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Palm OS Emulator Ported to Sharp Zaurus

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Palm Info Center reports that POSE (the Palm Os Emulator) has been ported to the Sharp Zaurus using the QTopia palmtop environment. See the QPOSE homepage for more information." This could make a Zaurus a much more attractive device to those of us with lots of important info on Palm Os devices, but according to other readers' submissions it does require a Palm ROM image to function.

91 comments

  1. Great! by Sir+Homer · · Score: 1, Funny

    Now I can play Gameboy ROMs!

    1. Re:Great! by JesseL · · Score: 2

      Try reading that again, this is a Palm handheld emulator, for running PalmOS, Gameboy has nothing to do with it.

      --
      "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
    2. Re:Great! by Clue4All · · Score: 1

      Right, and there's a GameBoy emulator for PalmOS. Get it? It's a joke, he's running an emulator inside an emulator? Get it? Nevermind.

      --

      Is your browser retarded?
    3. Re:Great! by Tha_Zanthrax · · Score: 1

      For the people who don't understand: 1. You buy a Sharp Zaurus. 2. You install the Palm emulator. 3. Then you install a gameboy emulator for PalmOS. (liberty) 4. Start playing Tetris. It can be done...

    4. Re:Great! by JesseL · · Score: 2

      Yeah I get it now, but it was a seriously lame joke considering that:
      1) Emulator inside an emulator jokes are done every time an emulator gets mentioned on /.
      2) There is already a Gameboy emulator that runs natively on the Zaurus.

      --
      "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
    5. Re:Great! by Alzheimers · · Score: 1

      Now all we need is a Zaurus emulator for the PalmOS...it'll be the 13th Floor all over again...

    6. Re:Great! by numatrix · · Score: 1

      Umm, no. Wrong zaurus. That's the japanese zaurus; when most people refer to zaurus generically, they're referring to the SL-5500 (or the developers version which is the 5000, or the german versions of those; stick a (d) at the end of the product) There ~is~ a gameboy for the zaurus though. Just had the wrong link.

    7. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's right, try to cover your sorry ass, loser. You wouldn't look so stupid if you'd just say "Oops, my mistake! Sorry."

    8. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      haha
      you jackass

    9. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There actually is a game boy emulator for the Zaurus. It's Qtopia Gnuboy. Look for it at http://www.zauruszone.com or http://www.myzaurus.com

  2. What about an emulator for... by Dimensio · · Score: 1

    The PalmOS. Could that be done?

    Yeah, it's a lame joke but someone had to do it.

    1. Re:What about an emulator for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I having a meating with my palm very soon.

      Rest assured it is not going to be an emulation...

  3. And Palm will give you the ROM! by BancBoy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Palm gives out the ROMs for various models via the web for their free "development" Palm emulator. If these ROMs will work for the emulator, you're set.

    --
    [UID-HeinzIntel]
    1. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by Tha_Zanthrax · · Score: 4, Informative

      That emulator can be found at http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/.

      Access to the ROMs requiers a membership of the Palm OS Developer Program. to bad...

      There are tools packed with the emulator to extract ROMs from your PalmOS device.

    2. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by Oliver+Wendell+Jones · · Score: 3, Informative

      Access to the ROMs requiers a membership of the Palm OS Developer Program. to bad...

      Gee, when I signed up for the Palm OS Developer Program it was free and only took a very short while.

      It's not a terribly big inconvenience...

      --
      A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
    3. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by Thud457 · · Score: 0

      Well, you can kiss that goodby in 3... 2... 1...



      (Incidentally, is this an emulator or a port? What processor does the Zaurus run?)

      --

      the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    4. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by numatrix · · Score: 1

      Those emulators work. I've also dumped a 'live' rom from my palmVx that worked fine as well.

      Don't get your hopes up though, the speed of the emulator currently is abysmal. 5-30 seconds to register a single click. More than anything it's a demonstration that it can be done. Whether it can be done well or not will take time, and probably some lower-level programming to tell.

      The differences in the palm cpu and zaurus cpu mean that just having 6x the sheer clock cycles doesn't necessarily mean you can emulate a palm with any reasonable speed.

