Tapwave Zodiac Owners Celebrate the Release of LJZ

wraggster writes " Tapwave Zodiac owners today enjoyed the Release of a major multiple system emulator called LittleJohn Z that includes such systems as Snes, Genesis, PC Engine, Nes, GBC, Wonderswan and NeoGeo Pocket. Sites such as Zodiac Gamer & Zodiac Emulation have more information on this release."

Comments

lp

[Anonymous Coward]

last post

wheels within wheels

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone got a zodiac emu so I can have a go? Maybe under vmware :)

Could be useful

[Jerrith]

Saw one of these in CompUSA the other day, but wasn't all that impressed, and there didn't seem to be much software. Something like this software though could really make it a neat little piece of hardware to have. Nice display at the front of the store, how well are they selling?

Re:Could be useful

[Divide By Zero]

They're not exactly mainstream, but there is a small following dedicated to their Zodiacs. http://www.tapland.com/ and http://www.zodiacgamer.com/ are the two big sites that I know of, though there is a lot of info repeated between the two.

Tapwave only recently started offering the Zodiacs retail - they were only available thru the Tapwave website for the first few months.

It's a PalmOS 5 device that happens to have a slightly different form factor. Or, at least, that's what I tell my boss when I get caught playing Bionic Commando in system architecture review meetings. Then I flip over to the built in memo pad before I show him that I'm actually diligently taking notes.

It's a really nice piece of hardware to have if you're a gamer/gadget geek who was forced to grow up and get a job. Half PDA, half classic game emulator, and it'll run any Palm software compatible with OS5 or earlier, so you can keep all those apps you've become reliant on. Just as soon as GBA emulation gets working, we'll be all set.

New generation Console

[superpulpsicle]

I am looking for a real emulator for the PSX and N64. The 8-bit/16-bit emulators are so established, I see NO reason for new ones to come out.

Anyone know of a good PSX/N64 emulator that's FREE and works with ATI/Nvidia cards.

Anyone know of a good place to download ROMs anyways?

Re:New generation Console

[justkarl]

Anyone know of a good place to download ROMs anyways?

You know, that's a question that I ask myself every day when I get out of bed...well, not really. But I do wonder about good places to get roms...Most of the best ones, the small sites, with just the ones you were looking for were shut down/faded away; which could have been because of the crackdown on pirate software circa 99/00.

On another note, I've seen emulators for PSX/N64, but they ran so slow, it wasn't even worth it. I'd like to see one that has real time capabilities for consumer level processing power.

Re:New generation Console

[hiroshi912681]

and just where are you gonna stick the CD in? unless you wanna buy a gigabyte memory card for it.

seriously, there's no reason to diss the 8/16 bit. they haven't been established on this platform yet. he's obviously pleasing as many people at once with der uberemulator. if you want 32 bit, get the gba emu. I don't expect n64 emulation, either, the games are big, and 95% of the games wouldn't play right on its controller. be realistic.

Re:New generation Console

[HAKdragon]

ePSXe seems to work great as a Playstation emulator and it's free to boot, though you'll need a BIOS file, which a quick search on google will yield. You can play orignal PSX cds, backups and ISO images.

As for N64 emulation, I'm not too up on it, but Project64 seemed to work pretty well from my limited experience with it. The problem is that the N64 is a fairly hard machine to emulate and many times they had to test individual games and work on getting those working.

Re:New generation Console

[accelleron]

You are somewhat mislead here.

Most N64 roms are around 16-35 megs in size (sound and all), Mario 64 was around 14, unless memory fails me.

Most PSX images are ~500-700 mb, but if you rip away the movies/music/voice many will abate to a humble 100-300mb, which easily fit on a 512, or even a 256 card, which are not too expensive. In addition, most PSX emu's designed for small-storage platforms [PPC PlayStation Emu's for example] support playback directly from compressed (think: zip) files. That puts the average game, sans most music, movies, and voice-acting, on a comfortably affordable 256MB SD card. There are exceptions both ways, though, as some games [mostly RPGs] do need their sweet 600MB, and most fighting/recing games [see Driver, Tekken] can easily make due with 16 to 64.

http://www.pdai.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1 63 0

^master list of PSX rip sizes

Re:New generation Console

[hiroshi912681]

there were a lot of big games. paper mario being one of the largest. but, besides the size of the games... imagine the memory requirements for it. if an xbox can barely run an n64 emu (it required a virtual memory driver!), I doubt a handheld would be able to do it sufficiently

Re:New generation Console

[rattboi]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. When talking about RAM, Xbox has 32MB, which it puts to good use in it's games. But the Zodiac has 2 models. One features 32MB RAM (same as Xbox) and the other, for $100 more, features 128MB RAM. So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.

Re:New generation Console

[lucas teh geek]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. When talking about RAM, Xbox has 32MB, which it puts to good use in it's games.

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. when correcting someone, make sure your are actually correct first. The xbox has 64MB of ram.

Re:New generation Console

[Luigi30]

ePSXe worked pretty well for me on ~1.5GHz.

Re:New generation Console

[Reapy]

You guys need to look at suprnova.org. I saw torrent files that had a 10 gig dl of every snes game out there and a 3 gig one for every nes game. I don't know if they are still there, but I'd keep my eyes out to try downloading those.

