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Development => Consoles => Topic started by: guicrith on July 09, 2016, 10:12:14 PM

Title: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 09, 2016, 10:12:14 PM
This is not a release!

This is a new palm emulator I started and have been working on it on and off for about a year and now need some help,so I posted it on github.

It can currently only run 1 game (zap2016) and the speed is off and any popup dialog will crash it.

All the apis so far have been done by hand so no palm os rom is required.

Heres the link:https://github.com/meepingsnesroms/PersianTree (https://github.com/meepingsnesroms/PersianTree)

Currenly it is very messy and uses QT as the gui.

With help I would like to switch it to retroarch and clean it up a little.

If you dont want to work on it maybe just look at it and tell me if you see a bug.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 09, 2016, 10:43:47 PM
Hi Guicrith, nice to see you again :)

So I assume this is an emulator that can emulate a PalmOS pocket computer and not an emulator that runs on PalmOS? For which platform will it be? I assume Android but I was curious about the others, since the topic was in the consoles section.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Yuki on July 09, 2016, 10:47:24 PM
Oh that's nice. I don't really know anything about PalmOS, so I can't really help but if you want testing I can gladly help out. I have a working install of RetroArch on my Raspberry Pi if that helps, for the libretro port.

@DJ Omnimaga I assume it will theorically work on everything that has a libretro frontend, like RetroArch. As in, everything.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 09, 2016, 10:53:53 PM
Yes it emulates palm os.
It runs on everything. (Android,Linux,Windows,Mac,IOS)

I don't need testers yet because the only thing to test is why it crashed,and the retroarch port hasent even started,that would be after it can run at least a few games without crashing.

Thank you for offering though.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: gameblabla on July 10, 2016, 12:09:21 AM
ah, very interesting.
Eventually, this might become a Zodiac emulator, as it is PalmOS based, only with a 2D Radeon accelerator.
This console had some... interesting games. (much like the Gizmondo actually)
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 10, 2016, 12:12:39 AM
Quote from: gameblabla on July 10, 2016, 12:09:21 AM
ah, very interesting.
Eventually, this might become a Zodiac emulator, as it is PalmOS based, only with a 2D Radeon accelerator.
This console had some... interesting games. (much like the Gizmondo actually)

That is the main goal after converting to retroarch and fixing all the bugs.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: gameblabla on July 10, 2016, 12:15:43 AM
Quote from: guicrith on July 10, 2016, 12:12:39 AM
Quote from: gameblabla on July 10, 2016, 12:09:21 AM
ah, very interesting.
Eventually, this might become a Zodiac emulator, as it is PalmOS based, only with a 2D Radeon accelerator.
This console had some... interesting games. (much like the Gizmondo actually)

That is the main goal after converting to retroarch and fixing all the bugs.
Ahaha, i should have looked at your github page...
Why converting to retroarch though ?
Why not just use SDL so we can port it to platforms like the TI Nspire ? :p

I personally find SDL much easier to use than libretro which is even more bloated and complicated.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 10, 2016, 12:23:42 AM
Because libretro takes care of all input and output,I just need to read the palm buttons/keyboard keys and provide a framebuffer and audio buffer.

Also SDL doesn't work very well with android and iOS.

For calculator ports just run it in kernel mode and make a simple I/O driver,it only needs those 3 things.(2 here since calcs don't have speakers)
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 10, 2016, 04:59:13 AM
Thanks for explaining which platforms this is for by the way. I'm glad to see it will have such compatibility. :) As for the games did it have a lot of them? Or did it go the way of the Gizmondo or VirtualBoy?
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 10, 2016, 05:08:49 AM
It has lots of games,there hard to find now since they where downloads and the original websites are down,but anyone could develop for it so theres a lot.

Palm os went from 1997-2008,it is dead now but the best palm (the palm tx) had a 200mhz arm so it is more powerful than a GBA.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 14, 2016, 04:27:10 PM
And no one archived those games on Abandonware or archival websites? That's a shame...
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: guicrith on July 14, 2016, 04:32:36 PM
Most have been archived somewhere but there harder to find than most ROMs and some have been lost or arnt cracked and there's no where to buy a licence.

The best ones are the astraware games and most of them can still be found along with keys or cracked.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 14, 2016, 06:14:05 PM
Ah I see. It reminds me of the Videoway games in the 90's.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: gameblabla on July 16, 2016, 04:15:09 AM
I archived some Zodiac and Palm OS 5.x games and some of them like Meteor Asteroid are pretty rare.
https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/files/ (https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/files/)

I even got my hands on an online issue of "Tapwave Times", an issue that was released during E3 2004.
https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/files/tw_times.pdf (https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/files/tw_times.pdf)

MTX: Mototrax looks nothing like the final version that was leaked to the internet...

That being said, i agree with guicrith.
Thanks to the registration system and people in general not caring about phone games,
Symbian and Palm OS are the worst victims of digital disappearance.
You really have to look really hard to eventually find some games...
For example, i still can't find the Street Hoops demo for Zodiac online...
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 16, 2016, 04:38:37 AM
Yeah. Very sad :'( . This reminds me of Vidéoway in Quebec (and I think United Kingdom). It was an online device you hooked to your TV that also required cable TV and for $8 a month you had access to a menu with plenty of services, like astrology, stock exchange, weather, news and interactive TV channels but the best part IMHO were the video games we could play online. All games looked like Colecovision or Atari 5200 games so I had to wonder if the thing used the same processor/hardware or something. However, most games were renamed and translated into French. Also the sucky part is that you had to use the TV remote they provided with the device rather than a gamepad.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CbhnN_YWEAAMYgs.jpg)

Sadly, everything is now gone since 2006. The service was replaced with Illico in 2000 but it continued running until 2006 for those who still had the device. It was basically the Quebec ancestor to Internet.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: gameblabla on 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 (https://web.archive.org/web/19980131104328/http://www.videotron.ab.ca/VCL/Videoway.html))
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)

(https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/img/zodiac_intro.png)
The intro screen when you power on your console

(https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/img/zodiac_menu1.png)
The main menu

(https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/img/zodiac_menu2.png)
This screen showed up after i tapped on "Unlisted"

And finally, a screenshot of a game running...
(https://zodiac.gameblabla.nl/img/rocketchu.png)
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.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on 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
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Yuki on July 16, 2016, 06:11:09 AM
Ah yeah, the Videoway, that thing was pretty much my childhood, used to play a lot with it.
Title: Re: PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on July 16, 2016, 06:11:39 AM
I have made a new topic about it now but I double-posted by accident due to a SMF error.