a proprietary design, the SpringBoard gave the Palm OS platform the option of adding additional memory, software, wired and wireless networking, GPS and even cellular cards that turned the Visor into a mobile telephone. They truly were plug and play devices, with software being added to the device once you plugged a card in, contrasting vastly with the supposed plug and play of computing at the time where it was often called plug and pray!

Now I will say that the Visor, as a basic device, doesn't do anything a Palm handheld couldn't do, apart from a few basic application tweeks: the OS was the same, but with the Springboard slot, the versatility of the platform increased a hundred-fold - albeit at a cost, the modules could be quite expensive.

Bog-standard organiser

But back to the actual device for a moment. It sports a 160x160 16 grey-scale screen, an IR port on the left hand side for wireless syncing and a proprietary connection port on the base for a docking station connection to your desktop computer. For the time, this was a speedy option, using the relatively new USB connector, rather than the then traditional serial cable. It also made setting up the dock quick easy as you didn't have to fool around with any out-of-the-way settings. As an aside, it also means connecting to a modern day computer is straight forward - hardware wise. There is also a microphone port for use with the cellular expansions, but it does little else otherwise. Despite being made out of plastic, the Visor is quite solid in the hand and doesn't make any creaky noises when prodded and squeezed. And, whilst this may just be me, I find it quite natural to use the stylus and the easy to learn Graffiti handwriting system to enter information, something that can't really be said for any touchscreen device as you are taken away from the task by the manner in which the software on modern devices wants you to act. By that, I mean the brain `gets` writing but has to adapt to tapping and swiping - and that process varies depending on the individual application you are using.

IR port and detail of the ridge effect that prevented the device slipping from your hands

There were seven buttons on the front of the device, from left to right, they were: power (with a dimple for use with the included stylus), Calendar, Contacts, Up and Down, To-Do list and Memo. The silkscreen area above has shortcuts for Home, Calendar, Calculator and Search, plus the Graffiti area itself. This is divided into two, one for letters, the other for numbers with additional shortcuts for the on-screen keyboard and numeric keypad.

Visor and supplied screen cover - note included help sticker.

The help sticker, detailing the Graffiti handwriting system

The Visor I have was very cheap to buy but still works surprisingly well for something approaching its 20th birthday. The screen is still very responsive and the only niggle I would have using it today is the back-light - it's totally useless unless you are in a pitch-black room. Aside from that, I would happily use this today, and there are still places you can get desktop software if you have a quick Google (and hardware too!). The battery life is, compared to modern day alternatives, immense, and there is something to be said for prioritising battery life over other features, especially for devices used in this manner. Sadly, it seems that functionality beats practicality for many - and I say this as an iPhone 7 user who knows damn well how that has worked out!

So what happened to Handspring? Well, it was the curse of modern technology, poor management decisions and the market in general. It tried to move into mobile communications with the Treo range, halfway houses between organiser and mobile telephone, but they were a damp squib. They were bought out by Palm (of all people) in 2003, who were themselves bought out by Hewlett Packard in 2010 but by that point, the original ethos had fizzled out, replaced by ever more capable mobile phones. There was also a lot of corporate shenanigans about branding and licensing but that could fill a book in itself.

It's a shame, really, as it wasn't too difficult to carry two devices at the time (remember, long battery life and AAA batteries meant no charger to consider, and mobile phones would be good for three to five days back then) but maybe that's the nostalgia speaking. The m515 and by association, the Visor, are probably best remembered as very good technological dead ends, but that doesn't mean to say that if you can live with the (relatively) few limitations, you shouldn't be able to still use them today.

A Psion of the Times

If you are of a certain age and have an interest in tech, the name Psion may mean something to you. Coming to prominence during the 1980's home computer boom as both a hardware and software supplier, Psion rode the wave and successfully launched a range of electronic organisers, helpfully called the Psion Organiser, that whilst clunky and very 80's looking, their job well enough to gain a dedicated following. This allowed them to progress from the calculator-like Organiser II with a pocket computer that defined the company into the 90's and still, to this day, gives certain individuals a sense of glowing nostalgia when seen in public.

Closed from the top

The underside and the speaker

Underside with the "gull-wing" card slot covers open

The Series 3 was their first clamshell design, one which nailed the brief spectacularly. What you get is a pocket-friendly device with a hunt and peck keyboard that, by good design, is pretty much capable of decent typing speeds with a bit of use. This is down to the well-spaced layout and the slightly concave keys that help guide the fingers accurately. True, like all Psion clamshell designs, there were issues - namely a slightly fragile hinge and a ribbon connecting the gubbins in the bottom half to the screen that could fray and cause display problems, but that does not take away what they got so right with the Series 3.

