Just bought a Sharpe Mobilon HC-4200

[Lok169]

Hi guys, first post on a new forum so bare with me if I babble a bit, but I'm hoping you guys can provide some useful info. I've used a Palm for a few years now and the whole PPC/WinCE thing is new to me.

I picked up an old WinCe handheld on ebay (Sharp Mobilon Hc-4200) , bought partly because I'm curious about mobile operating systems other than PalmOS and partly because it might be nice to take it on holiday and use it to send emails and or surf in a limited fashion.

I'm wondering if anyone knows where I can find freeware/shareware ect. for it. It runs WinCE 2.0 which I understand may limit things a little, but AFAICS there's no easy way to upgrade to 2.11. :(

On a long shot if anyone knows where to find an actual manual (or anything else) specific to this model, it would be appreciated, Sharp seem to deny it's existance (although I did find a manual for a 4100 which looks pretty close.

I know these devices don't have the best reputation, but it is as new and boxed, so i hope it'll last me a while, although the batteries may be a write off I hear they don't last well. All in all It's worth it's price if it more or less works for a couple of months, Just wish i could turn up some additional software for it, mostly a book reader and a couple of games would do, maybe an updated browser.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[surur]

I hope you did not pay too much for your device. Its really old now, and you may go away with a bad impression of the pocketpc OS, which has changed alot more in 3 years than the palm os in the same period.

You have a MIPS processor device, which means you can only install software which works on the mips processor. All recent devices use ARM, so you will have a shortage of new software. Fortunately there is quite a good freeware and shareware community on the PPC.

Here is one website I found using a search for win ce mips

http://www.totalshareware.com/asp/list_view.asp?catid=384

http://www.hotsos.ca/cepalm/software/wince1software/wince-1-software.asp

http://www.pocketpcfreewares.com/en/index.php?soft=162 (e-reader for peanutpress books (to make you feel at home :))

Keep googling :) and report back to let us know how you get on. And consider upgrading to a more recent edition device.

Surur

[Tom W.M.]

For ebooks I reccommend µBook (http://gowerpoint.com/). It's what I use on my MobilePro. It only seems to be listed for CE 2.11, but it's worth a try. Otherwise, try Mobipocket (http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReaderPro.asp) reader. If you need to read Palm Digital Media/eReader ebooks, contact me via PM--the version of eReader (http://www.ereader.com/product/detail/15004) available from their site doesn't contain the H/PC version, but I have an older installer I could send you, though again it only lists CE 2.11 (It's probably worth a try.) Microsoft .lit and Adobe Reader ebooks cannot be read on your device.

I'm afraid that there are not any real browser upgrades available for Windows CE; especially versions 2.11 and below. If your machine only has a 256-color screen it's not worth it anyway.

[felixdd]

www.wincecity.com is a good source for programs for older CE devices.

[Lok169]

Thanks for the help guys. :)

To answer a few questions:
No, I didn't pay much for it, £27 (About $50 I think) including delivery, I'm not expecting much, just curious.
As for Ebooks I'm quite happy Using Palm boks, as I have quite a store of them for my M515, so thankyou and yes I'll email about the old Ereader installer.
Thank you for the shareware links, I'll check them out
As for browser upgrades, no, it's not even 256, it's 16 color greyscale, the only reaon I mentioned it is that I'd like to be able to post on Delphi forums while on holiday and some older browser's can't handle all the frames and javascript.
Don't worry that it will give me a bad opinion of PPCs in general, probably the reverse, I've always stuck with Palm in the past but I thought I'd ty something diferent, it can only broaden my horizons, right?

Thanks again.

[mattp]

Sharp did release a CE2.11 upgrade to its 4100, 4500, and 4600 Mobilons. To make a long story short, Sharp was the subject of a class-action lawsuit because their original advertisements stated something along the lines that they would be upgraded in the future. They offered free upgrades for a limited time. Must have been three years ago or so.

Of the three, the 4100 was the only greyscale, so I suspect your 4200 is most similar to that. I have no clue whether the upgrade was available for the 4200 or even if the 4100 upgrade would work for it. I think only the three mentioned above were available in the United States.

I also remember wincecity as a good place to find software for the machine. As mentioned above, make sure it is for a mips processor.

[Lok169]

Yes, from what I can tell it's most like the 4100, possibly with a littl more RAM/ROM. Also for some reason it does not seem to have the built in modem which was one of it's attractions for me.

