In past articles I’ve looked at PC and Mac emulation on Android phones - both can be a little tricky to accomplish. I’m happy to say getting PSX up and running is a cinch! The app is already in the app store for $5.99. If you’re the shady type you can *ahem* probably find it elsewhere. (I’ll leave it at that.)

Once the PSX 4 droid (Playstation for android) app is installed you need to obtain a copy of the Playstation bios file and any games you intend to play.

As far as the bios file goes, there are plenty of resources for it out there if you google. Just search for “Download Playstation Bios” Try here for starters.

Games are pretty easily to get as well. They are of course online on websites like emuparadise.org or you can pop your existing PS games into your computer and create disk images (ISO files) For example, on a Mac you can use “Disk Utility” and click the “New Image” icon in the toolbar. (the format you’d use is CD/DVD master, just name it .ISO)

There are a couple tricky points I’ve noticed so far:

• There were several files to choose from when you select the bios file for the emulator. It recommended a particular one but when loading a game I received an error message. I switched to SCPH101.bin and it worked. Possibly different games require different bios file settings, might be a regional thing.
• Some games might be in .bin.ecm format, I guess this is an optimized format but I don’t think the android psx emulator can read them. There are utilities out there to convert from and to ecm files. The mac version worked fine from the command line, but not the gui. Here’s the utility: http://www.neillcorlett.com/ecm/
• Since I have a keyboard I used that instead of the annoying on-screen display. It also recommended a particular frame rate but i didn’t notice any difference between that and auto. On my 1st generation Droid it plays at full speed with only occasional choppy sound.

Happy gaming!

A while back I posted a Technobabble article on running Windows and DOS on Android via DOS BOX, which you can see here. Since then I’ve wanted to run the Mac OS, and now it’s working!

Here’s the link I stumbled on which has everything you need to get started: http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11650&p=133309

The page includes a link to the Mini vMac package which is the emulator. I’ve used this emulator on other platforms and it’s a lot of fun but it’s pretty bare bones. (Don’t expect anything fancy like sound!) In order to work, the emulator requires a copy of a Macintosh ROM. This means you’ll either need to use a utility to extract a ROM from a Mac.. OR… hit a website like pirate bay for a copy. (You know the “low road”) If in doubt, just google for mac roms.

You’ll also need software, so while you’re googling find a disk image of a Mac OS boot disk. System 7 will do. Fortunately, Apple gives this out free now, it’s just creating or finding the disk image that’d the trick.

One last requirement, you’ll need the Android SDK on your computer. Grab that here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

To get set up and running, get apk from that website and follow these steps:

• Go into your phone settings and under Applications, set your phone to allow installation from untrusted sources, also turn on USB debugging.
• Connect your phone to your computer.
• Using the adb command, install the mini vmac package. Here’s an example command: ./adb install ~/Desktop/minivmac4android-r23.apk The last part is just the location of the apk file. I ran this command from the SDK directory
• The hard part’s over! Now mount your phone and go into the SD card and create a folder called minivmac.
• Put the Mac ROM into this folder (Should be called “vMac.ROM”)
• Get a Mac OS boot disk image and any other disks you’ll use, and put it into this folder as well.
• Disconnect and presto!

And that’s it, look in the App drawer on your phone and you should see the mini vMac emulator icon listed. It uses a physical keyboard and touch-screen for the mouse. The menu button has options to mount disks, which will list any disks in that minivmac folder.

One other note, I have to start the emulator with my phone held sideways/landscape otherwise it only uses half the screen.

Have fun!

Mac OS running on Droid

Final Fantasy V

A perfect example of the dumb decisions back then is leaving behind this game with its ingenious character customization system and instead releasing Mystic Quest which though required grinding was a good idea. Nothing says fun like 10 consecutive redundant battles. Not that the game was entirely terrible, but it was nothing compared to this would-be classic. FFV is probably the last “traditional” Final Fantasy game, complete with elemental fields, black mages, and whatnot. (Well, ok FF9 is really the last game like that, but it was more of a “greatest hits” than anything else)

Seiken Densetsu III

Here was an game that almost was released. It was even featured in Nintendo Power, and arguably created some interest and anticipation. Why it was scrapped… who knows. Instead we got a piece of crap called “Secret of Evermore” I have to say, playing through Seiken Densetsu III was a real pleasure. It pushed the limits of the SNES and was surprisingly unique and non-linear. Would have made an excellent ”Secret of Mana II”

Mother (Earthbound Zero)

Earthbound fans are funny creatures, I guess I fall in that category too! The game itself was just as fun, innovative, and unique as the SNES release. The music is great, the story is great, the characters are well done. It’s just overall a good game. Because of it’s modern day setting it’s possible it could have been a big hit. It would also expand the RPG world of the late 80s beyond Square and Enix. What’s really killer about this game is the fact the localization was completed! It was just not green lighted for release because Nintendo of America wanted to focus on the new SNES. A ROM exists today with the official translation. There are even images of the box art. It came so close, but never happened.