There is a screen in there somewhere...

It's alive!!!

The screen, however, is a compromise, fair enough really given the year of release. As you can see, the screen on the original Series 3 is a bit lost in the lid and has a relatively poor resolution of 240x80, and that is one area they improved upon with the following Series 3a, where the display was not only physically bigger but offered a resolution of 480x160. The main processor is an NEC V30 running at 4.7MHz (a reverse-engineered copy of the Intel 8088 that powered the original IBM PC), coupled with 256Kb of RAM and 1MB of ROM that held the EPOC 16 operating system. Not exactly heady stuff at the time but then it did run north of 20 hours on two AA batteries.

A bit of Word.

A World Clock, circa 1991

The aforementioned Series 3a offered the bigger screen, a faster (7.68MHz) processor and double the RAM (and later 1 and 2MB models). The 3c (one of which I carried at university and sorely wish I had never sold on afterwards) bumped the RAM up to 2Mb and had a matte exterior (whilst some US models added a back-light to the display).Finally, the 3mx all offered a back-light and faster NEC V30MX processor running at 27.648 MHz. At that point, the Series 3 was retired for the Series 5.

Now I mentioned the batteries and their expected lifetime. Time was that the AA battery was ubiquitous and if you need to, replacing them was just a shop visit away. These days, with densely packed lithium battery tech, all I can say is good luck with that. True, high resolution colour displays and multi-gigahertz-clocked processors require that kind of power supply, but sometimes it would just be handy to be able to swap out old for new (or rechargeable) ones.

Anyhoo, back to the Series 3. The batteries are kept in the hinge and are easily accessible. The hinge itself is still pretty firm and doesn't feel in anyway compromised by the years of use - not bad for something made in 1991! That same hinge, on the interior, gives access to eight soft-keys - shortcuts for the built-in applications: System, Data, Word, Agenda, Time, World, Calc and Program. Pretty self-explanatory but as memory serves, both the Agenda, Data and Word applications were bloody good for their time and proved more than useful twenty years ago! In fact, I don't think I have used a better calendar application ever. The Program soft-key is of particular note, as having a programming language baked in meant that those who wished could program their own applications for the device.

Check out those short-cut keys.

Connectivity was well catered for too, with two expansion slots for Solid State Disk memory cards and software packs, and a proprietary connection for a serial cable. Later models also offered an infra-red connection.

Using the device today, the screen is pretty easy to read in decent light and the lack of a back-light isn't an issue. The small amount of RAM isn't too much of a hurdle either given what the device was used for and if you wanted to do any serious typing, a memory card was easy (if not overly cheap) to add. The example I have was purchased off E-bay and though the battery contacts need a good clean, it's in pretty good nick. There are always quite a few Series 3 models available but be warned, the more recent 3c and 3mx models go for near £100 or more, proof that they are still in demand today. A quick Google located a UK based company advertising new and second-hand Psion devices so, without doing any advertising, if you do want a Psion of your own, you know what to do.

The biggest hurdle for anyone under the age of 30 using anything like the Psion is the lack of a touchscreen. You see, back when the Series 3 was released, touchscreens were a rarity on portable devices so navigation is purely via the keyboard. There is a menu button and the on-screen menus are very well laid out so with a bit of practice, you'll be zipping about in and between applications with ease. For pretty much any option, there is a suitable key-based shortcut. True, it is not as intuitive as a mouse pointer or a touchscreen but for the time of release, this was pretty good. Indeed, anyone with a passing knowledge of DOS would feel pretty much at home here. How many there are of you in this day and age is up for debate! But in any case, the Series 3 is very usable and with only a small amount of practice too.

Is this a serious tool for 2018? Well, depends on what you want to use it for. As an organiser, the software is brilliant but there is the issue of connectivity and syncing software for the modern day PC. You can get serial to USB cables and a quick search online brought up a handful of useful articles so yeah, certainly with a later model with the higher-res screen, they are certainly usable today. Would you want to pay for one, well that is another matter...

On that note, I'll leave the blog for now, what with Salute at the weekend and then another appearance on Attention Please on Monday evening with Eddie Carter. If you fancy a listen, we're on 102.5FM in the local area or you can click on the Listen section here on the NE1FM website.