Phoinix, the free Gameboy emulator for PalmOS

by Bodo Wenzel
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Phoinix in greek font.

On this page: - Overview - Warning - Downloads - Languages - Links - Credits


New.

2004-04-10:

Alex set up a page for his "Phoinix ROM Converter", it acts as a frontend for the command line converter I wrote. Please don't confuse this application with Aaron's Phoinix RAM Save Converter which converts saved cartridge RAM.

2004-04-03:

As requested, the v.1.2.2 supports the 5-way-navigator found on OS5 devices. This is a hard coded quick-n-dirty fix.

Another small bug in the VFS support was found: games with bad filenames on memory cards are now DELETED! However, this will be solved better with the coming v.1.3. Good filenames consist of letters, numbers, and a small set of special characters including apostrophe, minus, dot, underline, round braces, and some few more.

This is just an intermediate version. I'm still working on v.1.3 with quite some new features. You might like to subscribe the mailing list for new version announcements to get notified. Even more you can join the mailing list for developers to discuss with us.

BTW, reports about G18, iQue, i500 devices are still missing. If you have such a device, please check out v.1.2.2 and send a report.

Additionally, I'd like to have some user of a Garmin iQue run a small test application to obtain screen properties. Please send me an email if you like to be the one.


Overview:

Phoinix ['foiniks] is the greek word for date palm. It is also the name for the mystic bird which burns itself after 500 years and is reborn out of its ashes.

In this context Phoinix is the name of a Nintendo GameboyTM emulator for the Palm Computing® Platform. It was formerly known as PalmBoy, but Palm Inc. claims the word "Palm" as a trademark.

Requirements:

  • Palm Computing® Platform (original or clone), what else.
  • Palm OS version 3.0 or greater. Sorry, I spent some time to get it run on OS version 2 but there are too many limitations!
  • Files of Gameboy games. Please note that you have to own the commercial games you like to play!
Copyleft of the program:
Copyright 2000-2004 by Bodo Wenzel.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
Copyleft of the documentation:
Copyright (c) 2001-2004 Bodo Wenzel.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

WARNING:

To get the emulation as fast as possible nearly no checks are made and the memory protection had to be switched off. This leads to a potentially very dangerous program - every single byte of your handheld's databases and programs in RAM can be overwritten! It's a very good idea to backup your databases before trying the emulator with new games until you gain confidence in the combination of emulator and emulated game.


Downloads:

You have access to all versions via the project summary page.

Link Size, approx. Version Description
starter.zip 480 KB v.1.2.2 This is your starter pack, containing the English emulator, the free games collection, and the documentation without the playability datasheets.
Phoinix-1.2.2-enBG.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, English (Great Britain) version.
Phoinix-1.2.2-deDE.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, German (Germany) version.
Phoinix-1.2.2-ptBR.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, Portuguese (Brazil) version.
Phoinix-1.2.2-itIT.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, Italian (Italy) version.
Phoinix-1.2.2-frCA.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, French (Canada) version. Canadians speaking English might like to download another version ;-)
Phoinix-1.2.2-esBO.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, Spanish (Bolivia) version.
Phoinix-1.2.2-jaJP.zip 44 KB v.1.2.2 Just the emulator, Japanese (Japan) version.
doc.zip 500 KB   Archive with documentation (files of this site).
freegame.zip 120 KB   Archive with readily converted free games.
tools.zip 140 KB   Archive with the converter and other tools.
Project summary.     The project summary page, where all other files of this project are accessible. The "experimental" package contains old and current test and beta versions.

Please read the help section on the page "How to get in touch" before sending any request for help. I'm receiving too many emails simply saying "It doesn't work!"


Languages:

Time after time some user asks whether s/he could help with translation into other languages, and you might be one. To help you I'm maintaining the text "Translating Phoinix" (archive with HTML and images, 36 KB). It should contain enough information to put you in the position to work, without being a programmer.

If you like to contribute a translation, read the text, and then contact me. After finishing, you'll be acknowledged in the credits section.


Links:

If you find any links broken, please drop me a note. At best you have the correct link at hand!

Some of my other computer interests are shown on my general homepage. You'll find software and hardware designs for different systems, old and new, rarely updated ;-)

You would like to visit Till's page of tools for Phoinix' precursor, PalmBoy. Probably some of them are useful for Phoinix, too.

Another great emulator is Liberty. Some games run better on Liberty, others better on Phoinix. Mike Ethetton, one of its authors, has written a nice page about emulation on PalmOS PDAs.

Brian Krohn started a group at Yahoo which talks about emulation on PalmOS PDAs in general.

I recommend using X-Master for the Hacks.

Look for free games at Kojote's homepage, there are lots of free games and demos - not only for GB.

Visit the games and demos collection of Anders Granlund , or search free Gameboy ROMs at EmuUnlim , at the Vintage Gaming Network , or at Classic ROMs. Don't ask me about commercial ROMs!

For applying IPS patches, try "JIPS" at http://zerosoft.zophar.net, it's a Java application.


Credits:

First of all I have to thank Till Harbaum. Being one of my best friends, it's always a pleasure to discuss PalmOS problems - and not only those. Please visit his pages!

SourceForge is a free hosting service for Open Source developers which offers, among other things, a CVS repository, mailing lists, bug tracking, message forums, task management software, web site hosting, permanent file archival, full backups, and total web-based administration.

I have to thank Jeff Frohwein for collecting all sorts of software and documentation for the passioned Gameboy developer and giving it to the community. You'll find it at http://www.devrs.com/gb/...

The fine man who spent all his time for checking the playability of games is HJ.

Translators:

  • The English (Great Britain) translation was smoothed by HJ.
  • The Portuguese (Brazil) translation was made by Pender666.
  • The Italian (Italy) translation was made by Andrea Butti.
  • The French (Canada) translation was made by Marc Collin.
  • The Spanish (Bolivia) translation was made by Raul Rea.
  • The Japanese (Japan) translation was made by Yukihiro Sugimura.

The nice guy who made the cool morphing icon is Hendrik Lüttke.

Mac users should thank Julian Hsiao for compiling the converter for the MacOS upto version 9. The executable for MacOS X was done by Ben Sanford.

The graphical frontend in Visual BASIC for Windows was written by Alex Henrie.

The Tcl/Tk graphical frontend for the converter "gb2pdb" was written by Paul Chandler.

Aaron Link wrote the Phoinix RAM Save Converter to convert saved cartridge RAMs.

The word "Palm" is a registered trademark of Palm, Inc.

The word "Gameboy" is a registered trademark of Nintendo.

The word "Java" is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems.

The word "Windows" might be a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. but it doesn't seem so.

palm.gb_emu@gmx.de