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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.

20 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. 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 BlowCat · · Score: 2

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

    4. 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
  2. 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!"
  3. 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
  4. 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.

  5. 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.
  6. 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"

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    -----
    Cast a Cold Eye
    On Life, on Death
    Horseman, pass by
    --W.B. Yeats' gravestone
  7. 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.

  8. 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!"
  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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
  12. 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?

  13. 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

  14. 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?