I do have a spare PCMCIA 56k modem though. Any idea how to set this up? I suppose I would need drivers. This is going to get tricky.

[mattp]

Here's another link for you:

http://www.pdastreet.com/cgi-bin/search-archives.pl?devicetype=ce&searchboard=mobilon

It's the old Mobilon forums from wincecity, and there is alot of info. there. I just did a search on 4200 and got about 40 hits. It would probably be worth some time doing some research there.

Mine had the built-in modem, so the only thing I used the PC Card for was memory expansion.

[TFGBD]

You should not need any drivers for the modem. I tried a Pretec Compact flash modem in my CE 1.0 MobilePro 400 and it worked flawlessly. I see no reason why it would not work the same for a CE 2.0 device. In my experience, there is plenty of software for CE 2.0 and even a fair amount for CE 1.0. I am very suprised at how much old CE 1.0 software I have come across for my $5 MobilePro 400! There is even a version of PocketC for CE 1.0! PocketDOS too! Generally, alot of the CE software developers that have developed CE software for 6 years or more should have some older versions of their programs available somewhere. For CE 1.0 software, I've found archive.org to be very useful. :)

Here are a few older sites to help you in finding CE 1.0/2.0 software:

http://ceware.mpc.com.br/html/software.html
http://velo.8k.com/
http://www.hpc.net/
http://www.pocketpccity.com/
http://pda.tucows.com/windowsce.html


Many developers that make modern HPC 2000 software usually have a few CE 2.x versions available for download as well.

The following sites have a nice selection of modern HPC software that may also have a CE 2.0 version available:
http://www.yetanotherhomepage.com/j7xx/j7xx.html
http://www.diverseinfo.com/
http://www.rothberger.net/common/home.shtml
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mettavant/pdalogiciels.htm

Here are some links to a few CE software developers that still have CE 1.0/2.0 software available. CE 2.0 software is really easy to find if you know where to look :)...

Bsquare Products (Go to Bsquare's home page using archive.org for even more)
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193312/bsquare.com/development/download/bFaxLiteDemo.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193319/bsquare.com/development/download/bReadyBeta.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193255/bsquare.com/development/download/bMobileNews.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19980113193305/bsquare.com/development/download/bMobileChat.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19980708222344/bsquare.com/development/download/HTMLEditor.htm
Orbworks PocketC
http://web.archive.org/web/20000621124220/www.orbworks.com/download/hpc.html

ArtSKey v1.11(WE)
http://www.artsoft.ru/eng/artskhpc.htm#AKv111

Cambridge vxHPC
http://www.cam.com/vxhpc.html

Cambridge vxUtil
http://web.archive.org/web/19980710214233/cam.com/vxutil.html

developerone.com

Eiichiro Ito (oohito Software)
http://www.oohito.com

TinyMail
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~mx5t-syuj/tinyseries.htm

Grundle Software

http://www.grundlesoftware.com

Ruksun Software Technologies
http://www.ruksun.com/mobile_computing/windowsce/index.html
Shell Force
Calcy Force
http://www.ruksun.com/mobile_computing/windowsce

Tascal
Wallpaper Changer
http://web.archive.org/web/20000819090256/www2r.biglobe.ne.jp/~tascal/download/wce/wpc_e.htm

Tascal Filer (version 0.30)

http://web.archive.org/web/20000819090156/www2r.biglobe.ne.jp/~tascal/download/wce/filer_e.htm

FFtp
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/ftn034.zip

CEBible
http://www.slsoftware.com/

Timer
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/timer.zip

QITimer
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/QITimer20DemoMips.exe
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/QITimer20DemoSH3.exe
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/html/software.html

Jimmy ngSoundEngine
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/ngsoundenginedemo.exe

Developer One ClassPro
http://ceware.mpc.com.br/files/classproinstall_v1trial.exe

Garmap and other software
http://www.catnet.ne.jp/fukuda/garmap/e_garmap.html

wodeon
http://www.geocities.jp/omiokone/wodeon/indexE.htm

Micro-Cheng
MyTools
http://www.micro-cheng.com/products/mytools.html

miri's
Popup Filer
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/?wb_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miri.org%2FSoftware%2FmiriFiler.shtml&wb_lp=JAEN&wb_dis=2

[Jonathon Watkins]

Great list TFGBD. Thanks! :D