      To the post a few items down, this is a port OF an emulator. The author ported pose (the linux open source palm emulator) to the zaurus. So it's both a port and an emulator.

    5. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by BlowCat · · Score: 2

      Zaurus uses StrongARM. Palm uses Motorola Dragonball.
      Google is your friend.

    6. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by PepsiProgrammer · · Score: 2

      I just bought a zaurus yesterday and had a Visor Prism before that, the QPOSE makes the transition alot easier as I can still use my old palm software that I like alot. BTW, I would HIGHLY recommend the Zaurus to anywone who can afford it, one of the best devices ive ever owned. Still cant get quake working though....

      --
      "The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
    7. Re:And Palm will give you the ROM! by wavelet · · Score: 1

      yeah, but Palm OS 5 is going to be StrongARM based: Palm OS on ARM Processors

  4. BINK-BINK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Oh good... That system needed an OS. Looks like someone finally found one!

  5. Amazing... by CharonX · · Score: 1

    Anyone who has only had a minor glimps behind the scenes of emulation (or rather emulation hardware) knows that its more than hard work.
    It always boils down to:
    -Attempt to reverse engineer
    -Guess
    -Try it
    -Goto 1
    Not to mention that all these steps should be 100% error-free and highly efficient code wise...
    Major props to the emulation programmers!

    --
    +++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
    1. Re:Amazing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Props to the emulation programmers? You practically made a solid argument of why no one in their right mind would use an emulator! It's a waste of time. Wine causes more down time and aggrevation than just dual booting to windows to run whatever windows app you can't live without.

    2. Re:Amazing... by rudedog · · Score: 2

      Well, yes, but.

      The primary POSE developer is employed by Palm, and has access to all PalmOS source, so in the case of POSE, there is no step 1 or 2.

    3. Re:Amazing... by Hack+Shoeboy · · Score: 0

      Genius. I'll just dual boot my Zaurus into Windows and then run "pose".

      --

      IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
    4. Re:Amazing... by evil_one · · Score: 1

      Attempt to reverse engineer? No. The first step is get the developer information for the CPU(s) employed by the device and start writing a software core for it that will run on your target platform.

      --
      Desperation is a stinky cologne
  6. of course you need the roms. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To use the palm os you would have to have the roms. This could be very cool as a reaplacement for my palmIIIe. What would be really cool would be a lib that you could use so all you have to do is recompile your palm apps to work on the Sharp

  7. Generally the only people who will use this... by bile0 · · Score: 1

    are people that do have a lot of data in their palms. That suggests that they probably have a palm...

    I have 4 old palms of various shapes and sizes, I think I should have the right to use the rom on my Zaurus don't you?

    1. Re:Generally the only people who will use this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. You do. You can use a utility that comes with POSE (not QPOSE necessarily) to extract the ROM image from the palms you have. You can also get palm ROMs from the Palm dev Pavillion.

      Or, well, they're pretty easy to find, but that isn't your right.

  8. NES Roms.... by Bonker · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I'll buy the first non WindowsCE handheld for which there is a good NES emulator.

    I wanna play Mario3 on a handspring, dammit!

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:NES Roms.... by Kunta+Kinte · · Score: 1

      Like I said earlier, would MAME do? http://www.mameworld.net/zmame/

      There maybe snes emus out there for the z, I haven't checked.

      --
      Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
    2. Re:NES Roms.... by numatrix · · Score: 1

      How about snes [sourceforge] for the zaurus? There's also a gameboy [killefiz.de] emulator for the zaurus, though it's quite slow as well.

      I haven't tried the snes emulator, but I'd imagine it's slow too. It requires installing the x-windows environment instead of the normal Qt windowing system installed by default.

    3. Re:NES Roms.... by kcurrie · · Score: 1

      I've played the snes emulator on my z with a ton of games. Some, like Micro Machines work perfectly, others like Micro Machines 2 are a little slow.
      Cannon Fodder on the Z is pretty cool though!

