HIR Issue 8: Asmodians Work Bench
By, Asmodian X
New Windows CE PDA wanna-be's released
As you may be well aware of, 3-com's palm piolets have been growing in a niche market of quasi HPC's. In a brash effort to quell 3com's success, microsloth developed an version of Windows CE that adapts the windows CE environment to a PalmPiolet type of PDA. Complete with virtual keyboard and all that jazz. The two models I have seen are the Cassiopeia, and the Phillips Nino. The Nino has some neat features like some rechargeable battery's and stuff, but the Cassiopeia has a larger screen.
An advantage of course that the windows PDA implementation is that There are a wider assortment of applications available for windows CE. Most of the newer CE PDA's also have sound recording capability's. The disadvantages so far is the processors. Phillips and a few other company's are big with the MIPS chipset, where every one else is using a HITACHI SH3 Processor. So when developing software, a person would have to make it for both platforms.
Another issue is that I don't care for Microsloths statement about "expanding windows ce's communications capability's" Where in actuality the PDA versions lack any PCMCIA slots, or built in modems. About all the PDA version of windows CE good for is just keeping track of phone numbers and stuff. If thats All i wanted Id just buy a 10$ PDA and it would be over with! Not to mention there's no browsing capability's or storage utility's at all. All you can add to most of these half ass palm-tops is flash ram.
Windows CE 1.x Compaq PC companion/Cassiopeia Connectivity Note:
I have found that my Wince 1.0 device has some problems disconnecting from Linux after 3 minutes. The problem seems to come from the curious fact Linux by default sends LCP ping packets, for some reason, windows CE doesn't reply to linux's satisfaction. This string has worked for me so far. Although on some of the older UART chips it has given me some flaky responses. It helps to have a 16550 Uart.
pppd /dev/ttyS0 38400 crtscts noauth passive local lcp-echo-interval 0 The first part is the usual port set up. "/dev/ttyS0 38400" being the port and the speed. "crtscts" being the error control, and "noauth" tells Linux to not check for a password. "passive" tells Linux to just sit there and wait for a connection. "local" tells Linux to treat the connection like it was on a plain local serial cable. the "lcp-echo-interval 0" tells Linux to never send ping packets to see if the connection is still there. I've tried this with Debian Linux 2.0 with favorable results.
As far as I know this is primarily a problem with some of the older windows CE devices. This may apply to other brands other than Casio and Compaq.
Hitachi SH3 fun
The Hitachi corporation, who manufactures the SH series of RISC processors kindly displays all the specs <and I do mean all of the specs> at their web site at http://www.hitachi.com . My self and Axon printed them in entirety. Axon has had more experience with Assembly programming that I have, and accordingly he said the processor worked amazingly like its Intel cousins. We both surmised that that fact alone is why there could be an 8086 emulator written for it so fast.
Curiously, the newest version of the GNU compiler supports the SH3 processor, but only in ELF binary format. Roughly, that means that a person could port Linux to the hpc.. although the question of booting into Linux from windows CE still looms. There are several compact Linux distributions that will be designed to fit on palm-top computers and utilize its true power. Originally It seemed that the ELKS project would work out, however they sound like they are only working with the Intel processors. Right now there is no SH3 Porting project, but keep your eyes peeled.
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