Final Fantasy III (NES)

Like FFV, or FFII for that matter - this would have been a great game to have released in the US back then. Although FFII had an offical translation project underway, I think FFIII was a far better game. FFIII set the tone for Final Fantasy for many games after and introduced many conventions that are still part of the game today. It was also a great game, had great music and graphics, and was pretty accessible which also would have made it a great release in the US. With 4 Dragon Warrior games, it would have been nice to see at least one other Final Fantasy release for the NES. Fortunately this game is now getting the love it deserves, with the 3d DS remake that was released a few years back.

Dragon Quest V

Back when the SNES was out I was dying for a Dragon Warrior release on the new console. Nintendo Power teased US readers with Dragon Warrior V, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, nothing came out until DW7 was released on the PlayStation in the 2000s. So why is DQV such a big deal? Well, many people feel this is one of the best entries in the entire series - a series that was so big in Japan that it had to be released on holidays. The game itself would have helped keep interest in the series alive. Back in the NES days Dragon Warrior was the big RPG name, Final Fantasy was great, but arguably it was Dragon Warrior that held the RPG crown. Of course that changed, and Final Fantasy became the giant it is. But in my opinion it was a classic game with great music and story that would have been exciting so see released on the SNES. Like some of the other entries on this list, it also saw a remake - a 3d remake on the DS. But I still can’t help but wonder how great it would have been to see the game back then.

The bushes and clouds are the same spites in the original SMB.

You’ve probably heard this one, but it’s true. take a look here: http://elrincondeleo.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/super-mario-bros.jpg Oh the mushrooms and goombas are pretty close too. You might also find it interesting that though the levels are relatively large, they are stored in very little space - because instead of thinking of every square and pixle of the map, the only thing that’s saved is a list of level objects, their coordinates, and their length. That’s why rows of coins and bricks are common.

RPGs often lumped floors, dungeons, towns, and buildings together in one map.

RPGs often stored their maps in a more traditional sense. (Like a list of sprites and locations: tree, tree, water, water, tree, etc) So they had to do other things to make the most of the low amount of storage. In games that had dungeons a lot of times these were put together in one overworld-sized map but spread apart far enough that you wouldn’t (normally) see the tips of other parts of the dungeon. A really awesome example of packing dungeons together can be seen in the original Legend of Zelda: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldaquilt.jpg and here’s the second quest: http://www.theginblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/zeldadungeonspelling.jpg

Sometimes, it was worth being inefficient.

Sometimes to get the WOW factor, games would throw in an really “expensive” bit of multimedia to wow players. For example, the musical “SE-GA” in the original Sonic (see here: http://tinyurl.com/2duey26) And in Sonic 3 there was even a quick FMV! Graphics alone take up some space, check out this neat visualization of SMB3’s actual bits… http://i.imgur.com/PG1fq.gif

But wait! There’s more!

There are many, many creative examples of how developers squeezed the most content into games. Everything from the creative re-use of sprites, to pallet swapping, to primitive compression… it’s pretty amazing really!

First off, think of all the cool uses for x86 emulation on an Android phone. All those old PC games that ran under DOS or older versions of Windows, and just the pure nerdyness of it all… it’s too much to resist.

First step: Android SDK

To get started, you will need to install the Android SDK. The reason being is you’ll need the program “adb” which essentially allows you in debug mode to issue commands to the phone (like installing programs) you can get and install the sdk here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Actually getting set up with a working development environment for Android is a whole other story - you’ll need a IDE like Eclipse. But for now, all we’re concerned about is that adb program in the tools subdirectory.

Get your phone ready

Your phone will need some settings set up, go into your settings application and then “applications” you’ll see a section for development settings. You’ll want debug mode on, you’ll want the phone to stay awake on usb, and you’ll also want the setting in applications to allow installation from unknown sources. After this is all set, plug the phone in via usb, and mount it.