      --
      -- I speak only for myself.
  9. Cool. but has its restrictions... by sixSecondsOfDefeat · · Score: 0, Troll

    Although efforts to port the Palm OS to a commodore 64 have not yet succeeded. News is out (http://popularscience.com) that they gave ported the PalmOS to a ternery computing system, compliments of Bell Labs. They claim that this could actually "revolutionize the way we think about personal computing devices." The porting to the Sharp device is definitly an interesting read, but it is being sia dthat this will not really take off like they would like it to due to the fact that Palm OS is a Real-time OS, and the Sharp Zaurus was not built with real-time processing in mind. Upgrading their hardware to adapt to real-time needs on a mass-production level would cost Sharp millions of dollars for an investment that they are not even sure about.

    1. Re:Cool. but has its restrictions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah i guess that would make sense. but if it does turn out to be a worty investment, Sahrp will surely reap the benefits.

    2. Re:Cool. but has its restrictions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you kidding? PalmOS is a real-time OS? I don't think so, its an embedded OS yes but far from real-time. Plus PalmOS doesn't even have multitasking. Try VxWorks or WinCE if you want something approaching real-time. Plus when was real-time ever a requirement for a PDA? Its not processing with 1us deadlines and low-latency requirements and NASA isn't landing things on the moon with PalmOS.

  10. The joke was too subtle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You see, there's a gameboy emulator for Palm Pilots.

  11. Newfound role of broken Palm devices? by afflatus_com · · Score: 2

    Will be interesting to see if eBay will eventually start to list a destroyed Palm device (one that was run over, went through the washing machine, etc), as a few dollar item that contains a valid legal licence to a PalmOS ROM that can then be used to as an emulation in a non Palm devices.

    --

    -----
    Cast a Cold Eye
    On Life, on Death
    Horseman, pass by
    --W.B. Yeats' gravestone
  12. Umm... Its SLOW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't think this will be useful for much of anything until the speed issue is fixed. The emulator takes nearly 3 minutes to go from the Palm logo to the main icon view. I'm not exaggerating.

    Its painful.

    really really painful.

  13. Re:Great! - zMAME by Kunta+Kinte · · Score: 1

    dude, why would you want gameboy when you can install zmame?

    http://www.mameworld.net/zmame/.

    That's the same guy who did the POSE port btw. Man has respect in my book :)

    --
    Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
  14. Re:AOTC Spoiler by Thud457 · · Score: 0

    "eye-for-an-eye"? They must have cut that scene to get the PG-13 rating!

    Plus, if he was in a rage, he would have killed them all first.... Eeeeeewwwww... Myself, I don't see having your corpse raped as being as bad as being raped while you're alive. Of course, that's just my personal preferences speaking.

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  15. Re:Umm... Its SLOW by eyegor · · Score: 2

    No problem!!! We can fix that by creating a Zaurus Emulator that runs the PalmOS emulator and we can just run both on a REALLY speedy laptop... uhm... uh.... Nevermind....

    --

    Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
  16. The website is slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    They must be RUNNING it on a palm hand held!

    Heres the text of the article

  17. Review of a PalmOS emulator for PocketPC by afflatus_com · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many are working to port PalmOS to PocketPC also.

    Here is a in-depth review a while ago of one of the stronger offerings:
    Review of alpha version of "PocketPalm"

    --

    -----
    Cast a Cold Eye
    On Life, on Death
    Horseman, pass by
    --W.B. Yeats' gravestone
  18. Sharp could provide a "migration kit" by Karpe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have a Palm device. I am searching for a new handheld, but the devices I like the hardware the most do not run PalmOS, which is a need for me. I believe I could legally use my PalmOS ROM in the Zaurus, if I would stop using the Palm. And I would really stop, if I could use my Palm stuff on the Zaurus. If Sharp could provide users such a "migration kit" software for Palm users, that would backup the users Palm ROM and apps to a Zaurus, I guess they could really gain some part of the Palm market. Sharp should really put some resources in these emulation projects. Sell a "Palm compatible" device with much better hardware could be a nice advantage.

