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View Full Version : Run Palm apps on your Pocket PC

Ed Hansberry
06-28-2002, 07:11 PM
<a href="http://www.kodeness.com/">http://www.kodeness.com/</a><br /><br />Whilst perusing <a href="http://www.pdabuzz.com">PDA Buzz</a> during lunch, I see where the PocketPalm Palm OS emulator is back in action. It had been pulled earlier this year over legal issues, but the alpha version is back and it seems development is continuing. So, if you are a Palm convert but still miss that one app from your dark days,<img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif" /> you can give this a shot.
Foo Fighter
06-28-2002, 07:34 PM
Yes, but what does it look like? Does PocketPalm run in a small window like other emulators, or does it run full screen?
Ed Hansberry
06-28-2002, 07:49 PM
Yes, but what does it look like? Does PocketPalm run in a small window like other emulators, or does it run full screen?
Of course it runs in a small screen. You have that piddly 160X160 screen. To run it full screen, you'd have to do a 1.5X on it and that would be messy. Even Handera with their 320X240 screen run some apps in a pure 160X160X to make them look decent.
mookie123
06-28-2002, 08:37 PM
Pocket matrix has a forum section devoted to this "Pocket Palm". I has some post from the PDAFantast, the program author.

http://forums.pocketmatrix.com/
Foo Fighter
06-28-2002, 08:46 PM
To run it full screen, you'd have to do a 1.5X on it and that would be messy. Even Handera with their 320X240 screen run some apps in a pure 160X160X to make them look decent.

Well, duh. I'm not talking about boosting emulated Palm apps to 320x240. A Sony Clie can "emulate" a 160x160 environment at full screen. I'm talking about emulating a 160x160 environment on a 320x320 or 320x240 screen.
Ed Hansberry
06-28-2002, 08:54 PM
Well, duh. I'm not talking about boosting emulated Palm apps to 320x240. A Sony Clie can "emulate" a 160x160 environment at full screen. I'm talking about emulating a 160x160 environment on a 320x320 or 320x240 screen.
Foo, go download the free alpha and let us know.
Dr. Smooth
06-28-2002, 08:58 PM
To run it full screen, you'd have to do a 1.5X on it and that would be messy. Even Handera with their 320X240 screen run some apps in a pure 160X160X to make them look decent.

Well, duh. I'm not talking about boosting emulated Palm apps to 320x240. A Sony Clie can "emulate" a 160x160 environment at full screen. I'm talking about emulating a 160x160 environment on a 320x320 or 320x240 screen.

I think the point is that since a PPC display is 240 pixels wide, you'd have to double every other pixel (or do some processor-intensive antialiasing). Either way, the end result would be ugly. Have you ever run an LCD display like a laptop at a smaller resolution than its default? It's nasty.

I've run the emulator. It's pretty cool -- it even runs decently on my Jornada 548. I was hoping to use it to run some old favorite Palm apps. But AFAICT, there's no way to save your state. So every time you launch the emulator, you'd have to recalibrate and reinstall your apps. Maybe the author thought people would just leave it running all the time. If only PPC were actually stable enough for that approach to work...
Foo Fighter
06-28-2002, 09:06 PM
Foo, go download the free alpha and let us know.

Ok. Here I go:

"Hey, your chocolate is in my Peanut Butter!"

"No, your Peanut Butter is in my chocolate!"

:P
Small Town Man
06-29-2002, 12:00 AM
The emulator does run in full screen mode.
It comes with two .exe. One for 160x160 and one for full screen.
topps
06-29-2002, 01:16 AM
The developer and his small group of beta testers (which he does not want to expand so dont' bug him about it) has managed to get it running better than this, including saved states, loading apps, some IR compatibility (I think), and been able to run a wide range of Palm apps on it.

Prior to release, he was working on getting a wider range of Palm ROMs to work successfully. He also had done a pretty nice job of pixel interpolation etc so that it is quite usable in either full screen or 160x160 mode.

Then good ol' Palm Inc or whoever...waded in and tied him up in some legal manoeuvring - no legal merit to the case - has been tested before and the maker of the emulator was vindicated. However, Palm or whoever it was who threatened the legal action has acheived their goal and has slowed him down enough that now they are not so threatened by it. Note that Palm themselves will be using the same methodology to run Palm apps on ARM processors - there is no SDK for native ARM code for Palms and will not be until Palm OS6 sometime next year maybe.

He has done such a nice job with the code (much faster than the kludgy old emulator that was available before - from Conduits and others- which was based on an older Atari (no, that's not right...think of another old computer make beginning with A...not Apple...sorry, can't remember) emulator) that I was beginning to think that Palm Inc et al had bought his services to do their ARM emulator.

Will be great to see some progress on this.
ppcsurfr
06-29-2002, 06:32 AM
Doesn't look that bad on a 320x240 screen... actually it ends up as a 240x240 screen with the bottom part for your grafitti area.

Look bad??? Does it look bad on a HandEra running 320x240???
helloboys
06-29-2002, 09:15 AM
which was based on an older Atari (no, that's not right...think of another old computer make beginning with A...not Apple...sorry, can't remember) emulator)

Amiga. The other emulator used the 68K elumator out of UAE, an Amiga emulator.
topps
06-29-2002, 07:08 PM
which was based on an older Atari (no, that's not right...think of another old computer make beginning with A...not Apple...sorry, can't remember) emulator)

Amiga. The other emulator used the 68K elumator out of UAE, an Amiga emulator.

Yes...thanks...I knew it began with A...just couldn't get the ol' wet brain to function. WOM!

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