This topic is interesting for many Palm owners. They either wanted to run some of their old applications or games or just to play around with another kind of software. In 2006, we could write about the first x86 emulator for Palm OS. It was a port of the well-known DOS emulator DosBox, made by a developer who is a member of the Emuboard forums. The version he released was a very early beta version, and there was no way to enter text. The only way to start programs were to insert commands into a file similar to autoexec.bat; the touchscreen could hardly be used as a mouse. Unfortunately, the developer did not release any newer versions.
A lot of people wrote responses to our article where they wrote what they want to run: some people mentioned old Windows versions like 3.1 or 3.11 – which are compatible to DosBox – others mentioned productivity applications like WordStar, or games. In other cases, they asked us for help how to get the emulator running. But we couldn’t help anyone as the developer stopped working on it. At this point, I must also repeat that we cannot you help if you have problems with this program. We are no programmers, we also can only try how it runs and we also now that this version is almost unusable and that there are no new versions.
Today I talked to someone who told me that he was able to get the sourcecode and re-compile it. If he is lucky, he will soon present a new version of PalmDosBox which supports text input. At the moment, I have no further information. But as soon as the new version is availible, you can read it here.
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Would love to run battle chess, its free and a very cool game:
http://www.dosgamesonline.com/index/game/30/Battle_Chess.html
Hmm… I can’t tell you exactly, but I think, as it’s almost 20 years old, it should not have too high requirements
Hi,
Henk Jonas has said that he will get support for his treo, nothing more, nothing less. Hopefully this will, by default, allow many other OS5 devices to use it!
If anyone wishes to follow in the discussion of the “rebirth” of PalmDOSBox feel free to join in at http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88296 !
What I learned when speaking with the original developer, Sinisa Marovic, and trying to get him to release the sourcecode to SourceForge, was that he had released the code to others before and that he had never heard back from them, so who knows if this had been completed a long time ago?
Anyways, Henk will soon have a working build folks, and if it isn’t compatible with devices outside of Treos, I will see what I can do
Best Regards,
Ryan Rix
tried the version at source forge on my TH55, but after adjusting the settings, it causes a crash. I fear the new release will also not work on clies if it is developed for treos. A pity it´ll not be developed for palmOS 5 in general…
Hi CrocO,
It may just work on your TH!
Hopefully it will work for you!
Best regards,
Ryan Rix
Keyboard entry with my Treo already works. I was able to get Warcraft to run. The mouse isn’t working correctly yet and the speed could be faster…
Hi Anonymous,
really? That’s quite a different story than what we’ve heard in the past! Is this the sourceforge build that you are using?
Also, what model treo are you on?
Best regards,
Ryan Rix
Well Anonymous was me: Henk Jonas (MetaView) and the result you can found on my blog
Hi,
Tricky tricky Henk
Thanks for your wonderful work! I’ll load ‘er up on my T|X tonight when I get home. (left my reader or USB cable at home)
Best regards,
Ryan Rix