Any interest in Palm Pilots?

ClassicHasClass

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Aug 30, 2022
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The 690 was a lot better than the 680, but on the whole I wasn't impressed with CE. I did land a verrrry interesting CE device recently, however. More when it arrives.

I do have one of the MIPS IBM WorkPads (see https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-mips-thinkpad-kind-of.html ). The keyboard, once I fixed it, is great, and it's probably the most practical CE device I've used, but the NEC MIPS CPU is sluggish. Sure pretty though.
 

lauland

New Tinkerer
Dec 12, 2023
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I've got one of those! (Jornada 680) Running the JLime Linux distro off a 1g sd card. It's interesting since it uses an unusual CPU, the SH3, little brother to the SH4 that the Sega Dreamcast uses. There were a lot of Windows CE devices that used this CPU, but little else.
https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/il3skf
Anybody else have a Tapwave Zodiac? Way ahead of its time. It's even got (probably extremely primitive) 3d accelerator.

One thing I never got around to...and still meaning to if I find the time...is uCLinux on Palm. It's a very very cut down version of Linux. No gui, I think only a terminal via serial.

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And...while we're at it...if anyone else is interested in coding for the Palm using CodeWarrior, drop me a line. I used to do a lot back in the day, and have been meaning to get back into it. I've been doing a lot of m68k Mac coding recently...and having some fun with the challenges of fitting into the limitations of such "small" systems.
 

ClassicHasClass

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I like NetBSD more on the J690. I always thought the SuperH should have done better in the market. They're surprisingly nice to program.

I've toyed with getting a Zodiac, but the sellers generally want stupid money, and I'm not *that* interested.

For my Palm development, I usually crossbuild with gcc, or write directly in Plua.
 

lauland

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Dec 12, 2023
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In some ways the SuperH was ahead of its time. It has the "compressed" 16 bit opcodes not unlike thumb for arm.

Dang! I totally forgot that "NetBSD runs on EVERYTHING"! Do you like it? I've never tried except on intel boxes...and struggled to get it going on a PowerBook 180, but couldn't get the install/format/partition steps right. I was using an old version in the hopes it would squeeze into the limited memory. My next step is to install it on an external scsi drive using a quadra 800 and then boot the PowerBook off that...probably should have better luck.

I looked into gcc for Palm but since I had bought CodeWarrior Palm and was familiar with it on Macs and Windows didn't go too far. I liked the gui designer.
 

ClassicHasClass

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Aug 30, 2022
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Seems to work very well on it. My NetBSD systems are a IIci, a Q605, a G4 mini, an RPi and the Jornada (I also have it on a card for my MIPS WorkPad but I usually run it in WinCE), so I have a long history with it. In general I like the BSDs more as servers, and the J690 is indeed just that, a microserver I bring along for demonstrations.
 

lauland

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Dec 12, 2023
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Sure would be cool if a "nommu" version of NetBSD could be ported to Palm, eh?

That'd only be for the m68k Palms, of course...the ARM based ones could run the full kernel! I did some work way back on getting Linux to run on the Dell Axim x3 (I won one in a raffle) and figuring out the GPIO's was a pain, never finished. If any of the ARM Palms had hardware similar enough https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/hpcarm/ would be technically possible. It looks like they have it running only on StrongArm/PXA, a Palm using that (as opposed to the OMAP ones) would be a target...but a major challenge figuring out the hardware. Or maybe a rump kernel?

Browsing the source of this would be a start...whereever it is: https://palmdb.net/app/palm-linux

Have you tried NetBSD on Dreamcast?
 
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