The Zodiac, in aluminum case |
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| Manufacturer | Tapwave |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Palm OS |
| CPU | 200 MHz Motorola i.MX1 ARM9 processor |
| Storage capacity | 32 MB (Zodiac 1) 128 MB (Zodiac 2) |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi, Infrared, Bluetooth, USB 2.0 |
The Zodiac is a mobile entertainment console, launched on 5 May 2003, and released in October 2003 by Tapwave, a former private company that was based in Mountain View, California.[1]
The product was designed to be a "high performance mobile entertainment system” centred on games, music, images, and video, aimed at 18 to 34 year old gamers and technology enthusiasts. By running an enhanced version of the Palm Operating System (5.2T), Zodiac also provided access to Palm’s personal information management software and many other applications from the Palm developer community.
With fewer than 200,000 units sold, the Zodiac is the third worst selling handheld console, after the Gizmondo and the R-Zone. This was primarily due to strong pressure from the PlayStation Portable (PSP) from Sony, and the DS from Nintendo, both released approximately a year after Zodiac.
The Zodiac was discontinued on 26 July 2005, with Tapwave subsequently selling off its assets and winding down.
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An MP3 music player is included in the system's applications, and allows the creation of custom playlists using drag-and-dropping of files. MP3 music files can be played from either SD slot, or the internal memory of the device. MP3 files can also be used as alarms, along with conventional PalmOS alarms.
Photos (JPEG or PNG format) could be downloaded to the device using the Palm Desktop software or loaded onto SD cards, and could be shared and made into a slideshow (with background music) on the device.
The bundled video player on the device, Kinoma, would only play videos in a proprietary format, converted using the Kinoma Producer software (which supported conversion of MPEG1, MPEG4, QuickTime, AVI and DivX). The software however was limited in its conversion abilities, enticing users to pay for the full version. It has been suggested that this difficulty in converting video for the device diminished the Zodiac's success. Several aftermarket DivX and XviD players have been developed (such as the TCPMP), and, at the time of bankruptcy, Tapwave were working on an update to supply MPEG-4 hardware decoding.
Due to the metal construction of the Zodiac, the device was seen to be more solid than other PDAs. However, on some models the adhesive on the shoulder buttons failed, and occasionally the screen was scratched by the screen cover when grit entered. Furthermore, due to the insecure clip holding the stylus, they could be knocked loose and potentially lost. Some alternative cases solved this problem with their own stylus holder.
The Zodiac is a PalmOS 5-compatible device, and most software compatible with PalmOS 5 runs without issue. In particular, most PalmOS 5-compatible games play on the Zodiac. Tapwave also provided proprietary APIs to allow developers to take advantage of the Zodiac's graphics and sound hardware. A great deal of freeware and shareware games and emulators are therefore available. For example, there are versions of Doom, Quake, Hexen, Hexen II, and Heretic as well as versions of emulators such as UAE, ScummVM, and LJZ/LJP, a multi-system emulator. There have also been attempts to emulate PlayStation games onto the Zodiac, the most successful emulator being PPSX.[3] It is, however, nowhere near completion and many games are not playable as of yet.
The device has a total battery life of about 3 hours when using audio, backlight+screen and CPU-intensive tasks, and while running as a dedicated audio player it is closer to 6 hours. The original battery was a 1500mAh Li-Ion; third party replacements with 2000mAh capacity are still available from some manufacturers.
The Zodiac used a modified version of the Palm OS, designated version 5.2T. The main navigation menus consisted of 8 radially-arranged choices selected using either the touchscreen or thumbstick. It also came with the Palm OS Productivity Suite (containing a calendar, to do list etc.), an eBook reader, the Wordsmith word processor and the powerOne graphing application. It came bundled with two games, AcidSolitare (by Red Mercury) and Stunt Car Extreme (by Vasara Games).
The Zodiac console was initially available in two models, Zodiac 1 (32MB), and Zodiac 2 (128MB). The Zodiac 2 was $100 more expensive than the original Zodiac.
Games which utilized some or all of the Zodiac's hardware/software are incompatible with standard Palm OS devices. This does exclude platforms outside of Palm OS (e.g., Doom II is also out for PC, but the Zodiac version listed here won't run on standard Palm OS handhelds). This list also excludes standard Palm OS games which are also available for Zodiac handhelds, which were either identical or slightly improved on Zodiac, called "Zodiac tuned" (e.g. a game available for standard Palm OS only has the extra features of vibration and shoulder buttons as extra usable buttons when played on Zodiac).
Some of the games were never released due to the discontinuation of the Zodiac in July 2005. However, the testing builds of some of these games were leaked and are playable.
Several homebrew (freeware) games were released on ports.
Two versions of the Zodiac are available, differing only in the amount of memory and case colour
The Zodiac received a number of noteworthy industry awards. Some of these include:
The Tapwave Zodiac can also be seen throughout Stargate SG-1 including as recently as the 10th Season as a sensor device used by Col. Samantha Carter and Vala Mal Doran. It was also used in the first season of Stargate Atlantis as well by Dr. Rodney McKay and other staff as well.
The Zodiac was originally going to be named the "Helix" but was renamed.[5]
During development of the Zodiac, the code name of the device was "Road Dawg" and the code name of the desktop software was "Elvis".
The AlphaSmart Dana is the only Palm OS device aside from the Zodiac with two slots for SD card media.[6]
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