A few days ago I got a mail from the developer who ported an emulator that lets you use real PC apps on a Palm. It’s the Palm OS port of the well-known DOS emulator DOSBox. It doesn’t only emulate an x86 CPU but also a DOS environment, so you can’t install another x86 operating system. But you can run many DOS apps / games in this DOS environment, even Windows until 3.11 and maybe even Windows 95 / 98.
This version is the first alpha release and very buggy, of course. But I can confirm that it’s no fake, and some things already work relative well:
- CPU emulation works without many problems (though it’s relative slow)
- 80 columns x 25 (43) rows color screen
- VFS access
- mouse is controlled by touchscreen, but very uncalibrated
- my Tungsten C and my on-screen Graffiti 2 inputs aren’t recognized
The port contains all necessary program parts in one PRC file which is about 400 KB. In the app you can set the size of RAM and some CPU settings. Other settings can be stored in a file dosbox.conf in the root directory of your card, for example autoexec commands.
As this version doesn’t support entering text - at least on my Tungsten C - I have to set the app I want to start in the auto execution list of dosbox.conf. This works, and I can show you some screenshots:
DOSBox command prompt
Microsoft QBasic
Microsoft DOS Shell
Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS
A screen mode with 43 (instead of 25) lines is also supported!!!
I’m already waiting very long for such news. A DOS emulator is, of course, NOT meant to be a replacement of Palm OS. But it makes you able to run your old DOS games on a Palm, to write small scripts in QBasic or to run apps that aren’t out yet for Palm OS.
I don’t want to upload this here yet because I don’t know if the developer agrees and I want to ask him first. But I want your feedback - now. And perhaps you have some feature requests I could send to the developer. So please comment.
Gorgeous! There are a lot of good DOS programs I’d be happy to run on my Palm.
Thanx for the review!
COOL!!!!! I can’t wait to see a release of it!!!!
Thanks for this great news!!!
Hi,
it didnt work on my T3 though…
Best regards
Tam Hanna
This looks great!
I wonder why it didnt work on the T3… they both have 12MB of heap and use an XScale. It might be the hires+ of the screen.
Out of curiosity, does the developers nockname start with an M?
Is the project hosted at sourceforge?
There seems to be a palmdosbox project there and its author has given a link to download from in a different forum.
I don’t think it crashes because of special hardware… first it worked on my TC, now I have the same problem. Remember, it’s early alpha which even shouldn’t be (too) public… But I think it’s a good start
Hi,
I wasnt given any download link either…
Best regards
Tam Hanna
No complains there!
Its a great effort! And it proves to certain nay-sayers that you only need persistance.
WOW! That’s amazing! I’m interested that what will be with networking capabilities? For example, browsing the net through IE5 on Windows 3.11 :-).
>browsing the net through IE5 on Windows 3.11
I can think of how slow it would be…..
There are even some DOS browsers (which are of course slower)… And DosBox supports something like ‘ipx for UDP/IP’. Perhaps will help…
Here’s one I’ve used in the past. Setting up a DOS TCP/IP stack on top of Palm hardware would be an absolute nightmare, though.
http://home.arachne.cz/
[...] DOS and a true x86 emulator for PalmOS These days, everyone seems to be working so hard to put Linux on anything that can compute. Whatever happened to good ‘old DOS emulation?! Well, Tam’s palm is reporting that the emulator required to play old DOS games, run old versions of MS Word and program with Q BASIC have been written. This is most certainly a very rough version, and I don’t think the code has even been released. Not at Tam’s Palm anyway. But it’s pretty neat to see something like this created. PC apps on a Palm device. Certainly the new handhelds must have the processing power of early PC’s, so even under emulation you can see it as possible. We’ll look forward to hearing more about it. It would be very nice if it eventually even becomes a program that’s sturdy enough to be made available to all PalmOS users. Via Tams Palm. [...]
I love this! Will keyboards work with it? What’s the oldest Palm that would load this? (I’m hoping that Word Star will work on it.) What a treat!
I think it will work with keyboards when it’s more stable. The oldest Palm… well, I think any machine with an ARM processor, so even a Tungsten T (or the first Sony with Palm OS 5) should work (but slower than newer ones).
I don’t know Word Star good but almost any DOS program works. You can test it by trying it in a Windows DosBox installation.