Getting the emulator set up

For this, we’re using DOSBOX - which is a handy emulator for many, many platforms. The android version is available here: http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/

The instructions for installing DOSBOX are on this page. Essentially you’ll be using adb to send the .apk file to your phone. It’s simple, just navigate to the tools directory and type “adb install” followed by the name of the apk you get from the downloaded zip file.

Example, on the mac terminal: ./adb install ~/Desktop/WVGA/aDosBox.apk  (In this example I’m in the tools directory running adb and pointing to the extracted zip file on my desktop - a folder called WVGA containing aDosBox.apk

Next, we need to copy a configuration file for dosbox. Use adb followed by “push” and the name of the file and then the destination. For example: ./adb push ~/Desktop/WVGA/dosbox.conf /sdcard/dosbox.conf (first is adp, then push, then the source, then the destination)

Edits

You can use phone itself if you have a file manager program like ASTRO, or just use your computer - but you’ll want to make some tweaks to the dosbox.conf file. First off, give it additional memory. 8, 16mb — enough to run windows 3.1 or 9x. (Sorry I hope you weren’t expecting Windows 7 here!) Also feel free to add your own commands to the autoexec.bat section of the config file. Old skool users will remember that autoexec.bat is just a batch file that runs at startup.

Also, on the phone I made a dosbox directory organize all the x86 stuff.

Windozing

Well, at this point you should have the DOSBOX application on your phone which will fire right up into DOS. You can technically but any executables and run them from the prompt. I really cheated, what I did was install the Windows environment in a virtual machine on my laptop and then, copy the windows directory onto the phone. Nothing is stopping you from copying the setup files to your phone and running setup.exe — but do you really want the pleasure of sitting through a windows installation on a cell phone? Well maybe you do, since you’ve gone this far!

Final Thoughts

Launching windows is done with the “win” command, you can add this to the configuration file under the autoexec section or just run it manually at the prompt. Enjoy!

Let’s start of will a quick recap of these technologies. Basically all of this stems from the limitations html has previously suffered from. In order for webpages to have this level of interactivity and presentation, you’d need a plugin to get your browser to do it. So this is where flash is coming from. It’s meant to address the limitations of html.

Microsoft, as per usual, identifies a money-making technology and makes their own version. That’s silverlight. Like flash, it’s a plugin that lets your browser do video, animation, and higher interaction experience.

Now, HTML is a standard and the folks on W3C and other standards committees have identified that most web sites want this functionality standard and available. And I agree, you shouldn’t need to install plugins just to watch videos, see animations, etc.

To summarize the pros and cons in the previous technobabble article, flash is the big fish in the pond. It has full support in windows, mac, and linux - along with several other platforms - even the Wii. However, it’s proprietary and uses its own language (ActionScript) Silverlight, although less-supported, offers a more open solution. It’s XML-based and uses regular languages that most .NET web developers are familiar with. Also, you don’t have to build content in an expensive Flash studio environment.

What’s interesting about the current climate is that flash and silverlight are actually becoming obsolete. As more browsers support HTML5 (which, by the way, is robust enough to play Quake) Flash, in particular is not useless as it is being used in development outside of strictly webpage multimedia, one example was its ability to build mobile apps. Which brings us to…

Apple! There’s a strange history between Apple and Adobe (who purchased Flash from Macromedia a few years back) When Apple was in dire straits in the late 90s Adobe bailed on them and made Windows their primary development platform, as opposed to Macintosh which was known for it’s desktop publishing and graphics strong points. So rumor goes, Steve Jobs got pissed about this and now has this vendetta against Adobe. Apple has definitely grown big, especially in the cell phone space. For Apple to not support Flash and even go so far as to restrict development of apps via flash is a real low blow, if you think about it. But the official stance is simply that Flash is too closed, slugish, and proprietary - and the shift is towards HTML5.

In my humble opinion I do see HTML5 as an attractive future for a lot of web interactivity and presentation. Having said that Flash is far from dead, and is constantly evolving. With leaps forward like Adobe Air, it’s hard to just dismiss Flash as obsolete and irrelevant. There are still things HTML can’t do - all this geo-spacial stuff on mobile devices and ipads, as one example. If Flash is smart they will stay ahead of the curve.

