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PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

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Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#111

Post by smith7018 »

ethanpil wrote: post #31

What would it take to get this on modern (or even last generation) phone hardware? I bet we could do everything we want with tremendous simplicity and out of this world battery life... Probably would make a PinePhone feel like a Rolls Royce.

According to the README, it runs natively on ARM but it looks more like a program than an OS. So I'm sure it can be updated to run on Android or iOS if the GUI code is rewritten with their respective frameworks but making a bootable OS seems more difficult. The author wrote an article last year about making it a bootable OS by using a barebones x86 kernel and QEMU so I'm sure it could probably be repurposed for ARM devices. [1]

https://pmig96.wordpress.com/2023/02/24/pumpkinos-busybox-an...

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#112

Post by Someone »

kalleboo wrote: post #54
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…

> For anyone wondering, no, this isn't the thing that made classic Mac OS unfit for multitasking Yeah, the way to port classic MacOS apps to native OS X apps was called Carbon, and it was basically 80% of the classic MacOS toolbox just ported to OS X, Handles and QuickDraw and all. Classic MacOS apps written to CarbonLib would "just run" natively in OS X (and the same binary in Classic MacOS). Carbon even kept workin…

> Apple could have worked in multitasking in classic MacOS if they really wanted to

They did, and they couldn’t. Most users had some code running that patched system calls locally or globally or that peeked into various system data structures, and all applications assumed the system used cooperative multitasking. Going from there to a system with preemptive multitasking would mean breaking a lot of code, or a Herculean effort to (try to) hack around all issues that it caused with existing applications. I think that would have slowed down the system so much that it wasn’t worthwhile making the effort.

Having said that, MacOS 9 had a preemptive multitasking kernel. It ran all ‘normal’ Mac applications cooperatively in a single address space, though. Applications could run ’tasks’ preemptively, but those tasks couldn’t do GUI stuff (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ca...)

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#113

Post by codezero »

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…

Totally agree about there being exceptions. I never wore a watch, but when my wife got me an Apple Watch it became a huge utility to me to filter notifications to see only important things I cared about and it made me more productive to have one.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#114

Post by layer8 »

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.

Computer history museums seem so relatively recent that I almost expect there to be computer history museum history museums at some point.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#115

Post by layer8 »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #83

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 day…

I miss the weeks-long battery life, the simpler app designs, and the page-up/down buttons.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#116

Post by layer8 »

DXXTHLOVESU wrote: post #63

So palm OS was an old mobile operating system, introduced around 1996, coded in C++... later extended to support smartphones? Can someone please explain more to me about this OS as it seems pretty interesting, and I have never heard of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS

https://palm.wiki/

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#117

Post by memsom »

wmf wrote: post #7
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.

Palm was started by ex-Apple people and borrowed a lot of ideas and mistakes from the Mac.

Well - it is even more than that. They basically used Apple style code resources to define PalmOS apps. You used to be able to compile Think Pascal code on a Mac, and some guy has worked out how to use that code resource to convert it in to a PalmOS app with just tweaking the code resources in the compiled MacOS code. It was quite mind bending to me as a 20-something PalmOS fanboy with a day job doing Delphi. This was in like, 1998/1999 or so. I even went as far as emulating MacOS just to play with it. I don;t know if his code still exists online, but the tool was called SARC (Swiss Army Resource Compiler) is anyone cares to search for it.

I don't think Palm did a lot to change the exe format in the early days. And they used the same CodeWarrior 68K compiler that also targeted MacOS at the time.

Re: PumpkinOS, a Re-Implementation of PalmOS

#119

Post by Eric_WVGG »

thombat wrote: post #76
vineyardmike wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was 17 I had a job at Software Etc (a forerunner of Gamestop), and person checking out asked if I had any kids. I was kind of bewildered and said "I think I'm a little young for that" and she sort of shakes her finger in front of me, "oh no you're not honey"

I've been thinking about that ever since, marking various dates in my life where I could take this theoretical kid out for a beer, etc. If my child's child had made a similar… um… life decision… I could be a great-grandfather in two years.

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