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Palm Digital Assistant & UNIX

I have had little interest in PDA as I didn't find it very suitable to have a PDA which cannot phone, has no WiFi etc - currently (2004/11) Nokia and also Palm have released PDA which have WiFi, Internet (WWW/Email), and also full cellphone functionality.

1. Linux PDAs
2. PalmPilot Linux
3. Linux CE

Some Linux PDA, either ported or natively supported:

Handhelds.org Overview of handhelds running Linux/NetBSD (unfortunatly cluttered and bad navigation there)	Gmate's Yopy Most promising PDA with cam, voice-recognition, release date unknown (July 2001)	Compaq's iPaq Most popular and supported Linux PDA port
AgendaComputing.Com: VR3 Native Linux PDA

Other options are the refurbished pen-computers from Fujitsu:

Fujitsu Stylistic 1000 486DX-100, 8MB RAM, 325MB PCMCIA ATA disk

Fujitsu Stylistic 1200 Pentium-120, 16MB RAM, 2.1 GB 2.5" HD

With a price-range of $100-$150 a serious option as you get a full functional PC, yet, larger and heavier than a PDA. The newer pen-computers are quite expensive $3000+.

PDA Lab 2. PalmPilot Linux

First get yourself the latest XCopilot or Palm OS(tm) Emulator (POSE):

XCopilot Palm Pilot Emulator for LINUX & X11

POSE by 3com.com The 'official' emulator

Running ./xcopilot -ramsize 2048 -datadir . -romfile palm-vmlinux.rom shows booting, and finally a prompt appears in your xterm:

% more /proc/cpuinfo

CPU:            68328

MMU:            none

FPU:            none

Clocking:       43.9MHz

BogoMips:       5.49

Calibration:    2745600 loops

I was truly impressed that a cross-compiled LINUX kernel could be booted within an emulator (even a CPU without MMU), and actually really work.

Or pose palm-III.rom, the original ROM files are available at Palm Source: Downloads (you need to signup and agree to a couple of license agreements).

ROM Images

uCLinux.Org Palm Pilot LINUX: download vmlinux.rom WindStone KE another rom In case you look for the original pilot.rom do a search with google.com for "pilot.rom" and you might find the binary somewhere (as I did) ;-)

XCopilot Skins

Since the original skin of XCopilot is rather ugly, here some skins. To install them proceed like this:  cd xcopilot-version/   cp case.type.xpm case.xpm   rm display.o   make  case.hippie.xpm case.horizon.xpm case.marple.xpm case.modern.xpm case.stylish.xpm If you like to do your own skin, download case.xcf along with GIMP (all selections are prepared), and open brush tool, select "Overlay", then click on the "Tile Collection" within the main-tool window, select one you like. Then enable the "stamp" (aka clone-tool) painting, double click so you get the "Clone Tool Option", select "Pattern Source" and "Aligned". You might to lighten up the resulting painting and enhance the contrasts, the tool is available Image -> Colors -> Brightness / Contrast or Hue / Saturation.

XCopilot vs. POSE

xcopilot seems much better working than pose which crashed all the time with seg-fault, hasn't convinced us at all. (status Jan 2000)

Developing Applications

A clear distinction is required to be made: PalmOS or LINUX: Linux: With frame-buffer support some simple applications are possible to program, but without real GUI-API nothing really goes. WindStone environment might bring there new possibilities and quick application development on the Palm Pilot, or you use the PalmOS to develop (not reusable) applications. PalmGear.Com: FAQ Good place to start PalmOS Dev Tools for Linux Instructions how to create .pcr (PalmOS based apps) PilotApps @ ISAAC Group telnet, ssh, web-browser EuroCool.Com PilotApp Archive

The palm pilot is well supported via LINUX, but unfortunatly you get only B/W graphics on this PDA.

Palm + VNC

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a cross-platform & interOS protocol/server/client software which synchronizes screen-buffers amoung machines (e.g. X11 -> Win95, Win95 -> X11, or even X11 -> X11); and also a PalmOS client is available, which enables you to connect with your PDA a UNIX machine with X11: PalmVNC PalmOS VNC viewer Note: If you run the XCopilot check Palm OS - Linux Documents

PDA Lab 3. Linux CE

Various projects under LinuxCE are currently developed:

LinuxCE.Org [DEAD LINK] Bringing LINUX to PDA's which run usually WindowsCE

Supported are: Vadem Clio, the Everex Freestyle, the Casio E-105; also Nino.

                                                                                                                                   

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