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RePalm

dmitry.gr

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Re: RePalm

#131

Post by ubermonkey »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #130
ubermonkey wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, no. Symbian had some presence via Nokia devices, but was kinda an also-ran in the US in terms of actual viable smartphone platforms. WinCE and WinMo were gawdawful and unusable unless you were just really, really drinking the Redmond Kool-Aid. (Amusingly, if you Google "symbian" now the first link is for a thing that is absolutely not related to smartphones, but which uses a name that is "symbian" without the "m"…

Symbian was a contender in Europe, many mobile gaming companies in Europe started on this Platform, especially in Finland/UK. Remember the Ngage? It was nothing compared to what came later, but if you were in this business at that time, Symbian was a thing.

Yeah, my bias is definitely US, since that’s where I live. Symbian devices were very very few and far between for us.

Re: RePalm

#132

Post by selfhoster11 »

muyuu wrote: post #68
selfhoster11 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeDOS brought MS-DOS back from the dead. Was it useless? In my opinion, far from it. Yes, Palm is useless and archaic of networked features are your #1 use case for a PDA (smartphone) and there’s little use reviving it. However, if you care about old Palm games, or about efficiently organising your life with minimum distractions, then IMO not many modern devices will beat a Palm OS device. Analogously to MS-DOS, th…

FreeDOS is exactly what I was describing. Makes sense to use that old software, but not to actually develop for these days. Because you'd be imposing weird anachronistic restrictions on yourself for no good reason.

The C64 demo scene is still alive and well today. Restrictions sometimes are the point.

Re: RePalm

#133

Post by grishka »

Possibly silly question. Why go through the trouble of emulating the ARM mode on Thumb instead of running the emulator on ARM Linux but with own userspace scheduler that implements the necessary features? I don't really know how to go about preemption, but that should have still been much easier than doing all that he did.

Re: RePalm

#134

Post by ckz »

mek6800d2 wrote: post #123
tgmatt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, and a genuine question, why do you use PDAs when smartphones exist? Surely they do everything the PDAs did but better?

In 2018, I read James M. Tabor's Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Cave on Earth (pub. 2010), which particularly focused on Bill Stone's and ALexander Klimchouk's respective explorations. (Contrary to perhaps popular understanding, as evidenced by an answer I saw on Quora that asserted that the temperature got hotter and hotter the farther Klimchouk's team descended in "their" cave, Stone's and Klimcho…

Re. automotive, I've also heard there is/was an overlapping group of Palm + auto enthusiasts. Quite possibly they're using something like OBD Gauge: http://www.weidefamily.net/vanagon/Pending_Content/Engine_Co...

Getting that working up is on my to-do list. Today I use some Python scripts to read engine codes and such, but it's not like I always have my phone or laptop on me. :)

Re: RePalm

#135

Post by dmitrygr »

grishka wrote: post #133

Possibly silly question. Why go through the trouble of emulating the ARM mode on Thumb instead of running the emulator on ARM Linux but with own userspace scheduler that implements the necessary features? I don't really know how to go about preemption, but that should have still been much easier than doing all that he did.

Because there aren’t any stable arm Linux boards that are small and documented. data sheets are under NDA. And please don’t mention rPi. I’ve never seen one with uptimes in the years. They randomly kernel panic once a month no matter what they do

Initially when I started I did run it under arm Linux on a Chromebook

Re: RePalm

#136

Post by sho_nuff »

ckz wrote: post #113
sho_nuff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * iPod -> Music player w/ FLAC + 1TB SD Out of curiosity, which Music player did you settle on? I am in the market for one and looking for options (currently leaning towards a FiiO M11).

Currently a FiiO M3K and I've been super happy with it. Might be discontinued now, however. The thought process for the purchase was that I wanted a standalone DAP without a touchscreen (iPod-esque), without wireless connectivity, with expandable storage, and not running Android. The M3K also has good Rockbox support including dual-boot, so I swap between that and the native Linux firmware at times. I am considering…

Thank you for pointing out that device.

I believe you are correct. I was only able to find a listing on Amazon for a used one of the M3K devices. Also found a listing on ebay.

I need a device with Bluetooth as my car doesn't have an auxiliary jack. Suppose that I could also make use of an low power FM transmitter also.

Re: RePalm

#137

Post by wmf »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #18

PalmOS was killed by its design mistakes and technical weaknesses. 16 bits memory limitation, even at the time that was silly. Armlets? Extremely hard to write simple native code or to port apps and games from other platforms. No file system, a custom and rather slow database instead… But they had tons of documents on how to follow their UI/UX guidelines. Basically, they had no real kernel upon which building an OS,…

They copied all those mistakes from the Mac, even though by that time Apple already knew those decisions were mistakes.

Re: RePalm

#138

Post by kmoser »

squarefoot wrote: post #78
muyuu wrote: post #37

As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. It's like bringing back MS-DOS, perhaps you have something ready made for that environment and you want to use it as is because you don't want to relearn some newer interface. That's ok, it can be done with emulation. But other than that why would you want to impose yourself a bunch of anachronistic limitations?

> As much as I love retro stuff I see no point in reviving Palm. I see a big opportunity should rePalm be ported to generic low cost embedded hardware. ESP32(|ARM|Risc-V) board+LCD+LTE module, all costing a dozen bucks each or less, would make the basis for a powerful dumbphone for when manufacturers will cease any production of them. I would personally love to have such a device. Broadly speaking, PalmOS had filesys…

For that matter, why revive any older tech, like record players, wrist watches, and fountain pens? The simple answer is that people like the simplicity and retro feel of those old devices.

Over 13 years ago I wrote an online tool (palm2csv.com) that converts Palm Datebook (Calendar) and To Do (Tasks) to CSV and iCal/ICS format. To this day people continue to use it and email me with stories of how they love Palm Desktop and their Palm device, and are reluctant to give it up in exchange for a modern phone.

Re: RePalm

#139

Post by notgettingit »

This is really awesome work! Thank you for sharing, and good luck for what’s ahead. Several source files are referenced through the post (emu.c, emuC.c, emuJit.c, patchpace.c, etc.), but I could not find them. Where can these be accessed please?

Re: RePalm

#140

Post by hedgehog »

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #127
stephc_int13 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PalmOS was already dead when the iPhone was launched. In fact most players had divested the market at this stage. The PocketPC team was a skeleton and Symbian was being eaten from inside by competing internal projects. Apple had a highway.

>PalmOS was already dead when the iPhone was launched. It was declining but not dead. Palm's swan song, Palm Centro, released in 2007, was a big success. They sold at least 2 million units[1]. According to AdMob, in terms of web traffic, at some point it was the second most popular smartphone in the US (7th worldwide)[2]. [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20080805094357/http://blog.palm.... [2] - https://web.archive.…

Exactly, good brand and decent market position making the situation potentially salvageable with better strategy. Look at Apple around ten years earlier, classic MacOS and the beige boxes and a business bleeding cash. Palm has the Pre on the way, that was a really nice device but delivered too late and without a good enough app strategy.
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