Tapwave Zodiac Owners Celebrate the Release of LJZ

wraggster writes " Tapwave Zodiac owners today enjoyed the Release of a major multiple system emulator called LittleJohn Z that includes such systems as Snes, Genesis, PC Engine, Nes, GBC, Wonderswan and NeoGeo Pocket. Sites such as Zodiac Gamer & Zodiac Emulation have more information on this release."

Could be useful

[Jerrith]

Saw one of these in CompUSA the other day, but wasn't all that impressed, and there didn't seem to be much software. Something like this software though could really make it a neat little piece of hardware to have. Nice display at the front of the store, how well are they selling?

Re:Could be useful

[Divide By Zero]

They're not exactly mainstream, but there is a small following dedicated to their Zodiacs. http://www.tapland.com/ [tapland.com] and http://www.zodiacgamer.com/ [zodiacgamer.com] are the two big sites that I know of, though there is a lot of info repeated between the two.

Tapwave only recently started offering the Zodiacs retail - they were only available thru the Tapwave website for the first few months.

It's a PalmOS 5 device that happens to have a slightly different form factor. Or, at least, that's what I tell my boss when I get cau

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:New generation Console

[Luigi30]

ePSXe worked pretty well for me on ~1.5GHz.

Re:New generation Console

[Reapy]

You guys need to look at suprnova.org. I saw torrent files that had a 10 gig dl of every snes game out there and a 3 gig one for every nes game. I don't know if they are still there, but I'd keep my eyes out to try downloading those.

Then you can carefully find the games you owned and delete the rest of the illegal ones :)

Re:New generation Console

[hiroshi912681]

and just where are you gonna stick the CD in? unless you wanna buy a gigabyte memory card for it.

seriously, there's no reason to diss the 8/16 bit. they haven't been established on this platform yet. he's obviously pleasing as many people at once with der uberemulator. if you want 32 bit, get the gba emu. I don't expect n64 emulation, either, the games are big, and 95% of the games wouldn't play right on its controller. be realistic.

Re:New generation Console

[accelleron]

You are somewhat mislead here.

Most N64 roms are around 16-35 megs in size (sound and all), Mario 64 was around 14, unless memory fails me.

Most PSX images are ~500-700 mb, but if you rip away the movies/music/voice many will abate to a humble 100-300mb, which easily fit on a 512, or even a 256 card, which are not too expensive. In addition, most PSX emu's designed for small-storage platforms [PPC PlayStation Emu's for example] support playback directly from compressed (think: zip) files. That puts the aver

Re:New generation Console

[hiroshi912681]

there were a lot of big games. paper mario being one of the largest. but, besides the size of the games... imagine the memory requirements for it. if an xbox can barely run an n64 emu (it required a virtual memory driver!), I doubt a handheld would be able to do it sufficiently

Re:New generation Console

[rattboi]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. When talking about RAM, Xbox has 32MB, which it puts to good use in it's games. But the Zodiac has 2 models. One features 32MB RAM (same as Xbox) and the other, for $100 more, features 128MB RAM. So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.

Re:New generation Console

[lucas teh geek]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. When talking about RAM, Xbox has 32MB, which it puts to good use in it's games.

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken. when correcting someone, make sure your are actually correct first. The xbox has 64MB of ram. [cnet.com]

Re:New generation Console

[Divide By Zero]

So while I think there's other issues as to why N64/PSX emulation wouldn't work on Zodiac, RAM isn't an issue.

Yes it is, but not because the chip isn't there. The OS (PalmOS 5.1T, if I remember right) only uses about 14MB for functions typically associated with RAM. (fast temporary storage, basically). The rest (18 or 114 MB, depending on the model of Zodiac) is analogous to hard drive space - long term storage. The thing is, Palm hardware, Tapwave included, uses physical RAM for both types of storage

Re:New generation Console

[HAKdragon]

ePSXe seems to work great as a Playstation emulator and it's free to boot, though you'll need a BIOS file, which a quick search on google will yield. You can play orignal PSX cds, backups and ISO images.

As for N64 emulation, I'm not too up on it, but Project64 seemed to work pretty well from my limited experience with it. The problem is that the N64 is a fairly hard machine to emulate and many times they had to test individual games and work on getting those working.

Re:New generation Console

[cttforsale]

I use 1964 and project 64.
Here's a link to them (anr more):
http://www.emuparadise.org/emulators/n64.p hp

Get your n64 roms here:
http://www.emuparadise.org/roms/n64/

Re:New generation Console

[MMaestro]

I see NO reason for new ones to come out.

Um, because most keyboards, PDAs, or handhelds such as the Gameboy Advance don't have a Z-trigger and joystick for the N64 nor do they have 8 buttons (10 if you count start/select, 12 if you count R3/L3) nor dual analog sticks for the PS1/PSX.

After the 16-bit era, controllers went insane. PS1/PSX added 2 extra buttons at first, but dual analog sticks!? Whoa! What next? Built in vibration AND wireless?! Nintendo moving the d-pad to the sidelines with the N64? Yeah, R

zodiac

[BTWR]

i'm sorry, I disagree with the other poster. The Zodiac has the potential for greatness. It's seems to be a very "do/modify-it-yourself" device. My predicition is that the mod community will be more influential than the commercial programs available for it...

Other devices?

[dnobel]

Does this mean that a port may be in store for other Palm OS PDAs? I wouldn't mind taking something similar for a spin on my treo 600...

Re:Other devices?

[Ravi Hiranand]

I'd love to see something like this for my UX50...

Re:Other devices?

[VikingBrad]

Probably have to wait for the Hi-Res version of the Treo to support similar screen dimensions to the Game Boy Advanced, et al

Cheers
VikingBrad

Re:Other devices?

[StevenHenderson]

No. The Zodiac has an advanced graphics chip (ATi if I'm not mistaken) that lets it render things the Treo could never do. Also, lower res screens on the Treo don't help...

Re:Other devices?

[Fammy2000]

While it is true that LJZ uses the ATI image chip for some of the operations, this could be ported to the rest of PalmOS with a rewrite of some of the image/screen functions.

The code's GPL. Get crackin' folks! There was a hold up for a while development because the source couldn't be released with current Tapwave SDK license agreements. I assume that has been fixed. During that time, the author lamented that he might make the emulator PalmOS 5 instead.

Re:Other devices?

[Divide By Zero]

It might, but probably not. Zodiac has the widescreen Palm display that's only available (as far as I know) on the Zodiac and one of the PalmOne Tungsten models (the T? I forget.) It also has beefier sound, the ATi graphics processor mentioned in an earlier reply, and the analog stick. If the game or emulator's designed for those, it may have alternate controls for the Treo, but don't be surprised if it doesn't.

There are a bunch of games that were designed for "regular" Palm devices that don't work on

LittleJoh?

[British]

Okay, looking at the price for the Zodiac 2:

$399.

WHAAATT?!??

$399

WHAAT??!??

I said, $399

WHAT????

$399.

Do I think this costs too much?

YEAS!@#!@#

Maybe I'd get one if they vastly reduced the price.

O-KAY!@!@#@#@

Re:LittleJoh?

[Mac Degger]

Dude...it's the highest spec PalmOS device on the market, with more features/specs than the T3. So expect it to cost a bit...personally, with the 128mb version, I think it's a damn steal at that price.