Old Hardware Emulated :POSE Emulating The Palm Pilot (Part 9)

May 31, 2021

The OEM's

POSE emulator the Handspring Visor series of phones.

Palm Computing didn't keep the OS just to themselves. Various companies showed interest in running Palm OS on there devices as well. Palm Computing could find a additional source in income licensing there OS out to interested third parties. This in fact happened early on with HandSpring. Jeff Hawkins, the original creator of the Palm, left Palm Computing when he was unhappy with the direction that the company was going.

He, along with Donna Dubinsky and Ed Colligan, the other co-creators of the device, formed a new company called Handspring. These early devices were very well received and sold well. The Visor, which was the first model offered by the new company, sported a expansion slot that allowed peripheral devices to easily be added or removed quickly. The cell-phone module transformed the Visor into a early smartphone.

Handspring licensed PalmOS from Palm Computing and made customization to the platform that benefited there new line of devices. The Visor has already been covered in Part 2 of the Palm Article. However, Handspring continued to update the platform, and they would eventually release the Treo line of Smartphones, with the first models being very well received. HandSpring was eventually acquired by Palm Computing in 2003.

TRG Pro

Trying to find information about TRG was like pulling teeth. Regardless, I found information about this company. Founded in 1992, TRG, acronym for Technology Resource Group and based in Iowa; specialized in firmware development and custom software for those system. They also did PCB layout for printed circuit boards. TRG did work for various companies like AT&T, 3M, and GTE (Now Verizon) to name a few.

Given there specialty in electronics design, they seemed a perfect fit for designing there own take on the Palm Pilot. The TRG Pro was released around very late 1999/early 2000. On the surface, the TRG Pro looked like a clone of the Palm III, and was mostly compatible with the hardware upgrades for that devices as well. However, they made many customization, including adjustable volume of the speaker. Yes, one might think that such a feature is trivial. However, this feature was overlooked and ignored in the Palm and Handspring Visor devices. One of the items that made the TRG Pro popular among its users was that there were performance enhancements done on the handhelds that made them outperform both the Palm III and Handspring Visor significantly.

According to Wikipedia, the TRG Pro also included a expansion port that could include several peripheral devices, like memory upgrades, modems, and a barcode scanner. The TRG Pro used a CF Card slot for additional storage in place of the SD card which were typical in Palm devices. When it comes to peripheral options, the TRG Pro is similar to a Handspring Visor. The CF expansion port could also accommodate a IBM Micro-drive, which was a very small hard-drive that IBM sold back in the day. The TRG Pro could use all the storage space of a IBM Micro-drive, which is 304MB's. While pitifully small by modern standards, this was a massive amount of space for a handheld back in late 1999/early 2000. This was more than enough space for a Palm Pilot. One has to remember that back at that time, most CF cards were typically 16MB's, so a 340MB IBM Micro-drive was very cutting edge for the handheld. Of course, that Micro-drive was also much more significantly expensive than that 16MB CF storage card.

The TRG Pro retailed for $329 at release back in 2000. Adjusted for inflation today, that would be around $512 in 2020. While ignored by most handheld users, the TRG Pro was rapidly embraced by Palm power-users. Sometime around late 2000/early 2001, TRG renamed themselves to Handera, which continued to release new Palm-compatible devices.

Handera

Handera or Hand-era? Who knows. Anyway, TRG lived on as Handera, which continued making Palm-compatible devices that were embraced by the Palm power users.

While the Handera 330 continued to provide additional features not standard in Palm OS at the time, one of those features in the Handera was the QVGA screen which operated at 320 by 240 pixels in greyscale. This resolution would be adapted eventually by the vast majority of handheld devices by the middle 2000's.

This new feature did impose compatibility issues though as many Palm applications conformed to the 160 by 160 screen resolution as that was the only resolution that the vast majority of Palm devices conformed too. As a result, applications that specifically requested that resolution had weird display issues on the Handera.

In order to support such changes, Handera made various modification to Palm OS. The Handera variant of PalmOS had sharper icons and fonts to take advantage of the higher screen resolutions. Despite the compatibly issues that were imposed by the higher-res screen, some applications could take advantage of the new features, like the Big Clock application that came with the Handera. It was a clock,calendar, alarm, and timer all in one. Again, one would think that such inclusions would be trivial by modern standards. At the time though, all of these features were typically done by separate programs. As such, the inclusion of all these features in one nifty program, along with the notepad/e-reader that supported the higher-res screen, made the Handera the handheld of choice for those Palm power users.

Handera appears to still be around today in Iowa even though it looks like they don't have a website anymore. There website redirects to Musco Lighting, which does lighting systems for stadiums.

Big Blue Has Some Palm Offerings As Well

IBM released a few Palm models in the late 90's/early 2000's as well. The Palm was seen as a commentary device for computer users. From Big Blue's perspective, they could sell there own Palm devices to complement Thinkpad users and IT workers that were constantly on the go. As such, IBM's offerings were branded as the Workpad. From a device perspective, there really isn't anything that could be said about the Workpad though. The originally model was basically a Palm III with IBM branding on it. Hardware-specs and design-wise, it's exactly the same as the Palm III and completely compatible with it. Even calling it a clone would be a disservice as it's a Palm III with IBM branding on it.

Here's a Palm III for comparison. Sure, the cover of the IBM Workpad had a slightly darker shade of gray compared to the Palm III. Whoppie do.

The original skin featured for the IBM Workpad in the POSE emulator had Japanese Kanji characters in the bottom, touchscreen area for input. I did a little GIMP edit and took the English input area from the Palm III skin and pasted it over the Kanji input area of the IBM Workpad skin. When the IBM ROM was identified, it was seen as a Palm III standard ROM. Due to this, the emulator used the standard Palm III skin instead of the IBM Workpad one. I edited the configuration file for the Workpad skin to use it with the IBM ROM instead of the standard Palm III one.

I admit that I am a sucker for IBM-branded products though. I have a few IBM Model M keyboards, along with a IBM Thinkpad 380 and a T41, along with a IBM Multimedia Keyboard that I'm typing this article on right now. I used to have a Thinkpad 365ED from the middle 90's. However, the plastic case just fell apart and the screen busted. A sad loss. Despite that, as a sucker for IBM products, the Workpad is actually very appealing. I still have mine, even though the battery doesn't hold a charge anymore. I don't have the heart to throw it away though.

My model, the C3/C500, is basically a IBM-branded version of the Palm m500. My model comes with a backlite screen which works very well in the dark.

LGR has done a really awesome video showcasing the IBM Workpad. I would highly recommend checking out that video if you have a nostalgic heart for Palm Pilot. It's linked below.

Going through the Wikipedia list, there were various OEM's that licensed PalmOS out for there own handhelds. However, most of these devices, like the IBM-branded ones, were straight copies of Palm's offerings. As such, besides Handspring's and Handera's offerings, there wasn't anything noteworthy about the other clones.

This is going to be the last article of the "classic" line of Palm Pilots. After that, I'm going to focus the next couple of articles on handhelds platforms that competed with the Palm. I've been spending a lot of time setting up a Windows VM in Vmware Player with the SDK's from various companies that included device emulators. There will be a heavy focus on Windows CE and the Symbian devices. The competition between the various players in the market would shape of the evolution of the smartphones and tablets that we all know and sorta love today. I hoped you enjoy the Palm series. I will revisit the later incarnations of Palm OS, and when that platform started to fall downhill. All great empires do come to a end, and this is no exception with the tech equivalent of the Roman Empire. A empire that defined the PDA, and thus, smaprtphone aesthetics for others to come.