EPOC MBM

Revision as of 15:08, 8 April 2022

EPOC MBM (also known as MBM, Psion Series 5 bitmap, or Symbian Multibitmap) is a raster image file format associated with Psion's EPOC operating system, and its successor, Symbian (most notably used by Nokia phones). An MBM file can contain multiple images.

Images may be grayscale, palette color using a predefined palette, or (less commonly) direct RGB color. They may be uncompressed, or RLE-compressed.

See also

• EPOC Sketch (similar format)
• EPOC AIF (similar format)
• Psion PIC (predecessor format)

Identification

MBM files begin with (hex) bytes 37 00 00 10 42 00 00 10.

There is an "exported MBM" format, which begins with 37 00 00 10 8a 00 00 10. Aside from that, it seems to be identical to the main MBM format.

Specifications

• Format info from Psiconv
• Epoc32 File formats
• The MBM file format (from archive.org)

Software

• Konvertor
• XnView
• Psiconv (must be built with ImageMagick library in order to support MBM)
• Deark

Sample files

• This Psion CD contains many MBM files, for example at .../GRAPHICS/DRA_0001/STEREOVU/
• http://cd.textfiles.com/psion/disk3/SPE_0003/WAL_0008/
• http://www.pscience5.net/colouricons.htm - Many MBM files are in the ZIP files here (and in the ZIP files inside the ZIP files).
• ColoredS5mboles.zip → *.mbm ("exported MBM" format)
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/epocMBM/

Links

• Wikipedia: MBM
• Wikipedia: EPOC
• Wikipedia: Symbian
• Creating EPOC MBM Picture Files