PersianTree PalmOS Emulator

u/gameblabla July 16, 2016, 05:44:35 AM

Interesting, the Videoway is essentially an 8-bit computer, very similar to the Colecovision.
(only with more advanced graphics, similar to the Colecovision/MSX but with better sprite capabilities)
It has a MC68A09EP, which is a Motorola 6809, most famously used by the CoCo 2 & 3 and many arcade games.
(btw, this might bring you some memories)
Perhaps we should talk about it more in depth in another topic ?

Anyway, i discovered in the SDK files that it has in fact, a fully working emulator provided with the Tapwave Roms.
Unfortunely, the emulator is pretty bad (at least on Ubuntu) and refuses to run most games.
However, this did allow me to discover the Zodiac's menu and run a game. (before it crashed)

The intro screen when you power on your console

The main menu

This screen showed up after i tapped on "Unlisted"

And finally, a screenshot of a game running...

RocketChu, one of the few japanese games for Palm OS

This is a non-Zodiac Palm OS game so it does not take advantage of the wider screen.

If you want to try it yourself, it's found in the SDK.7z file in Tapwave 1.1 SDK/PalmSim.
Run PalmSim.exe and enjoy.
It might be useful to guicrith for testing and comparaisons but i don't think it will be too useful.

Last Edit: July 16, 2016, 05:50:00 AM by gameblabla

u/Dream of Omnimaga July 16, 2016, 05:52:19 AM

Yeah I was considering making a Videoway topic at some point, but I wasn't sure if anyone else would be interested since it was only provided in Quebec and UK IIRC.

Also those PalmOS games look great :O