[Qemu-devel] QEmu - ARM - PalmOS (Not sure if it worked last time)

[Hans Schmucker]

OK, first of all I'm a happy user of QEmu/Linux, running Win98 and WinXP 
(and quite fast...) on my 1.2 Ghz Athlon

But that's not why I'm posting here.
The reason is that Qemu is a great x86 emu and I don't think that the 
arm part is any different. But of course the ARM part still lacks 
peripheral emulation.

PalmSource on the other hand is still looking for a low-level ARM 
emulator so users could test PalmOS 5/6 apps. There would even be two 
ways to use qemu during this process.

1. Enhancing PalmSim. OK, first some information on PalmOS. Up to 
PalmOS4, Palmos worked on 68k processors. PalmOS5 and the upcoming 
PalmOS6 however are ARM based. But, PalmOS, at least as of OS 5.4, 
doesn't launch ARM applications directly... Instead you launch an 68k 
application through the included PACE emulation and when you ask for a 
PCENativeCall, PACE either runs a DLL (on PalmSim/Win) or a native ARM 
application (on the real device). However PalmSim can't launch ARM 
native code, only 68k native code & win x86 dlls. So a (relatively) easy 
way to get native arm palmos applications to run would be enhancing PalmSim.

2. Adding ARM system emulation to QEmu
This is much much more complicated but it would a much preciser 
emulation: PalmSource, of course has all documentation for various ARM 
hardware as it was needed to write the OS itself... as PalmSource still 
needs an opensource arm emulator to complete their new development 
tools, PODS development system, Eclipse IDE, PRC-Tools (gcc-m68k-palmos 
& co), POSE (68k Emualtor), they might well be willing to provide the 
needed information and maybe even some support.

So, has anyone yet asked PalmSource for support? While it might sound 
strange for an opensource project to request support from a company, 
PalmSource has already proven to be quite interested in handling 
tool-development this way.