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PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

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Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#71

Post by AshamedCaptain »

xmm wrote: post #17
jsheard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anything moderately large would need to be put into a special memory block that the OS could rearrange at will, and one would need to lock the block's handle to keep it stable while accessing it Didn't 16-bit Windows and classic Mac OS do something similar? If you're doing multitasking on a system without an MMU then I think that kind of live heap defragmentation would have been practically required.

Classic MacOS did, but it's definitely not something needed for multitasking without an MMU. For instance AmigaOS didn't do this, but instead effectively had a single shared heap.

Mac OS, Win16, PalmOS all have shared heaps too. This is precisely why you need defragmentation (after an application quits, the heap is a fragmented mess, full of holes) and therefore some system so that the other applications keep "movable handles" to heap blocks instead of raw pointers (which would become invalid after the heap undergoes one round of defragmentatino).

If an OS does not do this you are basically indirectly setting a limit to its uptime, as eventually this global heap's fragmentation will prevent launching any new programs.

Having local heaps does not solve this, as you still have to allocate these local heaps from somewhere. Having an MMU will allow you to do transparent defragmentation without handles as raw pointers (virtual addresses) become your handles. Having an MMU with fixed page size will allow you to outright avoid the need for defragmentation.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#72

Post by vineyardmike »

johnwalkr wrote: post #45
frellus wrote: post #37

Nothing made me feel older than going to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and seeing a Palm Pilot in the display case. It should be illegal to show things which were an integral part of your life, a short 30'ish years ago, as if they were uncovered in the ruins of some pre-civilization. Not fair at all.

On Reddit a few months ago there was a post about someone finding their grandfather’s old gameboy.

As someone who had a gameboy growing up, and now a child, I had to quickly do some math to console myself that I'm not yet "Grandfather" age. This is simply a (now) old man who had fun toys as a (normal age) adult.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#73

Post by 0xEF »

bayindirh wrote: post #65
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to put ebooks on it to help us during university exams. I pretended it was a calculator. I know, I’m ashamed, but it was for a boring course on economics.

I was the opposite. I used it as a calculator, without adding any ebooks on top, but my professors were uneasy about it. Then I got a calculator to curb their anxiety.

I remember when calculators were the Forbidden Fruit because, according to maths teachers, we were "not going to be walking around with calculators in our pockets all the time."

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#74

Post by snom380 »

lxgr wrote: post #13
tensor wrote: post #9

I remember investing in Palm thinking that they'd eventually be the ones to build something like the iphone. Sadly, they didn't and when apple did that was it for them.

They did have the Treo line! Arguably, what ultimately brought Palm down was their early success and the huge library of existing shareware and freeware tools: They desperately needed to try something new (Palm OS was just showing its age as a single-threaded, in-RAM, non-virtual-memory-based OS), but couldn't, since it would have alienated long-time fans by stranding their existing software libraries. They could nev…

Apple was able to manage this with a much bigger market and a lot more apps (when transitioning to OS X), so while it would be hard, I think Palm could have been able to do that as well.

But as you say, the company structure, market position and a lot more worked against them (same thing with Nokia and Symbian).

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#76

Post by thombat »

vineyardmike wrote: post #72
johnwalkr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Reddit a few months ago there was a post about someone finding their grandfather’s old gameboy.

As someone who had a gameboy growing up, and now a child, I had to quickly do some math to console myself that I'm not yet "Grandfather" age. This is simply a (now) old man who had fun toys as a (normal age) adult.

But the (horrifying) maths checks out: say he got the Gameboy at the age of 12 when it launched in 1989, had a first child at twenty in 1997, that child has a child of its own also at the age of twenty in 2017, grandchild aged six or seven now excited to find granddad's Gameboy. Twenty is merely youngish for a first child, not the stuff of shotgun-wedding backblocks.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#77

Post by akho »

johnwalkr wrote: post #45
frellus wrote: post #37

Nothing made me feel older than going to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and seeing a Palm Pilot in the display case. It should be illegal to show things which were an integral part of your life, a short 30'ish years ago, as if they were uncovered in the ruins of some pre-civilization. Not fair at all.

On Reddit a few months ago there was a post about someone finding their grandfather’s old gameboy.

Imagine them finding their grandfather's current PS5.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#78

Post by bouncing »

codezero wrote: post #39
frellus wrote: post #37

Nothing made me feel older than going to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and seeing a Palm Pilot in the display case. It should be illegal to show things which were an integral part of your life, a short 30'ish years ago, as if they were uncovered in the ruins of some pre-civilization. Not fair at all.

I still have my original PalmPilot in a box in the attic. Its existence was a huge life lesson for me. I asked my boss to pay for it (he did) but he said: do you use anything to organize your life and projects right now? If you don't, I don't think a PalmPilot will help you. He was so right.

I find that often, having a tool that enhances something you never did doesn’t make you start doing that thing.

But there are exceptions. I never had an address book or calendar until I had a Palm Pilot. It might have just been that I was becoming an adult at the time, but part of it was probably a barrier to use factor. The Palm was a small thing I could carry to class, keep near my phone, bring to my internship job, etc. It and the need for organizing did conspire to make it my first real organizer and my first time having that information organized at all.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#79

Post by finaard »

frellus wrote: post #37

Nothing made me feel older than going to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and seeing a Palm Pilot in the display case. It should be illegal to show things which were an integral part of your life, a short 30'ish years ago, as if they were uncovered in the ruins of some pre-civilization. Not fair at all.

I still have a section on my homepage about how to create and flash custom ROMs for the Palm Vx - and somewhat surprisingly, I still now and then get emails from people asking for help with that.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#80

Post by finaard »

rkagerer wrote: post #40

My heart thumped faster when I read this headline. Please make it work on Android so I can 'replace' my daily driver and go back to a better time!

I still miss the calendar and contact apps from the Palm. I stuck with Palm up until the Centro - and haven't found contact/calendar apps I'm as happy with as the Palm versions yet. They're either missing some simple basic features, or the UI is needlessly complicated.
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