Using IRC on the Psion NetBook
Well, Wi-Fi is working nicely in the house, so just after confirming the main internet applications work everywhere in the house, it was time to try out (investigate) some more net applications beyond Email and Opera.
Given the amount of time I spend on the #mobitopia and #joiito channels on IRC, the original chat application, is first on my list. I’ve had this problem before (at the O’Reily Emerging Tech conference) and the solution there was to grab Russ Spooner’s incomplete OPL implementation of IRC. That required some hacking and reverse engineering to get it working on the netBook. With Russ out of contact, the 30 Day Time Limit had to be worked around.
It wasn’t perfect though. The main problem was it wasn’t windowed, so private messaging windows don’t exist, and you had to remember /msg every time. You also couldn’t watch two channels. If you were in one channel, then any messages to the second channel would be lost. At the time there seemed to be a few Java IRC clients that should have run on the netBook’s Personal Java 1.1.3 implementation, but none of them actually worked.
So, I thought, time to revisit this. And after some searching on Google and through the Psion boards at Psion Place, I found not only a Personal Java implementation of IRC , but the every reliable Chris Handley (who’s part of FreEPOC, remember that?) has made a launcher ‘wrapper’ so it appears as a regular app on the Extras bar.
So here it is!

It logs on, it opens up channel windows, private windows, and acts much like MIRC but with a proportinal font. Hydra it ain’t but it does the job – but does anyone know a ’standard’ way to kill a Java window? All the dead conversations hovering in the background are freaking me out!
July 3, 2004; Wi-Fi and the Psion Netbook;
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Comments
4 Responses to “Using IRC on the Psion NetBook”





I suggest you use Assistant by Mario Collado. I assign a “kill” hotkey which does its job very well. I find closing java apps on netbook is really testing one’s patience.
Kind regards.
Hi, I had the same problem with IRC and was desperate to get it resolved. I now have a similar Java IRC application although this uses IBM’s free IRC client. Again I had someone package it up nicely for me and PM chats can be closed by clicking on a button in the window. You can have several chat rooms open at once and you can also see who is logged into the room. It has been optimised for the 7/netBook, although you do need to juggle screens a little to find the one you are looking for. Email me if you would like a copy.
Regards
Si
Simon, yes would like to see a copy, and Assstant wouldn;t work here. It;s not a key to kll the entire app, just a dead conversation window (for example).
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