Squeak on Palm OS 5?

Aaron J Reichow squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Thu Oct 10 21:39:34 UTC 2002


On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Swan, Dean wrote:

> You know, the alternate point of view is that Palm was really smart to
> design it this way and it's still a good idea.
>
> This limitation isn't any more crazy than the limitations with "soups"
> on the Newton, and let's face it - Palm OS and Newton OS devices crash
> far less often than WinCE devices.  I would say that Psion did a good
> job with EPOC in managing the tradeoffs.  EPOC allows large
> allocations, AND i've never had a crash on my 5 MX.

I am not arguing that there isn't some cleverness in what they're trying
to achieve.  I think having only records in a databases is a great idea,
on the Newton or the Palm.  The Newton took this concept well, but didn't
abandon everything.  You can allocate more than 32K of RAM on the Newton-
in C++ or NewtonScript- to do whatever you want with.  Palm made some
design decisions that aren't just about making sacrificies where
convenience is added for users or developers, which is what we see a lot
of in the Newton OS and EPOC.

> I've been thinking about Squeak on Palm OS more lately since I've seen
> information about the AlphaSmart Dana (www.alphasmart.com), which is
> essentially a Palm OS 4.1 laptop with a 560x160 LCD, a full size
> keyboard, and it's NOT a clamshell design.  I'm kind of thinking of it
> as a Model 100/NEC PC8201a for the 21st century.  Now if they'd make a
> version that divides each of the physical dimensions by 2 it would
> make a pretty nice handheld too.

Would be nice if it had a bigger screen too- I'm partial to 480x320 and
that aspect ratio for a pen-based computer.  For something with a keyboard
it's not as important though (for me).  But the Dana won't be usable for
doing Squeak until it has a real processor or real OS.  I wonder if they
have a POS5/ARM version in the works?  This would be especially good for
the Dana, as they are really pushing it as an alternative to a laptop on
their site.

> Anyway, my thoughts are along the lines of LOOM.  ObjectMemory is
> really the only class that should have to be mucked with much to
> implement a Squeak VM that essentially lets the image live on "disk"
> or some other storage medium (i.e. SD card, MMC, etc.) and work within
> a small physical memory.  After all, FLASH cards today are
> considerably faster than disk drives of 20 years ago, so while Squeak
> on this sort of architecture wouldn't be as fast as we've gotten used
> to, it could still be quite worthwhile.

I was thinking something like that for the tentative Newton port of
Squeak.  I'd love to hear about any other ideas you have!

Regards,
Aaron

  Aaron Reichow  ::  UMD ACM Pres  ::  http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/
  "A weed is just a plant whose virtures have not
                     yet been discovered."            :: r. w. emerson




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