So what’s next? Who knows! I’m sure HTML5 will be embraced, ESPECIALLY since IE9 will support it! Flash will probably still be used because quite honestly it’s easy, and so pervasive. Apple won’t support it in the iPhone OS, and hopefully Adobe doesn’t strike back with Photoshop and Creative Suite not being ported to the Mac. (Probably not because that’d hurt everyone) But it’s a real interesting game being played right now, so stay tuned because it’s far from over!

AK Notepad
A simple note taking program. Quick, painless, and free.

Aldiko
An eBook reader with access to lots of free eBooks online.

Android LightSaber
You need this, to battle iPhone users and their lightsaber apps.

Android VNC / Remote RDP Lite
These allow you to remote into macs and PCs. Slow, but still usefull and downright fun.

ASTRO (or ES File Explorer)
A program like ASTRO is practically essential. Use it to browse files on your phone, LAN, or even over FTP. So incredibly useful it should be shipped with each phone!

Barcode Scanner
Not only for the fun of scanning products, but the barcodes you encounter online and in real life that point to android apps and content!

Barnacle Wifi Tether (for rooted phones)
For those of you who have been able to root your phone, you can use this app to transform your phone into a mobile access point for laptops, ipads, etc. Killer!

Goggles
Mostly for the fun-factor, this app will scan, identify, and lookup objects just using your camera. It also can identify businesses similar to Layar and Wikitude which also belong on this list probably!

Google Sky Map
Simple and awesome, point it to the sky, see what stars/planets are there.

Meebo IM
The best way to IM on your phone - includes support for AIM, ICQ, and many other popular clients.

Mojo NES / SNesoid Lite
To me, this is the example of why Android is a better platform than iPhone. Because unlike the iPhone which has a restrictive app store - you get things like these which are in the grey area of what’s legal and what’s not. But anyways, there are plenty of emulators including the two mentioned above. There are also emulators for genesis, gameboy advance, and various other platforms! The free versions do the job, the pro versions give you some essentials like saving games, etc.

Pandora
Put in a name of a band, and listen for free as you discover new music. Songs will be selected for you, you rate the music, and it will start finding new stuff for you! Also of note is Shazam, which will identify music it hears. Great for finding the name of a song you hear out somewhere that you like.

PDA Net
This doesn’t require any hacking or rooting, what it does is allows you to use your phone as a modem for your laptop. Works great with my MacBook. The free version limits some stuff like https sites, so it’s worth paying if you use it intensively.

Terminal Emulator
Simply gives you access to a shell, linux and unix users will be right at home!

Trapster
This app shows you where speed traps are. You can identify speed traps and warn other drivers.

Obviously it’s hard to limit this list to just 15, there are plenty of incredible apps for Android.

As always, it comes down to pros and cons. Everybody is asking if it’s worth it, well let’s get the pros and cons listed out:

PROs
* Extremely elegant device, not only in appearance, but to use. It makes using a laptop feel like a clunky obsolete experience.
* Similarly, there’s a real appeal to touch interface, using websites by touching them sort of connects you to it, in a way you don’t get with a laptop or some intermediate machine to communicate with what’s on the page.
* Typing is perfect on it.
* Easy to use, very intuitive interface.
* Fast and responsive, beats the heck out of my Netbook in terms of performance.
* Syncing with google calendar, or any of the iLife apps is an extremely nice feature.

CONs
* Biggest con: the app store. Apple has firm control over the apps on it, and many apps aren’t free. It’s a huge bummer. As a geek, I want apps like SSH, FTP, RDP, but none are free. Emulators are completely out of the question.
* No multiple users
* The iPhone OS does not support multitasking yet. So, I can’t surf the web while listing to Pandora (although I can listen to iTunes and do other things)
* No camera
* No SD
* Needs better syncing to iTunes, over bluetooth would be nice. Even streaming media would have been cool.
* Crashed once on me already, just watching a movie.
* No Flash, but with more sites embracing HTML5 it’s not as big a downer as it sounds.

So let’s wrap everything up, there’s a lot to take in here. There are some serious cons to the iPad, sure. There isn’t a reason to give you on why you can’t live without one. A laptop does everything it can do, and so can a lot of cell phones. What it does have going for it is style, presentation, and experience that more than makes up for its faults. Using it is literally so elegant it is preferable to pick up this tablet on the couch to check Facebook, or whatever - than to fire up the ol’ laptop. It’s a true consumer appliance. If you’re a geek and you want to play ROMs and hack wifi networks, it’s not going to do it. To an average user who is viewing photos, checking stuff online, and maybe working on some basic office documents, this will sure as heck cut the mustard.

