Old Hardware Emulated :PalmSim Emulating The Tungsten

 

Could Palm Get Its Groove Back?

PalmOS 5 booting up

When Compaq demonstrated that video and MP3 playback on a PDA was possible, expectations changed. The days of the simple appointment keeper was over. Palm had just experienced the first of many "OH CRAP" moments. Multimedia was the name of the game. The Dragonball was no match for the ARM-based devices. Palm needed a answer to both the Sony Clie, Compaq iPaq, and various other handhelds. Palm needed to make a PDA that  was capable of being that multimedia powerhouse in order to remain competitive. Not only that, Palm wanted in on that lucrative business market. Palm wanted a device that would cause business people to salivate like the Blackberrys did.

Would Palm be able to make a device that would meet all of these goals. The company already knew that PalmOS was capable of multimedia playback. The Sony Clie demonstrated this. Palm's answers to all of these demands laid with the new Tungsten series of PDA's. Introduced in late 2002 starting with the Tungsten T, these PDA's would be the successor to the DragonBall-based Palms. 

There was a lot riding on the line. On March of 2000, 3Com spun off Palm Computing the company went public with a IPO which quickly took the markets by storm. By the end of the first day, Palm's stock was trading at $95 a share, and the company was worth more than Ford and General Motors combined. Palm became very complacent about there gains and took there success for granted. Within a year though, the country was in a recession and the tech bubble burst. The financial troubles that occurred after 9/11 contributed as well. Things just didn't end there though.

While Palm had been highly successful with the typical consumers, there devices have never really caught on with corporate user. In the very beginning, many of these users were Psion holdouts that later migrated to Handspring. From there, these users gravitated towards the various Windows CE PDA's and RIM's Blackberry offerings. These platforms kept chipping away at Palm's market-share. However, Palm still had plenty of fight and a few tricks up its sleeve.

Costing around $200-$500 depending on model, the Tungsten PDA's were priced competitively among the various handhelds of there day. Utilizing the ARM processor, these handhelds were a massive upgrade over the Motorola 68k-based Palms. They sported a 3.5mm headphone jack. One would think that mentioning this is very trivial. However, multimedia on handhelds was still a relatively new concept. The fact that this headphone jack was present was Palms declaration to the world that they were ready for multimedia now. If you wanted to jam to The Beatles, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin like the awesome person that you are,  you can do so now. Sure, Palm was late to the party, but its better late than never! The headphone jack was only the start.

The Palm Tungsten had a 320 by 320 pixel display running in 16-bit color depth (65,536 colors). This was also a massive upgrade over the previous color Palms that had a 160 by 160, 256 color display. The Tungsten T, the first model in the series, had a 16MB ROM, offering much greater storage compared to previous models, along with the ability to accommodate SD cards for extra storage if needed. This was also the first Palm to support Bluetooth.
Some of the applications were updated for the new OS. The calculator program received a new look. However, most of the default apps were simple ports to the ARM processor that maintained the exact same look and feel.

The Tungsten T was the first of many devices that would run PalmOS 5 Garnet. The CPU powering all these new features was a 144MHz ARM processor made by TI. The Tungsten was ready for multimedia consumption now.

Palm announced to the world that the Tungsten was ready for the prosumer now. The man on the street was interested. At the same time, that same man wondered.... "What in the Hell is a prosumer?". What's this buzzword I hear of that fails the vast majority of spellcheckers? Dissecting it, the term "prosumer" or professional consumer, was a alternate term for business/corporate users. Palm was telling corporate users that they have there PDA. Would they bite back?

With a $499 price tag. the cost reflected Palms attempt to reach out to that all-important demographic.Most corporate users stuck to there Blackberrys and WinCE devices. Despite the new feature set, the alternate platforms offered better stability and security. The Blackberry handhelds incorporated email and data encryption while both the Blackberry and WinCE handhelds offered greater stability compared to PalmOS. Many office users became conditioned to using Pocket Word and Excel on their Windows CE handhelds. Since Microsoft Office was a staple of desktop computing, many users stuck with what they know. Microsoft Word and Excel has name recognition.

However, DocumentsToGo Office Suite was compatible with the Office formats. In fact, it was one of the few products on Palm that was compatible with it. It was even compatible with PowerPoint! DocumentsToGo became a very valuable piece of software that allowed these users to work on there documents on the go. I now know why that name makes sense!  
By now, the lawsuit with Xerox over the Graffiti software was settled. Palm discontinued Graffiti version 1 with 2, which required two keystrokes with some letters, along with different keystrokes with all the other letters. Palm users who knew Graffiti 1 like the back of there hand were upset about the new implementation.

Despite this, later models of the Tungsten would go onto great success and found a dedicated following. Many third-party developers would embrace the devices as well, releasing many applications in the process.
Some screenshots of the QuickTour that was bundled with the Tungsten.

Simulation

The PalmOS 5 SDK simulator supported the Tungsten handhelds with machine simulations of the Models C and E. The Model C, introduced on April 2003, used a 400MHz ARM processor and shipped with 64MB storage. The Model E, introduced on October 2003, came with 32MB's of storage along with a 126MHz ARM processor. The Tungsten C was Palm's high-end offering for corporate clients while the Model E was Palm's budget offering. The Model C commanded a $499 price tag while the Model E was offered for $199.

Both of these handhelds are simulated using PalmSim using the system ROMS. However, mentioned in the previous articles, PalmSim is a simulator and not an hardware emulator. PalmSim can't run ARM-specific applications. PalmOS 5 applications have to be recompiled in x86 machine code in order to run on the simulator. This greatly reduces its usefulness, even though I still found a handful of applications that ran without issue, like Plucker. Like the other simulators, I ran this one on my IBM Thinkpad T41 running Windows XP. This is where the screenshots came from. Like the other PalmSims, this one might run under a XP virtual machine as well. However, I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on it.

Several of the Tungsten models would go onto great success. However, Palm failed to attract the corporate market that it so desperately sought. A series of unfortunate events would affect Palm in an very adverse way. While PalmOS 5 was a major leap in the right direction, it would also hold the platform back in other ways, allowing the competition to get the upper hand, and eventually leading to Palm's downfall. 

Articles of Interest

Wikipedia -Palm OS :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS

Wikipedia - Palm Tungsten : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Tungsten

eWeek - Multitasking on Tap for Palm OS : https://www.eweek.com/mobile/multitasking-on-tap-for-palm-os

ComputerWeekly.com - Mobile Platforms: Palm OS -- not the best for the multitasker : https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Mobile-Platforms-Palm-OS-not-the-best-for-the-multitasker

SatelliteForms - PalmOS Simulator  : http://www.satelliteforms.net/solutions/index.html?PalmOSSimulator

PalmSource - Palm OS Garnet : https://www.palmsource.com/palmos/garnet.html

LowEndMac - A History of Palm, Part 5: The End and the Post Mortem : https://lowendmac.com/2016/a-history-of-palm-part-5-the-end-and-the-post-mortem/

OSnews - Palm: I’m ready to wallow now : https://www.osnews.com/story/26838/palm-im-ready-to-wallow-now/5/

OSnews - Palm OS Simulator: run x86 Palm OS on Windows : https://www.osnews.com/story/27765/palm-os-simulator-run-x86-palm-os-on-windows/

NYTimes - Offspring Outweighs Parent As Offering Hits the Market : https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/03/business/offspring-outweighs-parent-as-offering-hits-the-market.h...

technobuffalo - Palm: The Rise and Fall of a Legend : https://www.technobuffalo.com/palm-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-legend

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