Releasing Palm OS Archive, Developer Rediscovers Working Virus After 25 Years
Long-time Slashdot reader ardiri remembers his days writing applications for the Palm OS. And he's now released approximately 1.5 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, "accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years... to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing." The…
Developer ardiri has released a substantial archive of historical Palm OS development resources, preserving over 1.5 GB of tools and knowledge accumulated during the early days of handheld computing for more than 25 years. The collection, available on GitHub, includes SDKs, conference presentations, documentation, programming examples, source code, and development utilities.
Ardiri's archive aims to support the retrocomputing community by promoting historical preservation, education, and research, especially as enthusiasts work to maintain, emulate, and revive the Palm OS platform. In a surprising discovery, Ardiri found the original source code for a self-replicating Palm OS virus called "The Palm OS Virus That Never Was," which he developed in June 2001.
The virus, named "Virii," could infect legitimate applications while preserving their functionality and spread between handheld devices via infrared beaming. It also included a date-triggered payload designed to interfere with system time reporting between October 23 and 27, 2001.
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