    1. Re:Sharp could provide a "migration kit" by janda · · Score: 1

      IANAL, but if you live in the US, it should be. Take a look for the supreme court decision in wordperfect corporation vs somebody or another.

      --
      Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
  19. Extract ROM from USB Visor by miradu2000 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you have a Handspring Visor, which IMHO was one of the best PDA's ever, there are instructions for how to extract the ROM using the supplied USB cradle over at VisorCentral.com.

  20. Two things by druiid · · Score: 1

    First, the emulation is VERY VERY VERY slow, at least when I tried it. Two, it's very simple to find the roms, but I'm not about to say how. All I know is google is your friend.

  21. Why Bother Grabbing the OS ROM? by DrNibbler · · Score: 1

    Palm will give it to you as part of the developers program which is free.

    --
    Sean.OutaHere()
  22. It's getting obselete by line-bundle · · Score: 2

    The Palm company is moving to ARM and the POSE is for the 68k processor. So it looks like it's obselete on arrival.

    1. Re:It's getting obselete by Locutus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You don't seem to know much about this. PalmSource is moving to OS5 which is ARM based but they want everyone to keep writing software for the 68k. OS5 will have mappings from the 68k to the ARM native OS5. They say the apps will run more than 2x faster on the ARM than on the current DragonBalls.

      This means there is no reason to expect there being an immediate fork in the application development cycle for PalmOS apps. And all those apps will run on QPose (or atleast most will).

      LoB

      --
      "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
    2. Re:It's getting obselete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh heh heh ... heh heh heh ... he said dragon balls

  23. GPL Violation by Progoth · · Score: 1

    remember when sony released their "enhanced" POSE that had their proprietary hardware built in, and didn't release the source? Since POSE is GPL, /. was all huffy and up-in-arms about that...
    Well check out the link to the source on this guy's page....oh wait...that's not a link....

  24. don't have a ROM? by Icculus · · Score: 1

    OK, you have tons of stuff for PalmOS but no Palm from which to take a ROM image?

    1. Re:don't have a ROM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      duh. /. is full of pirates and theves.

  25. Let me help you... by Jagasian · · Score: 2

    Since you look a little confused, let me help you. If you want quality portable classic NES gaming, I suggest the following:
    PocketNES NES Emulator for the GBA
    Gameboy Advance
    Flash GBA Cartridge for "burning" NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advance games
    Note that you could burn all of your favorite NES, GB, GBC, and GBA games to that one Flash Cartridge because the Flash Cart comes with a multi-rom menu feature.

    With all of that gaming on the go... the great battery life, nice controls, etc... what else would you need? Also, note that running the NES emulator directly on the Gameboy Advance's hardware is far better than running it ontop of a non-realtime operating system such as Linux and WinCE. Gaming, imo, requires a realtime OS or no OS at all. I mean, who really likes those pauses in the middle of a heavy action sequence in your game?

  26. Graffiti? by vanyel · · Score: 2

    I don't see anything that talks about graffiti or other handwriting recognition technologies in either the zaurus or the emulator. I assume it's in the emulator at least, but such assumptions have bit me before...

    1. Re:Graffiti? by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 3, Informative

      vanyel wrote:

      > I don't see anything that talks about graffiti or other handwriting
      > recognition technologies in either the zaurus or the emulator. I
      > assume it's in the emulator at least, but such assumptions have bit me
      > before...

      Zaurus has its own handwriting recognition (a physical keyboard, a screen keyboard, a pickboard, and a unicode selector for maximum entry overkill ;). And, the emulator has fully functional Graffiti.

      Just don't expect to be able to save anything from the Palm programs, or to be able to load any programs not included in your rom. This emulator is a good idea, and will probably be very useful later on, but you can't do much with it now.

      The Zaurus itself is a very nice PDA that doubles as a tiny little portable Linux computer. I get a lot of use out of it, even though I can't hot sync it with my iMac (no Apple support and I won't insult the little dear by forcing it to communicate with a Windows PC). I access the internet through my Airport wireless network, and can exchange files with my Macs via FTP or an OS X compatible CF card reader.

