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.

2003-02-21:

Phoinix is now available in french: Phoinix-1.2-frCA.zip, translated by Marc Collin.

2003-02-14:

To thank you who have spent money for the TT, I have made a q'n'd hack to put the GB screen back to full size. Unfortunately it slows down the emulation a lot. Please try Phoinix-1.2OS5.zip. It should help users of the NX70V, too.

Of course I'm working on a better solution to give you back the used speed. But probably it will take some percent...

Sorry, Ben! The last time I forgot to mention your contribution: you compiled the converter for MacOS X. All its users should download the new tools.zip!


Overview:

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

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 2000-2003 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) 2001-2003 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 400 KB v.1.2 This is your starter pack, containing the english emulator, the free games collection, and the documentation without the playability datasheets.
Phoinix-1.2-enBG.zip 44 KB v.1.2 Just the emulator, english (Great Britain) version.
Phoinix-1.2-deDE.zip 44 KB v.1.2 Just the emulator, german (Germany) version.
Phoinix-1.2-ptBR.zip 44 KB v.1.2 Just the emulator, portuguese (Brazil) version.
Phoinix-1.2-itIT.zip 44 KB v.1.2 Just the emulator, italian (Italy) version.
Phoinix-1.2-frCA.zip 44 KB v.1.2 Just the emulator, french (Canada) version.
doc.zip 400 KB   Archive with documentation (files of this site).
freegame.zip 120 KB   Archive with readily converted free games.
tools.zip 124 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.

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, 40 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.

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 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 front end for the converter "gb2pdb" was written by Paul Chandler.

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

palm.gb_emu@gmx.de