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A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

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Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#101

Post by lxgr »

classichasclass wrote: post #47
harikb wrote: post #32

I have the Original PalmPilot, hardware upgraded to 3.0, as part of a beta program. I also have a few Palm 3's. Is there a compiled PDB available?

A Pilot 1000/5000 or the immediate model after? Also, I think you meant a .prc.

As far as I remember, the two extensions are mostly interchangeable, and are only used as a convention to indicate whether a given file contains an executable application or data.

Palm OS doesn't really have a concept of files; everything's a record-oriented database, containing either resources, including executable code, or data. Palm Desktop would just queue up every .prc or .pdb for copying during the next HotSync. (I've never tested it, but presumably renaming a .prc to .pdb and installing it would lead to it being backed up as a .prc.)

For some reason, Mobipocket (which was originally a Palm OS based ebook format) has landed on using .prc over .pdb for their books, which are definitely not executable, so every once in a while I stumble over a book with a .prc extension and it annoys me ever so slightly – it'll work, but that should be a .pdb :)

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#102

Post by msielski »

Ahh good memories. I wrote Pente for PalmOS back in 2004 or 2005, complete with a computer opponent using a minimax tree with alpha/beta pruning. Unfortunately I never finished or released it. It was so much fun to do early mobile development - it compared to nothing else I'd done at the time. And it wasn't easy. This is definitely an accomplishment.

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#103

Post by JKCalhoun »

yard2010 wrote: post #98
JKCalhoun wrote: post #21

Miniature golf was a game I began twice for the Macintosh back in the 1990's but never ended up completing/shipping. I've just recently been trying to recover my nearly 35 year old sources and create disk images for use on an emulator. The first B&W attempt at MiniGolf is here: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-UnfinishedTa... The second attempt (when I was a better programmer) was in color ... will mak…

Thank you John! This repo has a little of everything I love: art, engineering, history, but mostly art. It's truly inspiring.

When I redid Glypha (an old shareware game I wrote) last year for Steam, I decided to go with B&W pixel art for the game — even though in other ways I bent to modern hardware (a larger 16:9 screen size for example).

That B&W pixel art definitely was a defining feature of the era.

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#105

Post by memsom »

Zobat wrote: post #71
sodaplayer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just came across my old Palm Tungsten E2 last week while doing some cleaning. If I can also find its charger, I'll report back on running it.

I've come across my box of Palms a few times and had limited success getting them going. Seems they don't like being in storage for almost two decades. Really loved my Palms back then.

I have both a PalmPilot Professional (with serial) and a Palm m500 (with USB), the latter is a lot easier to pocket, but the USB support is horrible in modern OS. I keep wanting to get back in to Palm dev. I even managed to get Pila to compile under macOS Catalina a few years ago.

I also have a stack of V-Tech Helio's, which is a PalmPilot clone. I don't remember why I ended up with 3 of them, but I got them to reflash the OS and never got around to it. Their whole OS source code is available online. The compiler is not easy to make to work these days though. DJGPP and I think 16bit.

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#106

Post by xnx »

71bw wrote: post #99
xnx wrote: post #2

You need to promote this to projectionists so they can play it on their IMAX systems.

Care to explain? I'm obviously out of some loop here.

"IMAX emulates PalmPilot software to power Oppenheimer’s 70 mm release" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817900

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#107

Post by Telemakhos »

kstrauser wrote: post #12

This is beautiful! And now I'm nostalgic for my IIIxe. Through the rose colored glasses of poor remembrance, that might've been peek productivity in a handheld. It had enough functionality to remember all the things I cared to have on my person at all times, but was utterly lacking in notifications about distractions. It took me a while to quiet my iPhone so that it's not always pestering the hell out of me, but Palm…

Control over notifications is one of the most powerful UX features available. I make extensive use of geo- and time-based focus modes for the few notifications that I ever allow.

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#108

Post by memsom »

lxgr wrote: post #101
classichasclass wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Pilot 1000/5000 or the immediate model after? Also, I think you meant a .prc.

As far as I remember, the two extensions are mostly interchangeable, and are only used as a convention to indicate whether a given file contains an executable application or data. Palm OS doesn't really have a concept of files; everything's a record-oriented database, containing either resources, including executable code, or data. Palm Desktop would just queue up every .prc or .pdb for copying during the next HotSyn…

IIRC PalmOS prc and pdb are similar, in that they both contain PalmOS data, but pdb was meant to just for data and prc was meant to include executable resources too. PalmOS borrows a massive amount from 68K Mac. Codewarrior used to be the default compiler, and PalmOS uses resources in a similar way - though the actual file format is different IIRC. PalmOS apps are basically modified 68K Mac code (library?) resources. There was a tool that converted ThinkPascal generated binaries of whatever the type I don;t remember was, to prc files. SARC was what it was called.

Re: A MiniGolf game for Palm OS

#110

Post by harikb »

classichasclass wrote: post #47
harikb wrote: post #32

I have the Original PalmPilot, hardware upgraded to 3.0, as part of a beta program. I also have a few Palm 3's. Is there a compiled PDB available?

A Pilot 1000/5000 or the immediate model after? Also, I think you meant a .prc.

It was called Palm Pilot - the one pictured as the very first image in Wikipedia [1]. It still works, except for some bleeding/damage on a portion of the e-Ink screen. I probably need to find the appropriate Linux based tools to load the .PRC. I wonder if this [2] still works

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot

[2] https://shallowsky.com/linux/palmlinuxdev.html

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