Palm Zire 72 Running Linux & Qtopia

[Jon_J]

I know this may be old news, but has anyone here tried this?

http://hackndev.com/palm/z72

I haven't tried this, but this would be a nice way to make a Zire 72 complement a Zaurus.
I wonder if they "work" with each other, such as sharing memory or SD cards.
A Palm Zire 72 has SDIO and Bluetooth built in.
I'm not sure if I want to give up the very large software base of a Palm.
I can run a lot of stuff on it that isn't available for a Zaurus

[Snappy]

Nope ... not tried yet ... I haven't have had a Palm since my T3 ... 2 yrs back. Tried HandheldPCs ... and finally onto a Zaurus (Aki) ...

While there is a huge app base for Palm pdas ... I generally use ~5 apps on a daily basis ... the other apps are really on a good to have basis.

So far, my Aki can fulfill 3~4 of these apps already ... I just need to get wifi on Cacko or Chinese on gpe/pdaXrom to work, and I'm done.

As it is, I can use Cacko 1.23 quite comfortably without missing my T3.

oh but back to the point, it would be an interesting exercise, but to me, its more of a do it because you can, rather than because you need to.

[ian.finder]

Go figure I just sold my zire to finance the 3200 I just bought...
Still, the only palm HW that entices me is the treo 650--
I booted GPE on that the other day with the stuff from shadowmite-- I had to recompile the kernel on the host machine just to get it to load. Kinda pointless to have your cell phone on a 2ft USB "leash" to your desktop-- especially when the phone doesn't work.

Still, it's progress, and the T650 is so far the only palm that can boot linux from the original, built-in bootloader.

But as to Palm compatibility for the Z, hasn't anyone recompiled POSE for one of the roms? (Maybe I'll do it...) Also, I saw a program for WinCE / ARM pocketpcs the other day that could run ARM-based palm software natively by emulating only the palmos API, not the target's CPU (ala Wine on X86). Maybe as linux-based PDAs start to penetrate consumer markets we'll see a similar program. (And speaking of which-- what about an ARM port of WINE with WinCE API emulation (instead of standard X86 Win32) for PocketPC compatibility? That'd be somewhat nifty as well.)

[Tom61]

Maybe as linux-based PDAs start to penetrate consumer markets we'll see a similar program.

Considering about the only way to get that to happen is for PalmSource to finally release ALP, which would mean all there various emulation layers for older PalmOS apps would of course be present, that's almost garanteed.

[miskinis]

Hi,

This is somewhat interesting, although none of the (older) Palm devices
I own have an SD card slot, and they also have Motorola 68000 series
(not ARM) processors.

I have put a little work myself into "emulating" some of the Palm API
routines, but a very small percentage of them.  I know there are versions
of POSE out there that were built for the Z, although I have never tried any
of them.  A search across all the forums for POSE should turn up some
info.

There is also an (abandoned) LINUX on Palm effort called UCX, and I
tried it a few years ago.  It was necessary to use a PC as a "terminal"
to watch the boot messages, and use the console, which was somewhat
of a humorous configuration in my mind.  There was no screen driver!

On a somewhat related note, I implemented a system (MISKINIX) a while
back, which was a stacked and multitasking windowing system running
on PalmOS.  I agreed to suspend work on it when I accepted a position for
another OS company, and once I got into a Zaurus, I never persued the
effort again.  It was very helpful to be able to gauge the performance of
complex algorithms on a 16MHz CPU, to optimize them.

I would be very interested to hear about folks' experiences with this
LINUX on Palm effort, in comparison to the Zaurus experience.

[miskinis]

Just an FYI - to show how limiting a windowing system is on x 160x160 8bpp display!

 [ Invalid Attachment ]   This is at 2X magnification! (When you click to enlarge)

[Ferret-Simpson]

check out the Bluetooth watch thread in hardware mods. Looking at replacing the Palm Wristwatch with a linux version. For no practical purpose, just kicks. (Although since, I've come up with a whole list of practical uses)

Believe it or not, the wristwatch is the best palm I ever tried.