Mu, a Palm OS Emulator

The continuation of the Mu along with the RetroArch Core is dedicated to Emily (1998-2020), your friendship was very important to me and I hope that you are resting well. -- Your friend, Stephanie

The goal of this project

This is a complete restart of my Palm OS emulator, with the last one the code got too messy and the goal too ambitious(to emulate every palm API in software and for compatibility with all Palm OS versions and devices).

To emulate every part of the Palm m515 that is used by the OS perfectly. This means no hacks like POSE where API calls are intercepted and replaced with those that dont use the actual hardware. It is also written in C for RetroArch so it will run on everything at the start, not just Win95 like POSE and Copilot and is being developed with modern emulator features in mind, save/load state and overclocking are available from the start.

Why the m515?

It is the best Palm brand OS 4 device that has no special hardware builtin(cellphone, barcode scanner, keyboard attachment), it has a color screen, and available ROM dumps.

What about accessories?

The Palm keyboard attachment will likely be emulated later on so the PC keyboard can be used on text fields.

What about OS 5?

I am planning on adding Tungsten T3 support as soon as possible.

Credits

Firebird Emu (ARMv5TE Core)
uARM (PXA260 CPU Peripherals and reference CPU core)
Musashi v3.4 (last version that builds outside of MAME)(68k Core)
blip_buf 1.1.0 (Audio Resampler)
https://www.iconarchive.com/show/crystal-clear-icons-by-everaldo/App-palm-icon.html (Desktop Icon)
https://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library (Palm Action Buttons, All UI buttons)
https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/2317746/chip_computer_cpu_device_frequency_microchip_processor_icon (hwTestSuite Icon)
https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/cow_235371#term=cow&page=1&position=13 (muExpDriver Icon)
https://findicons.com/icon/164302/cursor (Libretro Port Joystick Cursor)

Building

Using CMake

Using CMake, you just need to do:

• cmake .
• cmake --build .
  • You may specify a CMake target.

For RetroArch

Make sure you have done all the steps here https://docs.libretro.com/ under "For Developers/Compilation" so you build environment works.

cd ./libretroBuildSystem
make

To load multiple files at once, place PRCs and PDBs into a ZIP file and then load that ZIP file. PDBs will be installed first followed by PRC files.

For Qt

First install Qt 5.14.2, you may optional install as well Qt Creator.

• Windows: https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/5.14/5.14.2/qt-opensource-windows-x86-5.14.2.exe
• Mac: https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/5.14/5.14.2/qt-opensource-mac-x64-5.14.2.dmg
• Linux: https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/5.14/5.14.2/qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.2.run

When running CMake you will need to pass -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH to the location of Qt5Config.cmake.

• With Qt 5.14.2 on Windows building with...
  • mingw-w64: C:\qt\Qt5.14.2\5.14.2\mingw73_64\lib\cmake\Qt5
  • Visual Studio: C:\qt\Qt5.14.2\5.14.2\msvc2017_64\lib\cmake\Qt5

If you are using CLion, you may need to go into Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> CMake and add it to CMake Options.

For Qt Creator, open the .pro file and click "Run" or build from command line.

If you get error: 'thread' in namespace 'std' does not name a type while trying to build the Qt Project then you should install the POSIX Threaded variant of Mingw-w64 and not the Win32 Threaded variant.

TestSuite for Palm OS

Install prc-tools from the below link(self compiled or prepackaged VM)

cd ./tools/palm/hwTestSuite
./make.sh

MuExpDriver for Palm OS

Install prc-tools from the below link(self compiled or prepackaged VM)

cd ./tools/palm/muExpansionDriver
./make.sh

Running

Files

palmos40-en-m500.rom: f50e4d5e4d98dc831f2c34a9107651eb (MD5)
palmos41-en-m515.rom: 83cb1d1c76e568b916dc2e7c0bf669f6 (MD5)
palmos52-en-t3.rom: de46ec84d9aabf655eabdf9b00a3845d (MD5)
bootloader-dbvz.rom: 9da101cd2317830649a31f8fa46debec (MD5)

For Qt

1. Run once to create the directory tree
2. Copy "palmos41-en-m515.rom" and "palmos52-en-t3.rom" to "~/Mu"
3. (Optional)Copy "bootloader-en-m515.rom" to "~/Mu"
4. Run emu and press start button

For RetroArch

1. Download "Palm OS(Mu)" from "Online Updater->Core Updater"
2. Go back, select "Load Core", select "Palm OS(Mu)"
3. Copy "palmos41-en-m515.rom" and "palmos52-en-t3.rom" to the RetroArch system directory
4. (Optional)Copy "bootloader-en-m515.rom" to the RetroArch system directory
5. Run a .prc or .img file

Tools

Prc-tools, Palm OS SDKs, pilrc, pilot-link

License

• CC BY-NC 3.0 US
  • Attribution is to:
    • Emily "meepingsnesroms"
    • Stephanie Gawroriski xerthesquirrel@gmail.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States License.

Links

Website
Discord

Also see Mu's sister project

🐿SquirrelJME