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Reware your PDA: dual boot Linux on a Palm TX from an SD card

video Reware your PDA: dual boot Linux on a Palm TX from an SD card

As part of the Reware project, we've been working at Eyebeam since July on making it easy to install your own software on devices like the Palm TX. We now have our first HOWTO video, showing the basics of how to use a Reware disk image yourself, then it illustrates some of musical apps we've made using Pd.

http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/reware/wiki/Releases

Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.

Please keep me posted on how it works for you, this is a new project, so I am really looking for feedback. Also, these disk images are designed to be a platform for programming rather than another PIM suite. The goal is to get people to create all sorts of new uses for these little computers.

I've been dual booting my Palm TX for a couple months now and the worst thing that happens is the clock gets set to 1942, but this is a new project, so be sure to do a full sync before trying the image. There are no guarantees that this will work for you.

25 comments

Feb 17, 2011. 3:47 PMzachery980 says:

i know that this is dead but i too my tungsten t3 and made it a smart phone ha ha suck on that apple

Feb 17, 2011. 4:37 PMeighthave (author) says:

awesome, post a link to it on this page!

Feb 17, 2011. 6:42 PMzachery980 says:

1)ok this is a rare program now and the only way to get it is cracked this pro gram is for the shmart phone look should work on any palm before the palm pre its teal os

2)a crap cell phone or laptop with blue tooth

heres a vid of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5SkRJ1WlQ4

Feb 17, 2011. 7:27 PMzachery980 says:

heres tealos patched
http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/attachment.php?attachmentid=193436&d=1238379890

palm sued teal because of tealos looked just like the palm pre a few years back so you cant buy it any more or download it from the teal web site use wisely

Dec 22, 2008. 2:02 PMadanedhel728 says:

Be careful with this-- I was trying to get back into Palm OS by typing "shutdown -r now," as I do in another TX Linux OS, and my screen went blank. Hitting the reset button did nothing. To fix it, I eventually had to open it up and disconnect and reconnect my battery, which involved getting a very small torx head screwdriver, snipping wires, and resoldering. It was fun while it lasted, but I would honestly say only do it if the TX you're using is expendable.

Mar 22, 2010. 8:09 PMjhwblender says:

couldn't you have done a hard reset?

Mar 22, 2010. 9:07 PMadanedhel728 says:

No, the reset button did nothing, whether soft reset or hard reset.

Dec 22, 2008. 6:36 PMeighthave (author) says:

Yes, it is still definitely raw, and there are some gotchas like this one. The key thing here is do not reboot from Linux, always shutdown, then click the reset button. The new Reware images I am working on have a "Poweroff" icon on the desktop.

Call me crazy, but I actually regularly dual boot between PalmOS and my Reware Linux images on the Palm TX that is my everyday device.

Sep 4, 2009. 4:00 AMDiegoAlberto says:

Kinda cooooool.... del p*utisimas como dicen en mi tierra. I'm trying to do something with my tx, want to work arround but safety is a not too much wanted concern... I'll tell you how it works

May 25, 2009. 12:23 PMtheblackpeacock says:

i eagerly await this new developement. i think that what you are doing is great.

May 24, 2009. 6:20 PMtheblackpeacock says:

hey will this work with a palm tungsten e? i tried booting the tungsten T software and it crashed (duh).

May 24, 2009. 7:56 PMeighthave (author) says:

I'm trying to get a Tungsten E image working, but its tricky since the E has 16MB of RAM rather than the 32MB of the TX. I recently got a stack of 16 Tungsten E Palms, so my motivation to get it working has increased.

Feb 19, 2009. 6:38 PMsteed1172 says:

I have got this on my garmin ique 3200 gps/pda (which itself kinda stinks) when i got it loaded on and i booted linux... the thing just reset and went to the "palm powered" screen.. i am guessing this probably won't work with it. is there anything i CAN get to work on my cruddy gps/pda? i would appreciate help, thanks.

Feb 24, 2009. 8:57 AMeighthave (author) says:

If it is an ARM CPU running PalmOS 5 and has an SD card, then it it very likely to run. It is very unlikely to damage the hardware just trying it, it can mess with the software tho.

Feb 20, 2009. 10:26 AMevanwehrer says:

would this work on a treo?

Feb 24, 2009. 8:55 AMeighthave (author) says:

Yes, this will work on some Treos. I think the 650 and 680 are the best bet. I have a 650 that I am testing with. Let me know if you want to try it out, and I'll help you with the details.

Dec 8, 2008. 1:53 PMvitriolix says:

Looking forward to trying out the latest build with gstreamer any py-gst on it...

Dec 8, 2008. 2:25 PMeighthave (author) says:

I am adding test releases as I make them, so check the bottom of the releases page if you are interested in helping to test:

http://dev.eyebeam.org/projects/reware/wiki/Releases

Dec 5, 2008. 10:37 PMBongmaster says:

great :) i just recently put familiar linux on my compaq ipaq :) and plan on using it with my arduino homebrew :) it would be awesome to be able to get the ide running on it :)

Dec 7, 2008. 12:41 PMeighthave (author) says:

You want to run the Arduino IDE on your ipaq? Once you get the Arduino hooked up to the iPaq, please post documentation! We also want to start hooking up Arduinos to PDAs.

Dec 7, 2008. 2:45 PMBongmaster says:

well i have got it talking to a sketch called bitlash via a serial terminal on the ipaq, so i can bitbash to it from the pda, thats the 1st step.

u can find the bitlash thing on the arduino.cc forums here http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1227446710

i also used my charger connectors spare pins to connect to a rs232 9 pin dsub socket for my rs232 to TTL converter to connect to the ipaq.

Dec 6, 2008. 1:56 PMphant0m_sp00f3ra says:

is there anyway to do this to a on a palm m515¿

Dec 7, 2008. 12:40 PMeighthave (author) says:

It might be possible on an m515, but I think it'll be too weak to do much with. PalmOS is smaller than Linux, so it runs better on smaller CPUs like that in the m515.

Dec 6, 2008. 9:31 PMgrantaccess says:

Is it just the clock that is changed to 1942 or does this hack actually allow time-travel. I'm interested as this might help in another project I am working on.

Dec 5, 2008. 1:24 PM

thearchitect says:

Very very interesting! Excellent stuff, I didn't know I could run Linux with my Palm TX. I will try it over the weekend. But yeah, I should back things up first, I can't afford losing stuff off my TX... Thanks! K.