Teddypig Hacks An eBook: Mobipocket eBook Reader for Mac OSX
November 11, 2007
Good Morning and welcome to another edition of Teddypig Hacks An eBook.
I was thinking that today we would all learn how to read Mobipocket eBooks on a Apple Mac which as you all know is simply impossible and can not be done. What can you do if you have a Palm T/X and a Mac and no way to read Mobipocket??? Ah yes, let’s dream the impossible dream shall we and away we go…
OK first off I need you to go over to this website called Access and register yourself as a developer. What are you developing? I don’t know, how about your sense of style. Once you get the email saying you can login then come back here and we will start downloading the necessary codes.
Once you have logged into the Access Website you need to go to the download page. You will find the link that says Garnet OS Development Tools in the lower right hand corner of the first screen you see after login.
Now you should finally be on the download page which is the most difficult thing about this exercise I promise. You will only be interested in the link that says Emulator and the one that says Platform ROMS.
Now click the Emulator link and let’s start downloading you are looking for Mac Binaries of course not source stuff. Off this page you will want emulator-mac.sit emulator-skins-19.sit HostFS_Emulator.sit
Once you are done there go to the Platform ROMS link and download the PalmOS412_RelROMs.sit file.
Now once that is all done you are through with that website but now I want you to go grab some Mobipocket install files so go over to the Mobipocket site here. Look for the files listed as Palm and grab mobireader.prc mathlib.prc bluepalm.pdb.
Your poor desktop should be a cluttered mess by now but let’s clean it up a little so start unpacking till you get this.
Once unpacked I rename the Skins folder so it just says Skins and drag it into the Emulator folder. Drag the Mobipocket files into the Emulator folder and open the Palm OS and HostFS folders and drag those single files into the Emulator folder. It should all look like this…
Finally! Now for the moment of truth. Drag the Palm OS ROM onto the Palm OS Emulator. Like this…
Click OK and you should now have a Palm V on your Mac OSX desktop. Viola! So now drag the Mobipocket and HostFS files onto the window of the Palm V. When you click the Home Button you should see Mobipocket Reader is now available for your use.
Now the moment you have been waiting for drag a Mobipocket eBook over and see what happens.
So there you go! This is not perfect but it seems Mobipocket is not answering the cry for a Mac Reader so this should hold you over till they fix that problem. Remember to thank the people at Palm for giving you this wonderful free way to read Mobipocket eBooks on the Mac. Maybe buy a Palm T/X in gratitude.
Screwed! (And not in a good way.) OSX eh, methinks. Tarballs. Common UNIX foundation. Linux. Can always compile the source. Wonder if….? Platform ROMS does not come in Unix flavour. Crap. Oh well, at least I ticked the “Contact me when we have Linux tools” box.
* sigh *
You might try recompiling the sources then. Good luck with that. It is alway a gamble due to the dependencies.
I cannot get the hack to open .mobi files because the emulator reports “the Emulator does not support the file you just dragged onto its window.”
Sounds like you need to download the mobipocket reader.
I am running mac osx 10.4.11 and don’t know if i need to change settings or something. I followed your instructions and I only end up with the downloaded files from access appearing on my desktop as word files whether I choose to save it to my desktop or open it with stuffit. Can you assist me with this?
Thanks,
Ron
p.s. I also have microsoft office 2004 for mac installed.
I have an older version of MS Office running. I can only show you in the pictures exactly as I got the files you might want to uninstall if you really need this.
I can’t seem to access the downloads. Every time I navigate to the Garnet OS development tools, the site seems to think I am not logged in. I have cookies enabled, I’ve tried Safari and Firefox, but no luck so far.
You have to apply for an account.
I have one and log into it, but it logs me out every time I try to access the downloads I need.
*edit*
Scratch that. I finally got it to work for me.
I did not have that problem could be your browser might want to email the site then.
Is there any way to set a PID (as there doesn’t seem to be one) so I can use my secure mobipocket files with my emulator?
Well it works like palm so if you can change it through the config you should be able to here.
I did see some env variables you could set in the config of the emulator
Thank you for sharing how to do this. I’m just glad I’ve got a working way to open my regular mobipocket files. I’ll work on getting the secure files up and running, but I’ve had no success with that yet.
Hi, I followed all the steps until the part where you said to unpack the stuff on the desktop. When the files downloaded, they have the exact file names you specified however they seem to be single .sit files, not packed or in a folder. When I try to open them, they open with text edit and are not intelligible. The icons on the desktop are all white papers with the exception of bluepalm.pdb, which has an open book on the paper. My macbook is running with leopard. Any help will be greatly appreciated and also much thanks for taking the time to figure this out and then share it!
Same problem with secure books bought and paid for - clueless as to how to get them on the emulator. there is no PID in the about listing that I can enter on the bookstore to get it to recognise my e-book.