IF on WM6, or emulator on emulator?

[NoahsMyBro]

Last June I got a T-Mobile Dash. The phone runs Windows Mobile 6. I've scoured the 'net, and cannot find any compatible Z-Machine interpreter for my device, which means no HHGTTG or Zork on the bus, among other text-adventure/interactive fiction games.

I'm very surprised that a platform this widespread doesn't have a compatible Z-machine for it, so every so often I renew my search. Today, while searching, I considered the possibility of running an NES or GBA emulator on the phone, and then, within that emulator, running a Z-machine written for *it*. I'm assuming I'll find a z-machine written for some other common platform - NES, VCS, GBA, whatever.

Have any of you ever tried this? Did it work at all? Was it unusably slow?

[MrSparkle]

I have not tried this as i dont have a windows mobile 6 platform, but id assume that all the overhead from running an emulator within an emulator might slow it down alot, then again were talking about text based games so even that slowdown may be tolerable.

[Gapporin]

Would something like this (http://jpdefault.altervista.org/?p=software&id=frostz) work? It says it's compatiable with Windows Mobile 5, and I don't really know that much about the differences between versions to know if it would be a problem or not.

[NoahsMyBro]

Hey Gap,

No, I tried that one - not compatible with my device, even on WM5. I emailed the author about it, and he said there was some probelm due to my phone having a keyboard and a landscape-oriented screen.

I tried downloading the sourcecode, thinking I'd take a crack at fixing it myself, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Of course, I'm not a programmer, other than messing around with Basic and (very briefly) ANSI C back in the mid-90's, so I didn't really expect to accomplish anything.

[Gapporin]

There are a few others for the Windows CE platorm -- is that a whole different entity than Windows Mobile?

[Poofta!]

windows mobile runs on windows ce architecture. windows ce architecture is extremely flexible and widespread (it powered the dreamcast). which is why after it's initial mobile incarnation, it was quickly renamed to windows mobile. now wm6 runs virtually any code that wm5 ran as long as the hardware permits (in the days to wm5 and earlier, landscape screens were uncommon if not unexistant, so flipping the the screen while running a program not designed for this, can crash or severely glitch the phone/device/program). ive even managed to run REALLY old windows mobile code (PPC2003 i beleive) on my wm6 device without error.

i too actually have been looking for a way to play zork on my phone, but honestly havent looked THAT well. when i got wm6 it was so new there was barely a theme available for it online, i dont know how the battlefield is now since im too busy to search.

anyway, good luck w/ your quest, if i find anything ill definately post in the forums, hope you do the same. as for your initial question regarding running an emulator in an emulator... it really depends how its made. some emulators build their own roms that encompass dozens other roms. some of these work only on the hardware they were written for (nes on gba) some work in other emus too.