[Bounty] PalmOS Emulator PND

[pmprog]

I was going to try and do this myself, but not really had chance; so I thought I'd throw a bounty out.

Source code Links:

POSE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pose/files/pose/3.5-2/

PHEM

Android POSE - I don't run Java though, so the UI won't be any use, but there might be ARM optimisations to the POSE code

http://perpendox.com/phem/source.html

£10 via PayPal

I can provide my the PalmOS ROM images to the developer if they need it - should have them on a CD from when I developed PalmOS apps, in case they are no longer online

 

[Ziz]

I took a look and started to play around with building from the source. This is really a mess! I will maybe have a deeper look later... PalmOS Emulation would be indeed very nice...

 

[ingoreis]

Wow i would like it too.


Palm OS Emulator as Android Version work very fine on the Pandora Android.


Its cool for classic Games like KylesQuest2 and Space Trader

 

[Grench]

Great idea - but maybe go one step more?

If at all possible, use the ROM image from a Tapwave Zodiac?  Nub and game pad and shoulder buttons and dual SD and stereo sound and high (for then) resolution screen, wifi capable (with wifi card), etc...

The Tapwave Zodiac was the pinnacle of Palm OS gaming devices - maybe of all PalmOS devices, though I do have to give some credit to the TRG Pro, Garmin iQue and the later phones in their respective niches.

That could, in theory, open games like Tony Hawk, Spyhunter, Warfare Incorporated (http://www.warfareincorporated.com/), and the ultimate Palm OS game EVER:  BIKE OR DIE!!!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_u8vEs9HBKQ?feature=oembed

So - I'm willing to bump the bounty by $20 US via Paypal for a Palm OS PND if it can handle the left nub and the right game pad and shoulder buttons (ala Tapwave Zodiac).

 

[Rockthesmurf]

@Gench I had exactly the same thoughts as you, Bike or Die was by far the game I played most on my Zodiacs. Would be ace to be able to play it decently on Pandora.

 

[FIQ]

N900 (Maemo 5) has both an emulator for the old palmOS ("garnet VM"), and "preenv" - a compatibility layer for webOS, a bit like apkenv but with a far better compatibility list. Perhaps those can be ported?

As far as I know, garnet VM is *not* open source, which can be an issue, so perhaps POSE would be a better idea. POSE also seems to have a garage entry but I don't know if any progress was made.

Preenv: http://wiki.maemo.org/Preenv

 

[marovada]

Finally got this to compile, but haven't got time to take it any further atm.

 

[Ziz]

Awesome!

 

[pmprog]

Finally got this to compile, but haven't got time to take it any further atm.

pose1.jpg

ss.jpg

Nice work!

 

[Exophase]

So - I'm willing to bump the bounty by $20 US via Paypal for a Palm OS PND if it can handle the left nub and the right game pad and shoulder buttons (ala Tapwave Zodiac).

@Gench I had exactly the same thoughts as you, Bike or Die was by far the game I played most on my Zodiacs. Would be ace to be able to play it decently on Pandora.

POSE emulates 68k Palms, for ARM devices you're going to need something else. And emulating a Zodiac is no joke, that uses a 200MHz ARM9. I can't find a lot of information on Garnet and StyleTap (a PalmOS emulator for Android.. that costs $50! And people thought DraStic was expensive...) but I think they run more like Wine or GINGE than a traditional emulator.

 

[marovada]

So - I'm willing to bump the bounty by $20 US via Paypal for a Palm OS PND if it can handle the left nub and the right game pad and shoulder buttons (ala Tapwave Zodiac).

@Gench I had exactly the same thoughts as you, Bike or Die was by far the game I played most on my Zodiacs. Would be ace to be able to play it decently on Pandora.

POSE emulates 68k Palms, for ARM devices you're going to need something else. And emulating a Zodiac is no joke, that uses a 200MHz ARM9. I can't find a lot of information on Garnet and StyleTap (a PalmOS emulator for Android.. that costs $50! And people thought DraStic was expensive...) but I think they run more like Wine or GINGE than a traditional emulator.

Absolutely it won't emulate ARM.  I have no intention of collecting any bounty.

Edit: Also it uses FLTK, which I'm not very familiar with so I'm happy to give someone else the modified source if they want to take this any further.  The android version was great for updating the core code but it uses the android api front end, so it's not going to help with scaling, rotation or keyboard/nubs etc for Pandora.

 

[pmprog]

Edit: Also it uses FLTK, which I'm not very familiar with so I'm happy to give someone else the modified source if they want to take this any further.  The android version was great for updating the core code but it uses the android api front end, so it's not going to help with scaling, rotation or keyboard/nubs etc for Pandora.

I would love a copy of your build. Are you building on the Pandora? or cross compiling?

 

[Rockthesmurf]

When I search on Google Play from my phone for "Palm ARM Emulator" DraStic comes up #2

 

[pmprog]

As requested, my bounty went to the Pandora fund

Edit: PND will be coming soon

 

[Grench]

So - I'm willing to bump the bounty by $20 US via Paypal for a Palm OS PND if it can handle the left nub and the right game pad and shoulder buttons (ala Tapwave Zodiac).

@Gench I had exactly the same thoughts as you, Bike or Die was by far the game I played most on my Zodiacs. Would be ace to be able to play it decently on Pandora.

POSE emulates 68k Palms, for ARM devices you're going to need something else. And emulating a Zodiac is no joke, that uses a 200MHz ARM9. I can't find a lot of information on Garnet and StyleTap (a PalmOS emulator for Android.. that costs $50! And people thought DraStic was expensive...) but I think they run more like Wine or GINGE than a traditional emulator.

Sigh - the Tapwave Zodiac was so ahead of it's time.  I still have mine - battery is probably shot though.

This does bring up another interesting topic though.  Has there been much work under Linux for ARM to create a VM engine to run alternate ARM OS images as virtual machines?  KVM, Virtualbox, etc. do that for X86.  Yes, it would be a gigantic project.

If one were to exist, though, wouldn't it enable having virtual machines running Android, Palm OS, Firefox OS, IOS, Chrome OS, Symbian OS, Windows CE, Maemo...  Quick search and the number of operating systems that have been compiled for ARM is staggering:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:ARM_operating_systems

It would likely be a herculean task though - it would probably require different settings based on which ARM CPU/SoC it's trying to interpret for - and there are so many varieties with so many closed source pieces included...  likely never happen in a generic form.  May be able to happen for a few specific ARM platforms?

 

[Exophase]

Yes, virtualization could work on ARM if you have the support in the CPU, which is part of Cortex-A15 for instance.

But this isn't like PCs where you have a variety of OSes running on a common hardware specification, or have some ability to create drivers for the guest OS to facilitate para-virtualization. Palm OS isn't just an OS that runs blindly an ARM CPU with any old hardware, it also has drivers that make assumptions about the hardware. And this hardware needs to be specially emulated to at least some extent.

In a lot of cases, where you do have a well-defined OS abstraction that client programs can't or don't often violate, user mode emulation makes a lot more sense. Where instead of virtualizing the OS and emulating the hardware it talks to, the client binaries are modified so that the OS calls are replaced with something else that emulates them. Which is what Wine and GINGE do (at least sort of)

 

[rygD]

Thanks, Grench and Exophase.  This has helped put a lot of things into perspective for me, and I now have a better understanding of what the future potentially holds.  A Zodiac emulator or VM would be great