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PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

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Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#81

Post by finaard »

wpietri wrote: post #46
lxgr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They did have the Treo line! Thank you for mentioning it. It makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about how Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. I had a series of Treos starting with the Treo 270: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_270 As somebody who carried a Palm for years, it was so amazing to suddenly have the internet in my pocket. It still is, really.

With the Centro it was pretty amazing when they dropped a maps application later on - as it didn't have GPS. In built up areas they managed pretty impressive accuracy just by cell tower triangulation.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#82

Post by JNRowe »

spc476 wrote: post #48
kmeisthax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The idea wasn't to get away with not having an MMU, though - it was to get away with shipping the Mac with an ungodly low amount of RAM for a machine with a GUI. I believe the original idea was to ship with like 64k or something? Obviously, with the state of mobile hardware back then relocatable blocks were also similarly necessary in order to save RAM. For anyone wondering, no, this isn't the thing that made cl…

Well, there's also the fact that the MC68000 in the original Mac didn't have an MMU, and it was difficult to add an external MMU to a 68000 system [1]. You could use an MMU sanely starting with the MC68010, and it wasn't until I think the MC68030 that the CPU came with an integrated MMU. [1] Because exceptions on the 68000 didn't save enough information to restart the faulting instruction. You could get around this,…

Just to muddy the waters some more there was also an EC variant¹ of the 030 without the MMU.

The EC variant was available right through to the 060, and I'd be curious to know how prevalent the line was. I suspect the EC versions far outnumbered the "full" chips, because they appeared in all kinds of industrial systems. I'm basing that entirely on working for a company that was still shipping products with MMU-less 68k and coldfire this century, not any real data.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68030#Variants

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#83

Post by PaulRobinson »

I love this project existing and prolonging the life of all that software that would otherwise never have a chance to execute again, but is this about nostalgia or about a real need/desire for that software?

Given how much people wax lyrical about Palm, Blackberry, Psion, outside of niche applications (I know IMAX needs Palm emulators to run bits of that stack), do people genuinely yearn for going back to the old days?

I was looking around for a "modern" Psion 5, and spotted some of the team had come up with the Gemini PDA which looks a bit like one, but is Android based. Some reviewers definitely find this a drawback. You can imagine a new EPOC operating system with support for modern connectivity would be a slam dunk for them, but then I found myself thinking I'd mostly run Linux on it (if I could find a new one in stock anywhere with a UK keyboard).

But then, do we all really want that? There has been a lot of progress in the last 20+ years, and I can't help but feel if most people were offered PalmOS instead of Android or iOS as their daily driver it would be frustrating enough they'd hand it back within a week.

What's the killer feature that makes that statement false?

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#84

Post by PaulRobinson »

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.

At the Science Museum in London, there is a collection of mobiles phones, computers and consoles in one gallery. My partner and I take great joy in pointing out all the ones we've owned over the years, it's great fun to see them again.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#85

Post by bayindirh »

0xEF wrote: post #73
bayindirh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

For simple stuff, incl. calculus, I agree with them. This was for other courses, which prioritize methodical correctness rather than math knowledge, like physics and chemistry.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#86

Post by donatj »

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.

The Computer History Museum also has a Dreamcast on display and that bothered me way more because there is some unresolved traumatized part of my brain left from when I was a teen still actively waiting for Dreamcast to make it's big comeback

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#87

Post by lloeki »

bouncing wrote: post #78
codezero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The key difference for me was that I didn't always have my notebook/agenda on me/at hand, so writing things was haphazard and unreliable (either I tried to remember and failed or I noted it down but consistently lost the random piece of paper I used as a fallback) whereas when I got a Palm device I always had that device at hand.

It all boiled down to the physical paper tradeoff: small filled up quickly/was too constraining a space, bigger was impractical to lug around anywhere.

So arguably I had sort of a broken system in place already but it became very intermittent to the point of being nonexistent in practice because of the constraints. Palm devices allowed me to fully realise the system.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#88

Post by cmgbhm »

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.

We had an org offsite there about 5y ago. The VP afterwards asks everyone what they most fondly remember.

One of the younger seniors says “I remember when my Dad used a palm pilot!” The room had the same experience.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#89

Post by kalleboo »

wpietri wrote: post #46
lxgr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> They did have the Treo line! Thank you for mentioning it. It makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about how Steve Jobs invented the smartphone. I had a series of Treos starting with the Treo 270: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treo_270 As somebody who carried a Palm for years, it was so amazing to suddenly have the internet in my pocket. It still is, really.

Heck Steve Jobs himself was known to own the Sony Ericsson P800 (Symbian UIQ) long before the iPhone was developed

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#90

Post by kalleboo »

Tor3 wrote: post #57
toast0 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Steve Jobs invented the smartphone Yeah, well people are misinformed. Unless there was something for the Newton that turned it into a phone, IBM was first to market in 1994 [1] The IBM Simon made calls, did data, had a paid 3rd party app, etc. Besides Palm, Symbian (Mostly from Nokia, but some other companies made Symbian handsets), RIM's Blackberry, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile (with handsets from many OEMs) had…

And, in any case, Japan had tons of what should be considered early smartphones. I was astonished the first time I saw one (and this was obviously before the iPhone). For some reason the iPhone managed to kill off the local Japanese industry though. Japan youngsters (and not only youngsters) are very fashion-oriented, which had more to do with the change than anything else.

The problem was the UI on the Japanese smartphones was completely unusable. Just how to go back to the previous menu differed between the different functions. I was there, I migrated my mother-in-law from her “galakei” to an iPhone. She went from barely even being able to take a picture (there was a dialog after each photo asking where to save it!! Wtf) to instant messaging and playing Pokémon Go.
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