#120747 - Mchart - Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:37 pm
I'm looking to start another a project for myself on the DS. I've been making little things here and there for both systems for a while now, and feel I would be able to undertake such a project, since I have experiance developing for palm OS to begin with.
However, I am not entirely sure if this would be legal and on top of this, feasible.
The first major hurdle, is that the only source code I have to work off of is the v5 device specific simulator for x86. On top of this, the lowest end v5 device is the Zire 21. (A 125mhz OMAP, 8MB of ram)
But before discussing the feasibility, I'm just wondering the legality of such a project.
#120755 - spinal_cord - Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:13 pm
As far as i'm aware, there should be no legal problem with making an emulator, as long as you do not distribute commercial software/hardware'images' with it. But I assume there are more legally knowlagable people here who could say better.
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#120771 - dualscreenman - Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:35 am
Yeah, but is is feasible? Not really.
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#120805 - GrizzlyAdams - Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:24 am
The PalmOS5 devices are based on faster ARM chips than the ds. You wouldn't be able to achieve reasonable speed. Maybe try for PalmOS4 with xcopilot? You might get speeds similar to minivmac.
#120810 - Mchart - Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:45 am
| GrizzlyAdams wrote: |
| The PalmOS5 devices are based on faster ARM chips than the ds. You wouldn't be able to achieve reasonable speed. Maybe try for PalmOS4 with xcopilot? You might get speeds similar to minivmac. |
Yeah, i've been actually working on something all day today, and my conclusion is.. Possible, but will run so slow it won't even be worth it. Even if I got both Arm7 and Arm9 running each core of the OMAP, its just.. bad.
So i'm just going to start simple at this point. Going to start out with trying to emulate a m130. (Since I still own one, and its the first in the history of Palm to be color)
#120905 - thing - Wed Mar 07, 2007 4:25 am
| Mchart wrote: |
Yeah, i've been actually working on something all day today, and my conclusion is.. Possible, but will run so slow it won't even be worth it. Even if I got both Arm7 and Arm9 running each core of the OMAP, its just.. bad.
So i'm just going to start simple at this point. Going to start out with trying to emulate a m130. (Since I still own one, and its the first in the history of Palm to be color) |
Yep, I guess OS4 (and below) makes more sense due to screen and hardware limitations. It's an interesting project, good luck!
#120916 - Mchart - Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:19 am
The size of the screen is the major issue i'm running into. I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to draw 3/4 of the viewable screen on the top screen of the DS. Then the remaining 1/4 of viewable on the bottom, followed by a representation of the Graffiti(tm) input area. (Or another idea i'm thinking about that would be much easier to do, is have the user look at their DS like one would in brain-age. Since drawing it out this way lets me use all of the screen space due to a closer aspect-ratio)
I'm probally going to have to drop graffiti support, however. And I will simply use this space for a onscreen keypad. Graffiti support is definatly on the list for one of the last things i'll try to get working. At this point I don't even want to think about it. If I can at least get the core applications runn
As for OSv4, I'm once again dropping down to a lower version. I have settled on v3.5.4, or more specifically, a M100 emulator.
Note that like the official v4 and below emulator for the PC, you will need to own or have legal access to the original M100 ROM.
#120936 - thing - Wed Mar 07, 2007 1:15 pm
| Mchart wrote: |
| The size of the screen is the major issue i'm running into. I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to draw 3/4 of the viewable screen on the top screen of the DS. Then the remaining 1/4 of viewable on the bottom, followed by a representation of the Graffiti(tm) input area. (Or another idea i'm thinking about that would be much easier to do, is have the user look at their DS like one would in brain-age. Since drawing it out this way lets me use all of the screen space due to a closer aspect-ratio) |
Sorry for my ignorance, but early Palm devices had 160x160 pixels, right? If so, why not fit it on top screen (256x192), and leave the bottom screen for an oversized keyboard (and hopefully) graffiti? The 'brain-age' approach is not a bad option either,
Anyway, you are the developer and you know the challenges... whatever solution you come up will be great :)