There’s infinite possibilities to having good’ol DOS working over at your Palm but I would like to have it working on a T3.
As for features, it’s hard to say when you can’t actually use the app. But once it’s downloadable, we’ll see!
I’m very interested in this, and, like Io, would love to be able to run WordStar on my palm (WordStar DOS run nicely in DosBox on a Windows XP system).
How to edit dosbox.conf? What shall I wrote after [autoexec] when i want to load a application from the memory card root? How can I mont the SD card?
To mount the root of the card to C:
mount c /
To switch to C:
c:
Then you can place commands, apps, etc.
[...] A review of, apparently, a yet to be released port of DOSBox to PalmOS has been posted on TamsPalm. It looks fairly interesting and given the power of DOSBox, I’m guessing there are a fair number of things that could be done with this software… I’m rather excited to see it finally be released….or even an alpha download link made available. I might even scour the net to see if I can find it anywhere.. [...]
Will it work on a lowres Zire 31? Will it have graffitti 2 support when its done?
LoRes: well, it could be possible, perhaps the developer has some extra work, but I think HiRes is better. You would have to scroll very much.
Graffiti 2: At the moment you see the on screen Graffiti strokes (although input doesn’t work), so I think it’ll work.
[...] Pero esta vez se está haciendo un port completamente funcional, en concreto utilizando el emulador DosBox, tan útil para ejecutar juegos y programas antiguos de MS-DOS en ordenadores modernos. El autor ya anunció su trabajo en agosto, y por lo visto la cosa ha avanzado, ya que podemos ver en TamsPalm capturas del emulador funcionando en una Tungsten C. Aunque el código está aún lleno de errores, es todo un avance ver como programas como QBasic, DOSShell o Word 5.5 se inician correctamente. ¿Qué recuerdos, verdad? No me enrollaré con batallitas de cómo me inicié en el mundo de la informática con mi querido clónico 286 a 16MHz y 512Kb de RAM. [...]
Well, Tam, in case you havent noticed…
WE HAVE BEEN DUGG, cool!
Downloaded PalmDOS from source forge and installed it on my Treo 650.. It crashes and restarts my phone almost instantly while loading. Doesnt work on my T650. Oh well. Hope fully DOSBox will work on my 650. My brother has a pocket pc smartphone and runs all these kick ass games on it in DOS. Like tomb raider, WOW, DOOM, ect. Runs fast too. Anyways, Props to the creater of DOSBox if it work good on my 650.
I certainly welcome this release of DOS emulator for Palm. I own a Tungsten T2. Will it work as well?
Can you install linux in it?
Too bad about the Tungsten C keyboard not working. Maybe in the future.
Oh my god! I can’t wait!
I think (almost?) every Palm OS 5 handheld should work.
Linux: as I said, DOS Box isn’t only a x86 emulator but also a DOS emulator which has DOS as a fixed operating system. So installing Linux is not possible, but perhaps there is a distribution that can start from DOS?
Brad, Tam posted this to Digg. But today we have 255 Diggs !!
Hi all,
1. nice to see dosemu on palm
2. Linux loader for dos exist -> loadlin.exe
3. only psychopat try run linux under dosemu on palm, if exist native palm linux on http://www.hackndev.com
Unfortunetly there is no native Linux for my Palm yet - but I think I won’t use it via emulation…
Runs on my Treo 650 but cannot use the keyboard. So I can’t type anything. Even don’t know how to exit the prog… But I’m sure the will come more…
[...] Palm OS 5 handhelds can soon run DOS programs. TamsPalm has an exclusive preview of the emulator!read more | digg story [...]
[...] Link [ Via The Raw Feed ] [...]
A HiRes+ compatibility would be cool!
[...] I’m already waiting very long for such news. A DOS emulator is, of course, NOT meant to be a replacement of Palm OS. But it makes you able to run your old DOS games on a Palm, to write small scripts in QBasic or to run apps that aren’t out yet for Palm OS…Read more… Share :These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
for Alexander Gratz: i don’t try, but look here: http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/PalmTungstenCHowTo
Oh no. Not compile
I prefer pre-compiled files which can be moved to the card and then just work. And there isn’t such a version for the TungstenC. It needs USBnet (which I never had worked working).
