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

For systems supported by RetroArch, you may download builds directly from and install them manually, if not using the Online Updater functionality:

• https://git.libretro.com/libretro/Mu/-/pipelines

Using CMake

Using CMake, you just need to do:

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

For RetroArch

There are two options available for RetroArch, you can use CMake to build the core, or you can use the older Makefile based setup. The Makefile based setup is for the older RetroArch build system.

CMake

Same as above for CMake, the RetroArch specific target is in this case mu_libretro. This will output a file accordingly. Note that if you are using a system which uses static binaries, such as the PS2 or 3DS, there are other steps you must complete, although it is recommended to just download from here https://git.libretro.com/libretro/Mu/-/pipelines.

Makefile

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 optionally 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

You need the following components of Qt5:

• Core
• Gui
• Widgets
• Multimedia
• Svg

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"
   1. Alternatively, you can install a locally compiled or downloaded core from another source and place it within RetroArch's cores/ directory. If you do this, remember to also install mu_libretro.info (which is located in libretroBuildSystem) to the directory as well so it knows which files are supported.
2. Go back, select Load Core, select Palm OS (Mu)
3. Copy palmos41-en-m515.rom to the RetroArch system directory
   1. For experimental Palm OS 5 support: palmos52-en-t3.rom.
4. (Optional) Copy "bootloader-en-m515.rom" to the RetroArch system directory
5. Load a .prc, .img, or .zip 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