Ok, I am certain beyond any doubt that we can accomplish this.
 
> One problem is that Palm distributes their OS updates (at least 3.3,
> dunno about 3.5 (yet)) in executables rather than in zip files.

I was just playing with the Palm upgrade installer in a hexeditor, looking at
the structure of the file, when something dawned on me. We don't
NEED to ferret the flashfile out at all... The PalmOS emulators all include a
tool that will download the flash OS from a Palm device as a binary PALM.ROM
file to be used in the emulator. All we need to do, is find a unit that has
already been flashed by a windows or Mac user, and liberate the ROM with the
emulator tools :) For that matter, once we have a copy of the ROM, we could
diff it against the flash utility, and create a simple executable that
extracts the ROM file from the util. This would eliminate any legal isses
involved with distributing copyrighted ROM images...

Step one accomplished?

  The
> other is that I doubt many people have access to information about how
> the debug mode works (at least, not many people who are not under NDA or
> something).

I have CodeWarrior for PalmOS (an older version...) and I am guessing that since
it is a developer's tool, the debug mode is documented therein. PalmOS, unlike
Win32, is considered to be an open API. It's been a while since I looked over
the materials, but I remember thorough coverage.

Stumbling block - my programming skills are out-of-date, and I make no bones
about it. Is someone interested in pursuing a project to make the PalmOS
devices ever more linux-friendly? I think this is a worthy effort...

-- 
Bill Layer
Sales Technician
<b.layer at vikingelectronics.com>

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