Will this work on 68k or just arm? ram required?
any support for palm doc formats or “save as” memo for transfer to palm apps? ansi color text?
all in all brilliant attempt
I think this uses ARM. Otherwise it would be too slow. This version requires 420 KB, and you can set the emulated memory from 1 to 6 MB.
Your ideas are good, I will forward them to the developer asap. But as you can mount the whole card into DOSBox (I did this on a card without important data - and nothing became corrupted or deleted), it shouldn’t be too difficult to transfer files between DOS and Palm OS
[...] Here’s an article/review of an x86 simulator running MS-DOS that was ported to a Palm PDA. It has 80 col x 25 rows, can run many DOS apps like Word 5, QBasic, etc…Long live DOS! [...]
I tried this out and it wouldn’t work for me. My Tungsten C has a switchable Chinese/English OS? Do I need to use the US ROM? Would sure love to get it work. Kings Quest games, old DOS platformers, or even some old DOS applications. Could you even get some old digital fine art applications like 3D Studio running on it? The Tunsten C has more power than the 486 that I used to use, although there is emulation to consider.
But Word Star…. Awesome. Come on keyboard support.
I don’t think that it has something to do with the ROM. What exactly doesn’t work?
very interested. I have many dos apps that I would love to run on my Palm
Please let me know when it can be downloaded…
[...] Palm OS 5 handhelds can soon run DOS programs. TamsPalm has an exclusive preview of the emulator!read more | digg story [...]
where download it?
@Andy: “I don’t want to upload this here yet because I don’t know if the developer agrees and I want to ask him first.”
Hi!
I like to try that dosbox with my Palm T2. Can you mail me that file? erkki.merkki[@]netti.fi
Nice find. Though I think the developer has some big issues to overcome:
-I’ve noticed from the screenshots that only half of the DOS screen is shown. Perhaps there could be a way to scale things down so that everything fits?
-From personal experience DosBox is a notorious CPU hog, maybe the developer can concentrate on a solution that is natively Palm OS, instead of porting a program designed for desktops?
Again, despite these shortcomings, I applaud the developer for his ingenuity and passion. It’s people like him that show why the Internet makes it easy to showcase great ideas.
hi, for all…
i’m not speak with developer, but i think that official project page with download, is on sf.net
http://sf.net/projects/palmdosbox
Hello … I loaded it on my Zire 72 and I can not type anything. some of the keys shift the screen but that is about it.
Anyone else able to get it working?
As the developer hasn’t replied my last mails, I think it’s O.K. to post the download link. He sent DosBox to me, so I didn’t know the Sourceforge page.
I don’t think the developer will write a new emulator. He has some experiences with ports (imho), and a new DOS / x86 emulator is much work.
The keyboard seems not to work on any Palm handhelds at the moment.
alex
I am very happy to have Dos on palm !
I load it on my Zire 31 and it says “Can’t Load Module, exiting.”. But I have installed UDMH with 10mb of ram. I don’t understand.
Where can I found a Read-me.txt for this program ?
Well, it works on my T3. The graffiti doesn’t work at all, but using autoexec commands in dosbox.conf I was able to load a game and it worked (although slowly). I had to use UDMH though.
I have no idea why it worked on mine and not on others, but…oh well.
I’d love to have that for my Treo 650.
I have a lot of old dos games I’d love to be able to run on my old Clie.
Where can I download it form?
-> Grant: look 7 mess back
Sorry, but I have no news from the developer yet. But imho he is working on the keyboard support, which is the most important.
Those could just be pictures…where is real proof?
it doesnt even work..says “Can’t Load module”
Doesnt work on TX…
It works on Tungsten C, but after the second screen it crashes and says “Fatel Exception”.
I tried puting all the settings to the lowest and it still didn’t work. Could you give me any help. My email is “RickHarrer@centurytel.net”.
hi all ! i need help to create conf because i cant
use keyboard or grafitti please hep
Tnks
YES!
Yes, I want it. I would LOVE to have access to just DOS. Win 3.1 would be gravy, but SO many good ol’ DOS programs. I’ve had an urge to play good ol’ Incredible Machine again - it’s now abandonware.
2. Could you do commands on files? It would be great to be able to run batch files.
Go for it!
- Girt