J_F

since I have both, a zodiac and a UX-50 this application is quite interesting - does anyone has experience with it?

thanks in advance

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NR70 - UX50 - Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2


Boldly Going Nowhere

MetaView

All it does: it alters 2 Ftr-entries to set the deviceID and the companyID to a Sony Clie. It's a fake and works only for a few apps.

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Palm OS ® certified developer

PalmPDF surely the best PDF Reader for Palm OS * 2Cool4U iPhone feeling on your Palm * OperaFrontEnd new experience with Oper Mini * PhoneDisconnect never forget a missed call or SMS
http://www.metaviewsoft.de

Telyx

I think it was written specifically to get Picsel Browser to work on a Zodiac.

dmccunney

I got Picsel Browser to work on a Zodiac without it, and never saw it do anything useful one way or the other.

Picsel Browser and NetFront, both ripped from Clies, run fine on my Zodiac, but both needed a little external assistance, from Code Diver to handle the full 320x480 screen, and from UDMH to provide my dynamic heap for NetFront.

The other major thing out there from Clies is the Macromedia Flash Player for Palm OS, but that won't run on the Zodiac. It does something that triggers the Zodiac exception mechanism, and causes a crash and reset. (It would be of limited use if it did run -- it only supports up to Flash 5, and Macromedia gave up on Palm OS development shortly after and concentrated on Windows Mobile for handhelds.)
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Dennis

J_F

thank you guys

__________________
NR70 - UX50 - Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2


Boldly Going Nowhere

Cyker

Indeed - A MUCH more useful app is the DevUnlock program

I do wonder 'tho, who is still signing LJP, Transport Tycoon and SvummVM!?!?

Because they don't need devunlock to run on the Zodiac despite using Zod-specific calls!

(That Joyce is one dedicated lady if it's still her! )

dmccunney

Possibly because they were "signed for all"?

She's still out there, and claimed in email she still signs stuff, but isn't very good about responding to email...
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Dennis

Cyker

Signed for All? What does that mean?

I thought everytime they re-compile the program, they would need to be re-signed?

And to be fair, it's not Joyce's responsibility anymore - The fact that she kept signing stuff after TW tanked was, I'm sure, just off her own back, so complaining that she doesn't respond to e-mails when frankly, it's not her job anyway, is a bit crass.

dmccunney

"Signed for all" means they are able to be installed on any device, and not locked to a specific one.

I don't know offhand if a new signature is required for a new build. I would guess not. My assumption is that the signature is embedded in the core when the app is built, and only one needs to be issued. If yu think about it, that makes sense: it would be problematic to require a new signature to be issued every time a new build was done

Correct.

When you ask someone a question in email, and they promise to check and get back to you, and never do, I'd say a mild complaint is justified, thank you.

She mentioned she was in contact with former Tapwave developers. I asked whether she could ascertain the status of the reported Zodiac Linux port Tapwave had completed just before they went belly up. She said she would check and get back to me, and never did. I pinged her later with a reminder, got an "Oh! Sorry! I've been traveling. Thanks for the reminder!", but still never got an answer to the question.

At that point I gave up.

But as it happens, I wasn't complaining. I simply made a statement that she is slow to respond to email.
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Dennis

Cyker

Ahh, I see the confusion - You were talking about the copy-protection signature lock.

I was only talking about the signing needed to unlock certain API calls for Zodiac-specific/enhanced games, which is what ?DevAccess? does.

There is no known way (currently) to bypass the individual hardware lock AFAIK, but since nobody (almost?) uses this (thank smeg) the point is moot

I am almost 100% certain that the signing hash is something that has to be generated from the program's binary and not something you can just 'tack' on the end:
1) If it wasn't, people could just copy that core hash and stick it in any app they wanted to make.
2) Zod versions of stuff were often delayed compared to raw OS5 due to signing delays which adds weight to the idea that it is some special hash of the compiled binary.
3) When Tapwave still existed, you could get a special program keyed to your Zod if you registered as a developer which turned your Zod into a 'development' Zod, which DIDN'T need signed binaries to access the Zodiac API. I think worked different to DevAccess, but the end result is the same


Edit: I have also just remembered there is a 'hack' you can use in your program to bypass the signing requirement anyway, so maybe they are using this instead of an 'authentic' signature

dmccunney

Nope. I was talking about the code that lets you run programs on the Zodiac that use the Tapwave API.

That's what signing is all about: it allows the program to use the Zodiac specific API (mostly ATI graphics chip related).

You can have an app signed for a specific device, which locks it to that device and prevents copy protection, or it can be signed for all and installed on any device you like

I've never had reason to try. I shouldn't wonder if you're right. I have a few Zodiac specific things on my device, but the vast majority is standard Palm OS stuff. I bought the Zodiac to be a PDA, not a games device, and one question back when I was looking at getting one was "Will this signature stuff cause me a problem?" The answer was that it only affected code written specifically for the Zodiac, and shouldn't be a problem otherwise.

Mostly, it hasn't been. I can think of two non-Zodiac apps offhand I can't get to run on the Zodiac because they do something it doesn't like. One is MS Mount, and the other is the ripped Sony Clie Flash player. No great loss in either case.

The delay would come from the fact that someone at Tapwave had to create the signature.

I was thinking about the signature being something the developer could embed in the code when they did a build -- that they got it in source form, so to speak, and compiled it into the binary.

I'm not sure, and may well be wrong.

As far as I know, what you got as a developer was DevAccess -- it let you run unsigned code so you could actually test your code as you developed. Toward the end, they were giving it out to just about everyone. I think they knew they weren't going to be there much longer. I believe the twDevAccess program available from various archives is what Tapwave provided to developers, and it's not keyed to a specific device. There is a more recent popAccess program that does the same thing but doesn't need to be re-enabled after a reset. It's an install and forget solution.

I have no idea. I'm aware of "Squidge's hack", which apparently lets you access at least some Zodiac specific functions without needing a signature, but I don't believe it's a comprehensive replacement.

The signature mechanism blocks tw* API calls from unsigned programs. My guess was that if you knew the underlying functions, you could access them directly rather than going through the Tapwave API, and that seems to be about what got done.
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Dennis

J_F

IMPORTANT FOLLOW UP

I tried MakeClie - I wanted to have MSbackup in my Zodiac) but since it did not work (same with Picsel and NetFront) I decided to delete it. Guess what? Yeap ... I had to hard-reset my unit

If anyone is reading this far do not use this application before backing up everything

__________________
NR70 - UX50 - Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2


Boldly Going Nowhere

Cyker

Are you sure? From what I remember, when you registered your dev access was keyed *specifically* to 'your' Zodiac; Several developers cited such a reason as why they couldn't give people access to their API-requiring programs, and directing people to register at Tapwave to obtain the unlock code in order to run said programs.



Yes, I think you are right - IIRC there is an alternative API floating about that allows alternate access to the functions, without going through the tw* functions.
If I wasn't so lazy I could check the TTDLX and LJP code base for confirmation, but I think it's a likely explaination

J_F

... ... er ... hmm... are we in the same post?

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NR70 - UX50 - Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2 and Zodiac 2


Boldly Going Nowhere