Re: computer-go: Re: Computer opportunity

[Kurt Thorn Perkins <thorn@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FWIW... Palm is no longer alone in the market if you favor the PalmOS.
The original designers of the Pilot (pre-USR, for those who don't follow
this stuff) have created a palm-alike called the Visor which has 8 megs
of RAM available, as well as external expansion modules ("soon to be
available"... salt, anyone?).  TRG, a company which has been making
memory expansions for the Palm for a while have also introduced a
palm-alike.  It has 8 megs on board as well, but uses the Compact Flash
expansion format.  This means that you can go out and buy memory
expansions that are available now... 16 meg, 48 meg, or if you REALLY
have nothing better to do... the IBM 340 megabyte microharddrive.

Downside is, speed hasn't increased much. As clock frequency increases,
power consumption goes up at a greater-than-linear rate.  In order to
keep a balance between speed and an AC extension cord, they probably
won't be increasing it drastically anytime soon.

  Kurt Perkins
  (I've been reading so many ads, I know this like the... er... Palm of
    my hand)


David Fotland wrote:

> I have a palm, and have tried two go recording shareware
> programs available for it.  The processor is too slow
> and there is too little memory for a go playing program,
> but a life and death problem program would be interesting, and
> easy to write.  I would do it, if I thought it would make any
> money.  Otheriwise, I'm too busy with Many Faces version 11.
>
> David
>
> At 08:04 PM 12/23/99 -0500, Davis wrote:
> >For my work, I just acquired a PalmPilot, and in addition to a vast
> >array of third-party business products, a tremendous number of games
> >have been written for the platform (I will not comment about what this
> >says about business users).  Most of the add-ons are shareware, but a
> >few are offered commercially.  Unfortunately, there are no Go products
> >available.
> >
> >I don't believe that the screen is large enough for full game playing
> >(Chess and Mahjongg are available), but it would be ideal for
> >interactive Life and Death problems, Joseki practice, etc.  The
> >manufacturers, 3Com, are extremely vendor friendly -- they offer two
> >levels of company certification ("Palm Computing Platform Compatible"
> >and "Platinum Certified").  The programming language is supposed to be
> >easy to use.  The main web sites are:<Palm.com>  <PalmCentral.com> and
> >the Product Quality Partners, <qpqa.com/qp3com.html>.
> >
> >I am not a programmer, but I would love to encourage those who are to
> >explore this opportunity.  By the way, there are a couple of bonus
> >situations.  First, the manufacturers have come out with a reasonably
> >cheap model PalmPilot, which would be fine for Go enthusiasts (even if
> >they don't use if for work), and second, if a game client could be
> >written for the small screen, all the current units all have modem ports
> >that can be used for email, browsing the web, "game playing," etc.
> >
> >If anyone accepts the challenge, please let me know.
> >
> >(Also, if the reader is not interested, but knows someone who is, please
> >forward).
> >
> >
> >