      "The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
      "Mosura", 1961

  27. Palm direction towards OS licensing by WillSeattle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and away from hardware with OS bundle (aka Palm 505, V, etc).

    One of the reasons I bought 1/1000th of Palm after IPO lockup drop was that I predicted they would:
    a. survive the dot com crash (didn't know when that would happen but did know valuations were nuts);
    b. increase revenue sales of the OS to other devices to the point where it would become the major share of their revenues.

    Hardware usually has bad ROI, but software has good ROI, provided you're one of the lead providers.

    So from this we can gather that you'll be reading many many more articles on "Palm ports OS to [insert device h/w here]" over the next year - and if you read the annual report, you can read between the lines.

    In some ways, open source (e.g. BSD, Linux) threatens their market space, as the cost factor is even lower, but the patent background should permit them to survive in the evolving non-PC era of the 2001-2020 era as devices and such fade into the background. But they have successfully defended against MSFT and other attempts.

    -

    --
    --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
  28. Maybe I am silly... by Splezunk · · Score: 1
    But if you want to run the palm OS, why not just get a palm?

    Seriously though, it is fun to be able to emulate other operating systems etc. but if you find yourself really needing to use the Emulator on a constant basis for most of your programs etc. wouldn't you be better off going for the Device that is made for the OS you want to use?

    1. Re:Maybe I am silly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, there is one program that I'm waiting to be released for a Zarus b4 I dump my iPAQ. Since it has a palm version, and I have a license with allows me to run the program on either palm or pocketPC, this makes dumping my iPAQ for a Zarus suddenly viable (the "slowness factor" however, is a bit disconcerting).

  29. Yopy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The emulator for Palm has been available for Yopy PDA for some time now.

  30. I hate cookies, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And slashdot is runned by a bunch of
    super-annuated dudes with a job paying didley
    when guys like Jon Niola have squared away the dough. Hey find a job and stop BSing the world just because you think it makes sense for you to
    do it.. Are you all a bunch of ex child porn stars? Find Mr.T he's green and full of steam, sitting on the pot like and elvis full of wrapper
    yack jam stupid spam sliping on the crap the 2600
    mack daddy do it where you doo because if you knew the president you would know MTV sucks
    without the sound and with it suck just because it is, and without your a better man jamma jam yah yah.. And give me a bouncy c and nice bouncy c..

  31. Dude, you're missing the point by melstav · · Score: 1

    If you end up with a large number of programs which were written for PalmOS, then you probably ought to seriously consider buying a Palm.

    But what if you're completely happy with your portable Windows device, except for a small handfull of Commercial/Proprietary programs that you would really like/need to run which have only been ported to the Palm? - For which there IS NO analogue written for WinCE or PocketPC?

    What do you do then? Do you buy another $200+ handheld just so you can use one or two programs?

    Or is saving $200 enough incentive to see if maybe the program will run in an emulator?

    Assuming the program would run sufficiently well in an emulator on your Zaurus or whatever, the one major stumbling block I can see is the issue of data synchronization. If an application was written for the PalmOS and a Palm Conduit was written for it, how do you synchronize your data if you're running the app emulated on a CE device?

    Has anyone written written a wrapper to run Palm Conduits via the Microsofty Sync-thinghie?

  32. Re:Umm... Its SLOW by segfaultdot · · Score: 1

    It can't be that slow. My 166mhz pentium mmx laptop runs p.o.s.e. at around one third the speed of my PalmIIIx, so a 206mhz ARM processor should be slightly faster than that. It's slow, but it's bearable.

    BTW, if you all don't have pilot ROM's, you could just download the LinuxDA demo roms and run that... j/k, the LinuxDA rom's don't work on POSE, anyway.

  33. WHY ON EARTH WAS THAT MODERATED UP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The so called text is actually a SICK GROSS PICTURE worser than goatseE.cx!

  34. Java by PiGuy · · Score: 1

    I believe the Sharp Zaurus comes with Java - if not, you could load it with Kaffe, then get a Java-based NES emulator. I don't know how slow this would be (shouldn't matter with NES, and Kaffe is fast), but a similar approach would work on many other PDAs, too.