On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Eric Arseneau wrote:

> > I studied this alternative but I really don't think PalmOS is a
> > good Squeak target, that's why I ended up choosing the Helio.
> > The Palm/Handspring machines are too slow for decent Squeaking
> 
> The new Visor Platinum is now a 68K running at 33Mhz !!!  Now if that isn't
> fast enough for you, I can remember being quite happy with a computer called
> the Apple Lisa XL, which had a 5Mhz 68K, running the MVC version of Squeak
> (Smalltalk80 T2.2!!!).

The Helio has a 75 MHz MIPS processor, 8 MB of RAM and 2 MB flash
ROM for $150-$170.  The Visor Platinum has a 33 MHz DragonBall, 8 MB of
RAM and goes for $299- up to twice the price of a Helio.  I couldn't find
anything about whether or not the ROM is flashable on the new
Handspring.  Most Palms and Visors do not have flashable ROM, making it
impossible (for some models) or very hard (on others) to get the Squeak VM
and micro-image in permanent storage.

> This may be the case, depending on which one, but if you wish to reach more
> users, then Palm is the way to go.  As much of a pain as it is to write Palm
> applications, it is by far the market leader.  And some of the stuff that
> Palm, Handspring and other partners, have coming down the pipe would blow
> you away !!!  All with decent compatibility with an existing large market,
> no less !!!

I cannot speak for Lalo, but for me, the size of the Palm market is no
bearing on my want to run Squeak on a PDA.  I want to be able to Squeak
wherever I am, but also create some PDA-like apps. 

Speaking of compatitibility, there is work being done now to create a Palm
emulator for the Helio.  This is a definate possibility- the Helio already
runs a more or less full version of Linux, and all it would take to get
Palm OS on a Helio (more or less) would be to port Xcopilot to the
linuxframebuffer, W, MicroGUI, or Nano-X (whichever small-windowing system
you prefer). 

> There is work being done to get Linux for Palm devices, here is one link I
> found staright off of the Yahoo categories
> 	http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/News/linux.htm
> 
> I don't know, but I'm sure there are others.  So it could still be a decent
> alternative.

The version of Linux for the Palm is quite stripped down.  It could be
argued that it's not "real" Linux- most importantly, there is no memory
protection (no MMU on the DragonBall), and would probably take quite a bit
more VM-side work to get it working.  Also, as I mentioned above, to get
Linux on a Palm device would require either a flashable ROM or an
additional memory module (as you find with the TRG modules).

Aaron