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Originally Posted by robinson
The Zodiac sounds incredible! I've never seen one in person and it's probably been years since I googled a picture of one. I'll have to check it out-- maybe there's a decent one for sale out there.
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It's a sweet device. Tapwave was originally trying to make a device that was a handheld gaming platform as well as Palm OS PDA, so it has things like an ATI video chip with 2D acceleration and 8MB of onboard RAM, Yamaha stereo sound, and 128MB of RAM. They went belly up in July 2005, but Zodiacs are still around. My first one was purchased on eBay for about $250. My second pair came from a clearance sale by Tapwave's former authorized repair center, who had a bunch intended to be in-store demonstrators on the shelves. It was a two-fer deal: buy a re-purposed demo unit, and get another sent back on an RMA as a source of parts.
It has a few quirks, because Tapwave's engineers implemented a form of DRM to sooth games manufacturers concerned about piracy. Software that uses advanced features of the Tapwave API (mostly concerning the ATI chip) must be digitally signed to run, and is locked to the device it is installed on. I have a couple of programs not written for the Zodiac which are allergic to something it does, and refuse to run. It also has a non-standard button arrangement, and lacks the "hard buttons" of most Palm devices, so some older software written to use them is problematic.
Most Palm software runs fine. I use Launcher X for my launcher. Most of my ebooks are converted HTML read by
Plucker, an open source offline HTML viewer for Palm devices, but I have Mobipocket, eReader, and PDF files (read by the open source
PalmPDF) viewer, and PalmDOC, zTXT, plain ASCII text, Word doc and RTF files, read with
PalmFiction, another open source product.
I got the original Zodiac when my Tungsten E was dying. The TX wasn't out yet. My specs were a 320x480 screen, more RAM, and a faster processor. Anything else was gravy. Conversations with another Zodiac owner on a Palm oriented board indicated the Zodiac would be a good choice, so I got one.
About half of its purpose in life is being an ebook reader, but it also has the PIM functions, plays MP3s and views videos, among other things. The open source Core Pocket Media Player port for Palm OS has support for the Zodiac's video, and there are extensive threads elsewhere on the best way to rip movies from DVD to play on your Zodiac.
The biggest wins from my viewpoint are the 320x480 screen and two SD slots. It means I
can carry my entire ebook library on my device...
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Of course, there is some magic and some fun in a new device with a new OS... and even enjoyment getting it to work or fulfill one's needs/wants!
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Certainly. Getting the Zodiac where I wanted it took some doing, because some things I had done on previous devices didn't work on it, but I'm quite happy with what I have set up now.
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Dennis