RE: [ECOS] Palm - Handspring

["Trenton D. Adams" <tadams at extremeeng dot com>]

You are correct, the handspring/palms do only have RAM.  It appears that
the uCLinux boots from the Palm OS and then takes over the RAM.  The
batteries keep the data in RAM from being destroyed.  If you run out of
batteries, you have to restore from backup.  I don't know how the OS is
upgraded, but I'm fairly sure it can be.  Maybe the ROM is not actually
ROM, but flash.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fabrice Gautier [mailto:Fabrice_Gautier@sdesigns.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 8:04 PM
> To: 'Trenton D. Adams'; 'Jonathan Larmour'
> Cc: 'eCos Discussion'
> Subject: RE: [ECOS] Palm - Handspring
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Trenton D. Adams [mailto:tadams@extremeeng.com]
> > Subject: RE: [ECOS] Palm - Handspring
> > 
> > 
> > I just bought a Handspring so I was kind of thinking of 
> doing it.  It
> > would probably take too much of my "spare" time to be worth while
> > though!  I wouldn't know where to start either.  Handspring 
> > does seem to
> > have quite a bit of information on their website about programming
> > though.  I haven't checked it out extensively yet though.  
> > They use GCC
> > from what I've seen so it would work well with an eCos port.
> > 
> > It would be fun to do if anything.  It would also give people 
> > out there
> > a cheaper way of trying out some embedded development.  
> > Handspring/palm
> > are way cheaper than iPaq.
> 
> Handspring website also says that the OS is hardwired in ROM, 
> and there is
> no flash. So it could prove difficult to boot anything but 
> their OS, maybe
> you can port eCos as a synthetic target on top of palmOS but 
> that doesn't
> seem worthy... I guess the programming information they gave is about
> applications not system.
> 
> Don't know for Palm, should be quite the same...
> 
> -- 
> Fabrice Gautier
> Software Engineer, Sigma Designs
> Fabrice_Gautier@sdesigns.com
>