

Gameboy on your PalmPilot? 42
@tomic212 writes "Ever wish you could play Gameboy games on your PalmPilot?
This article on the Palm Infocenter discusses a gameboy emulator being developed for the PalmOS. With an interview with Maven who is building the emulator from scratch in assembly. "
TI-85? (Score:1)
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brittany peery is a goddess
Prices of Gameboy and Palm V (Score:1)
palm iii (Score:1)
The range isn't that great 2m. Not sufficient to change channels from my couch.
Of course you can buy a high powered IR port that plugs into the serial port.
Legal problems from Nintendo? (Score:1)
Besides, people have been emulating Z80's for years on all sorts of platforms. The Gameboy isn't much more than a z80 with some near-off-the-shelf parts.
-Chris
(Hey, if I got the n64 hardware wrong, don't flame. People get the idea.
Weirdo controls (Score:1)
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Seen it done... (Score:1)
Hell my PalmPro running a coms app to do reconaissance for an embedded industrial computer I'd designed wouldn't drain after three hours of continuous tx/rx at 57600bps.
Prices of Gameboy and Palm V (Score:2)
For that price, why not just buy both? Wait a minute, I forgot one thing-- having a PalmV that plays videogames lets someone pretend to be doing very important business while at a meeting, right?
somebody has to say it... (Score:1)
...Dude...that would make an awesome beowulf cluster!
-W.W.
Uh oh (Score:1)
Could you sue them later and claim that it is their fault??
c.
Prices of Gameboy and Palm V (Score:1)
WinCE Has had GB emulators for a while... (Score:1)
I've been playing GB Zelda on my Casiopea for almost a year... I just want Color GB compatability. (:
Fill up all that extra space... (Score:1)
Legal problems from Nintendo? (Score:3)
-mike kania
palm iii (Score:1)
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Seen it done... (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:1)
I'm sure Nintendo will step in and say something, but I doubt will stop the movement. If there are enough people (as am I) interested in emulating the Gameboy on my pilot, then it will be done.
We just might have to stop from posting on Slashdot to keep attention low...
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Fill up all that extra space... (Score:1)
Some of the new games are 8mbit. Warioland 2 for example. ... I think...not quite sure...
A few new color games are 16mbit
So What? (Score:1)
Of course, I'm not likely to buy my son a Palm Pilot for his birthday. His mom, however, probably shouldn't be told about the Palm Gameboy emulator, or we may never see her at supper again!
Fill up all that extra space... (Score:1)
Zelda is 4Mbit = 512K
Ditto for Mario...
Legal problems from Nintendo? (Score:2)
WinCE Has had GB emulators for a while... (Score:1)
Actually, I replace the batteries (one pair of AA) about every month and a half.
As much as I dislike Win9x & WinNT, WinCE seems to be a fairly decent system. I've yet to get any error messages other than an out of memory message when I was trying to crash it.
I would be interested in running Linux on it however...
Uh oh (Score:1)
Maybe we can talk Palm into repositioning their keys into a better "gamepad" type layout...
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palm iii (Score:1)
The range isn't that great 2m. Not sufficient to change channels from my couch.
That's where those pyramid shaped IR repeaters come in handy.. (The ones that take the IR signal, convert it to RF, transmit to another device that converts back to IR to change the channel) If you could hack one of those devices to be just a straight repeater (IR in, amplified IR out) you could have it sit on the coffee table (or even embed it into the table) and solve the distance problem.
Uh oh (Score:1)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
I don't want to be a stick in the mud... (Score:1)
Take a look at the GameBoy emulators for the Amiga. Also written in 68xxx assembly, only these for the higher-end 68020s and such. Being a big fan of the Z80 (as anyone who has ever run ZShell would know) as well as my Pilot, I myself wanted to undertake this project, but I decided to do some research first. I inquired the author of one emulator and he told me that running his (honed) engine on a 16 mhz 68000 clone wouldn't be feasible. It was already pretty slow on a 68020. (Of course, even if it had been feasible, knowing me, I wouldn't have gotten very far anyway.)
Finally, realize that the processor, for the most part, is the easy part of the emulation. It's all that evil custom hardware, all that sprite stuff and scrolling stuff and such, that will be the real cycle-chewer. So, the author might have some false confidence; the Z80 engine may seem fast, but it uses only a fraction of the processor. And on top of everything, apparently this guy has barely started on the hardware, so don't expect this emulator to come out soon.
I think the only way to emulate the GameBoy effectively on the PalmPilot would be to use dynamic recompilation; that is, translate all of the Z80 instructions to 68000 instructions in the beginning, in one fell swoop. (Perhaps they could be translated by the same utility that converts the binary ROM images to the Pilot's PDB format, making it seamless and preventing any "load time.") And even then, it would be a long shot.
But, of course, I could be wrong. I HOPE I'm wrong. I would love for this thing to work well. I just wouldn't bet my box on it.
awesome! what about palm linux? (Score:1)
Though it doesn't have any apps written for it (yet).
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And just how do you propose..... (Score:1)
Not thinking of a little bit of high seas freebooting are we.......
Remember kids - Just say no to men with parrots on their shoulders, eye-patches and wooden legs.....
YoHoHo
Controls? (Score:1)
Hopefully Handspring will add a directional pad to their units, as they are supposedly going after the consumer market.