I also wanted to play around with PenGEOS, since it's not really been released except on Zoomers. I have an NCR 3125 NotePad (pen-top 386SL, VGA, 20MB disk, 8MB RAM, nice unit in general). I found that I could "pen-enable" Ensemble 2.0 -- even without PalmConnect -- and could merge the Palm stuff into the Ensemble installation and could even run some of the Zoomer apps on the NotePad.
** Please note: when I posted this stuff on the Internet, both Palm and GeoWorks people squawked about possible software license violations. I'm not a lawyer :-), and so I can't say whether or not they're right about that. The main thing is, you should own all of the software you're mucking with, of course, and actually read the licenses so that you can make an informed decision about doing this. **
OK, from here on I'm just including the text I sent out on the Internet. Sorry about the ugly line breaks.
I have some new, closing thoughts at the end...
========
Merging GeoWorks Ensemble 2.0 and PalmConnect
---------------------------------------------
I copied the GEOS20 files and directories into a new directory, and then
overlayed it with a copy of the PALMCONN files and directories. When I ran
this Frankenstein-esque version, it seems to work just fine. To my delight
and surprise, GeoCalc allows you to handwrite in its edit window, and the
Palm handwriting recognition software grabs the ink and does its best to
turn it into text! I wasn't so lucky with other apps, though. GeoFile,
GeoWrite, GeoDraw, and GeoComm all seem unable to deal with inked text (except
when you open a new file -- the file naming dialogue takes ink OK). All
apps seem to pop up a little keyboard, and if the writing grid worked
(see below for more about that), then you could consider them to be
at least marginally "pen-enabled".
Merging Zoomer applications into the GWE2.0/PalmConnect kludge
--------------------------------------------------------------
I use PalmConnect to copy the Zoomer ROM and RAM contents onto a
hard disk, and then tried running various Zoomer apps on the 3125.
* Kids, don't try this with your Newton :-) *
To do that, I first PalmConnect'd everything from B:\GEOWORKS and
SYS: onto the hard disk (it takes two passes, because PalmConnect
won't copy symlinked files). Then I copied everything from the
Zoomer's WORLD directory and subdirectories (except for NoteBook,
AddressBook, DateBook, and Preferences) into the target WORLD
directory, and then copied the contents of the Zoomer's USERDATA
and PRIVDATA into the corresponding target directories.
All of the apps seem to work OK with the exception of America Online.
I'm not sure what I've neglected, but it complains about a data file
being "missing or damaged". That's too bad, because AOL was something
I really wanted to be able to run on the 3125. Oh well, maybe I'll
figure out what it's complaining about. Anyone have any ideas?
It's pretty fun running Zoomer apps on a VGA display with a 386.
The apps execute in GeoWork's regular Motif-ish windows, and more
than one can be run simultaneously. They can be resized within
limits. Oh yeah, and it's *fast* too. :-)
Fixing the broken writing grid
------------------------------
It seems to be broken in the PalmConnect package. I supposed pop-up
keyboards aren't really supposed to be supported in that package
anyway, but it'd be nice if Palm would make a fix available.
In the meantime, you can use a copy of the Zoomer's SYSTEM\UI.GEO
to replace PalmConnect's SYSTEM\UI.GEO -- that fixes the writing
grid, but unfortunately it also makes the pop-up keyboards very
small like on a Zoomer.
Disclaimers, etc.
-----------------
Hey, I'm impressed that all of this seems to work. However, I've only
played with it superficially. Bad Things might happen if you do this
stuff.
===========
Since writing that, I've spent a lot more time using it and have had few problems. One thing that I re-did, and I'd recommend this, is to merge the PalmConnect and Ensemble versions of GEOS.INI by hand. I'm still tweaking GEOS.INI, mostly by trial-and-error. Jeez, I wish there was some documentation on all of those magic numbers and options...