3.6 KiB
Appalm ][
Welcome to the Apple II emulator for PalmOS
Authors:
Hilary Cheng :
David Schmenk:
Web Sites : http://sf.net/projects/palmapple
Public Forum : http://sf.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=88936
License:
Appalm][ Licenses is GNU GPL. Please go to this links for more details Appalm][ is based on YAE so that we can port to PalmOS Platform. Appalm][ cannot be used for sale unless there is an agreement with the authors. Please contact the author before any sale.
Appalm][ is an open source software. Anyone is free to modify the source code and contribute to it. All the users are free to use this software. But the authors are not responsibile for any damage by THIS SOFTWARE. Please try it at Your Risk!
Preface:
Because 68000 based Palm devices are barely faster than the Apple ][, emulation performance may be less than stellar. An overclocking utility will go a long way to make the emulator more useable on anything less than a 66Mhz Clie 665C.
Introduction:
What would be better than being able to take your beloved Apple ][ with you, including most of the software you had for it, all in your pocket? Here is your chance. The Appalm ][ emulator brings a 64K Apple //e, no 80 column card, and 2 disk drives, to your Palm OS based PDA. Disk images can be uploaded into the internal Palm memory or a memory card (think how many 140K floppies fit on a 128 MB memory card :-) ) Joystick emulation is provided using the hard keys available on most Palm PDAs. If you have one of those Zires without all the keys, then life sucks for you. The Sony HIRES screen is supported (in color!) - and looks great too. The Sony Game Controller works very well. Highly recommended.
Installation:
You need to install the emulator, appalm.prc, plus the ROM files apple2e.rom and slot6.rom. Pick a disk image (currently must be .DSK fomat) and use the DSK2PDB utility to create a PalmOS DB of the disk image. A '-r' flag can be passed to DSK2PDB to create a nibblized disk image which can load slightly faster on the Palm but takes up 220K vs 140K for the raw data. The standard format database performance has been improved to the point where I don't know why you would want the raw format.
Running:
The basic features of the emulator are available through the menu. Special keys and joystick options are settable there. You can return to the Palm Launcher and run other applications. When you come back to Appalm, it is in the same state as when you left it. Some of the Palm buttons have been hijacked to provide useful feature for the emulator. They are: Calculator - ESC key Find - CTRL-C Appointment - Joystick button (1 or 2) Memo - Joystick button (1 or 2) Phone/ToDo - Joystick X axis PgUp/PgDn - Joystick Y axis A type-ahead buffer is implemented for use with an external keyboard. You can keep typeing without losing characters.
Development:
This is a very preliminary version meant more as a proof-of-concept. More features and performance will be improved upon. Disk performance is very good now and writing to the disk image is supported. Sound support would be nice if I could figure something workable out. Color support for lo-res (160x160) Palms is in the works.
Conclusion:
I wanna say thank you to David Schmenk for enhancement of Emulator and prepare all the works of Appalm][.
And I can thank Hilary for doing all the initial development that laid the groundwork for my work. Its much easier if you have something that already works when developing new emulation components.