Frankly, Apple couldn’t have made the iPad any other way. If they started to load it up with too much it would have become cumbersome. The iPhone OS is ideal for it, desktop OSes are meant for desktops. The iPhone OS was the only way to go, it’s meant to be mobile and touched. Just like the original Mac, it had people saying it didn’t do enough - but what it introduced changed everything. And that’s exactly what’s happening here - it’s out there to blaze new trails and redefine the market. The killer apps for iPad haven’t even been written yet.

So in summary, it’s something more than the sum of its parts. It’s captivating and elegant. It’s also new, and I’m sure there’s a bright future of new models, features, and upgrades ahead of it.

Windows XP or Xubuntu.

Before anybody complains about me forgetting about their favorite, obsucure, runs-on-an-atari lightweight distro, keep in mind me choices are based around actually doing modern or real work using real applications and modern websites.

Here are the pros and cons…

Windows XP
PROS
* Customizable install with nLite
* High compatability
* XP is small enough you will still have room for apps like older versions of office, photoshop, etc
CONS
* Security. Realistically you should consider running antivirus as well which is a big setback on a netbook.
* Becomes slow and bloated over time
* Difficult to install without use of external cd drive.

Xubuntu
PROS
* Being free, it’s a lot easier to obtain, customize, and install (even via a USB drive)
* High UI customization to optimize screen real-estate
* Customization - only install what you need
* Fast, runs chrome perfectly.
* Decent apps, still have the ability to install Gimp, maybe open office with room to spare
CONS
* The learning curve associated with Linux (maybe not to the people who are installing OS’s on netbooks, but still!)
* Some maintenance issues, such as preserving disk space after package management.
* Less compatible

OVERALL
* Any OS install on these will require setting up a usb drive to boot and install from. This is somewhat easier with linux, but not impossible with windows. An external CD drive is even easier.
* Both OS - linux or windows - require customization to run well regardless. In windows, you’ll need to avoid swap files, tweak your registry, reduce disk writes and caches, and similarly in linux you’ll want to avoid swap as well and customize some scripts to reduce disk writes. Both will also require some tweaking to run well in the low memory environemtn.
* It’s tempting to spring for ubuntu, vista, 7, or something newer but honestly xp and xubuntu are slim and have a very small footprint and are essentially as capable as today’s OS’s.
* Using an SD card is tempting as a home directory or even a home and program directory - not only will this reduce writes to your more-expensive SSD, but you can reinstall and retain some of your stuff.
* Both XP and xubuntu waste space after it updates, see the old technobabble article on this!

Normally, people use iTunes to copy music on and off of their iPods. To prevent unauthorized music redistribution iTunes won’t work with someone else’s iPod on your computer. These restrictions are unfortunate - but this is the sacrifice Apple made for making deals with record labels to sell their music online. Regardless of why or what - if you legitimately have music (say, something you wrote) on your iPod - wouldn’t it be handy to be able to plug that iPod into you’re friend’s computer and share your work?

Navigate your iPod

The iPod works like a USB hard drive. iTunes even has a setting to enable disk use. So when you plug your iPod into your computer you should see it (Windows users will see a drive in My Computer, and Mac users will see the icon on the desktop)

View hidden files

The folders that actually store your music are hidden on the iPod. So first, make sure you are seeing hidden and protected files. Window users can check out the control panel -> “folder options” for this. For mac users, hop into terminal and try this:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

Yes, Apple is TRYING to make it hard to get at it Oh, and if you want to hide hidden stuff again try:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder

Access your music

Now that you can see hidden stuff, you should see a folder called iPod_Control in your iPod. Inside this folder is another folder called “Music” which contains all the songs on your iPod. Unfortunately, iTunes renames the files with short codes - but the real names of the songs are retained in the MP3 tags. If you copy these files to your computer there are various organizational utilities on the web that will help rename them back, based off the ID3 tags. Hop on google and look for mp3 organization or renaming utilities.

Avoid iTunes alltogether

There are even utilities out there that will allow you to copy files to and from iPods. This is a common thing for Linux users as there is no iTunes in linux. Some example programs: Amarock, Banshee (those are Linux only) also SongBird which is cross-platform. http://getsongbird.com/