Then you can carefully find the games you owned and delete the rest of the illegal ones :)

Re:New generation Console

[cttforsale]

I use 1964 and project 64.
Here's a link to them (anr more):
http://www.emuparadise.org/emulators/n64.p hp

Get your n64 roms here:
http://www.emuparadise.org/roms/n64/

Re:New generation Console

[Divide By Zero]

So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.

Yes it is, but not because the chip isn't there. The OS (PalmOS 5.1T, if I remember right) only uses about 14MB for functions typically associated with RAM. (fast temporary storage, basically). The rest (18 or 114 MB, depending on the model of Zodiac) is analogous to hard drive space - long term storage. The thing is, Palm hardware, Tapwave included, uses physical RAM for both types of storage, so it looks on paper like it has plenty of RAM. In actuality, it only has a small portion of the total RAM that it can use in emulation.

This was a pretty big point of contention, and something I verified before I bought my Zodiac - there is no performance difference between the Zodiac1 and Zodiac2 because the "working" RAM is the same - the only difference is "storage" RAM.

Re:New generation Console

[MMaestro]

I see NO reason for new ones to come out.

Um, because most keyboards, PDAs, or handhelds such as the Gameboy Advance don't have a Z-trigger and joystick for the N64 nor do they have 8 buttons (10 if you count start/select, 12 if you count R3/L3) nor dual analog sticks for the PS1/PSX.

After the 16-bit era, controllers went insane. PS1/PSX added 2 extra buttons at first, but dual analog sticks!? Whoa! What next? Built in vibration AND wireless?! Nintendo moving the d-pad to the sidelines with the N64? Yeah, RIGHT. What next? Microsoft enter the video game industry with their own system?

zodiac

[BTWR]

i'm sorry, I disagree with the other poster. The Zodiac has the potential for greatness. It's seems to be a very "do/modify-it-yourself" device. My predicition is that the mod community will be more influential than the commercial programs available for it...

Other devices?

[dnobel]

Does this mean that a port may be in store for other Palm OS PDAs? I wouldn't mind taking something similar for a spin on my treo 600...

Re:Other devices?

[Ravi Hiranand]

I'd love to see something like this for my UX50...

Re:Other devices?

[VikingBrad]

Probably have to wait for the Hi-Res version of the Treo to support similar screen dimensions to the Game Boy Advanced, et al

Cheers
VikingBrad

Re:Other devices?

[StevenHenderson]

No. The Zodiac has an advanced graphics chip (ATi if I'm not mistaken) that lets it render things the Treo could never do. Also, lower res screens on the Treo don't help...

Re:Other devices?

[Divide By Zero]

It might, but probably not. Zodiac has the widescreen Palm display that's only available (as far as I know) on the Zodiac and one of the PalmOne Tungsten models (the T? I forget.) It also has beefier sound, the ATi graphics processor mentioned in an earlier reply, and the analog stick. If the game or emulator's designed for those, it may have alternate controls for the Treo, but don't be surprised if it doesn't.

There are a bunch of games that were designed for "regular" Palm devices that don't work on the Zodiac because the buttons don't map correctly. I suspect things like this would work similarly the other direction.

There are already single-system emulators (some of the best of which come from http://www.crimsonfire.com/ and http://www.kalemsoft.com/). Their NesEm is pretty good, I haven't used the others personally. The big news here is that it's multisystem - NES, Genesis, GBC all in one emulator.

Re:Other devices?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, very likely.

Most of the emualtions covered in LJZ are already available for general Palm OS -- see all the "Free Stuff" emus on my site, http://www.codejedi.com, where I've ported Atari ST, Genesis, TG16, Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls, Beats of Rage, Colecovision and others to Palm OS :)

LJZ itself will likely get ported to Palm OS proper as well; its written as a TNA (a Zodiac app), but converting it to a pure PNO (palm OS ARM app for OS5) is not difficult, just some tedium.

jeff

Re:Other devices?

[edrugtrader]

???! how are you going to play super mario with a stylus?

Re:Other devices?

[Fammy2000]

While it is true that LJZ uses the ATI image chip for some of the operations, this could be ported to the rest of PalmOS with a rewrite of some of the image/screen functions.

The code's GPL. Get crackin' folks! There was a hold up for a while development because the source couldn't be released with current Tapwave SDK license agreements. I assume that has been fixed. During that time, the author lamented that he might make the emulator PalmOS 5 instead.

LittleJoh?

[British]

Okay, looking at the price for the Zodiac 2:

$399.

WHAAATT?!??

$399

WHAAT??!??

I said, $399

WHAT????

$399.

Do I think this costs too much?

YEAS!@#!@#

Maybe I'd get one if they vastly reduced the price.

O-KAY!@!@#@#@

Re:LittleJoh?

[Anonymous Coward]

how come ur so cheapass
its a great PALM OS device for gods sake! you must have no price notion at all, try buying a hi-res palm os device with 480x320 resolution and 128mb internal mem. with analog device for that price! if money is a problem, the Zodiac 1 is 299$ and it just have less memory
read more about it instead of talking shit

Re:LittleJoh?

[Mac Degger]

Dude...it's the highest spec PalmOS device on the market, with more features/specs than the T3. So expect it to cost a bit...personally, with the 128mb version, I think it's a damn steal at that price.