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View Full Version : Running Windows Mobile 5 off a USB drive


Joelacrane
09-29-2006, 06:04 AM
Yep, im serious. If you haven't heard, you should check out this webpage:

http://www.furrygoat.com/2005/09/portable_ce_20.html

With this webpage and a 128mb USB flash drive of some sort, you can pop it into an computer running Windows XP, open the emulator, and have your own virtual PDA. It could be handy for private web browsing on a public computer or just talking to your friends on MSN messenger.

This tutorial only covers WM2003SE, which is what i am running on my keychain right now. The WM5 SDK is here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=83A52AF2-F524-4EC5-9155-717CBE5D25ED&displaylang=en

...but it is very large at over 170mb, and i have dialup here at home, so i haven't been able to mess with it or figure out how to use it. Anyone tried it yet? If you have, let me know how it works, and how you did it.

JesterMania
10-07-2006, 04:01 AM
Wow, nice find 8O . It should be pretty useful under a restrictive computing environment. I only wish I had this when I was still in school :lol: ...

Joelacrane
10-07-2006, 05:34 AM
Isnt it great? I am having two problems with it though:

1. Windows Mobile seems to think that it only has 2mb of ram free, and 0mb of ROM free, even though i have the ram in the emulator set to 92mb.

2. I can get on the internet easily with both of my computers at home, but for some reason i cannot on all other computers i have tried.

I have no clue how to overcome these issues. Follow the instructions and set it up though, its pretty neat.

JesterMania
10-07-2006, 09:47 PM
Okay, I tried it out and everything works, except for the internet. I have a feeling on how to fix it but I won't have time to work on it until tonight. For the emulator, I actually used Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0 and for the image, I used PPC_USA_VGA.bin extracted from the WM5 SDK.

My current run command looks like this:

.\DeviceEmulator.exe %PORTCEIMG% /video 640x480x16 /memsize 256 /norsize 128 /flash flashmem.bin /p /vmname "Portable CE 2.0" /s %STATEFILE% /sharedfolder %SHAREDIR% /vmid %VMID%

Setting /memsize 256 gives me a total of 100.28MB RAM where 19.94MB are in use and I have 80.34MB RAM free (plenty to run all my programs).

However, my ROM seems fixed at 31.42MB total with 2.32MB in use giving me 29.09MB free. I tried to increase the ROM size by setting /norsize 128 but that perimeter seems to have no effect at all (min size=32, max size=128). That's something I'd like to increase in the future.

The /flash flashmem.bin is for saving the contents of the 32mb ROM.

Also, you totally lost me on point #2 when you talk about computers not being able to go on the internet :|

Joelacrane
10-08-2006, 02:33 AM
Its nice to see that someone else is working on this. I noticed that the startup file says that it has enabled persistant storage. Since this command script was intended for use with WM2003SE, could it be that this is fouling us up? I'm having the exact same problem as you.

At home, i can emulate the ethernet card without a problem on both of my computers, but at school or on any other computer, it seems to successfully install everything it needs to, but then WM complains about not being able to obtain a MAC address or something, and no network connection happens. I'll write down what it says the next time i get into the computer lab (This friday i beleive).

I'd love to get this working well, it would be so handy at school.

Joelacrane
10-08-2006, 03:08 AM
I decided to use the QVGA rom, and run it at 640x480. I didnt want all the people sitting behind me in class to see what i was doing, because with the VGA rom, the letters and numbers are as big as hams!

Right now, with memory size set to 92, i have A total of 1.93mb of storage, with 0mb free. Program memory is 20.99mb, with 1.5mb free. I would like to boost the total storage space to 50mb or so, and bump my program memory to 64mb total.

JesterMania
10-08-2006, 03:28 AM
I have internet working perfectly fine on my device emulator now. Regarding your internet problem, did the console show that the VM Network Services were correctly installed? Maybe it could be that the snetcfg_wxp command is failing to install the driver properly?

Also, how come you have such low storage space, and why limit memory size to 92? Maybe you can open up pce2.cmd and copy and paste here the line that starts with ".\DeviceEmulator.exe %PORTCEIMG% ......". I suspect you have wrong settings there. To start out, I would set /memsize 256 to at least give you ample RAM to run your programs. Like I said in the above post, setting /memsize 256 gave me 100MB RAM total and 80MB RAM free 8O .

And yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to configure the ROM size. It seems as if 32MB is hard-coded into the emulator, or I'm doing something wrong here.

Joelacrane
10-08-2006, 05:01 AM
32mb of free ram would be plenty for me. I just want more ROM for now!

My computer only has 512mb of RAM, so i dont want to use a whole lot. I'll mess with the network config file next time i am somewhere where i can use a "strange" computer.

JesterMania
10-08-2006, 05:15 AM
I should have read more clearly on Microsoft's website. It turns out that Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0 does indeed support configuration of the ROM size using /norsize, but unfortunately it has no effect at this time as the emulator is incomplete. The final release is supposed to ship with this option enabled once WinCE 6.0 hits so I guess we'll have to wait.

Another drawback I've encountered is if you install an application such as NetFront and it requires a reset. Once you've reset the emulator, you no longer have access to the Storage Card and furthermore, all files in ROM appear to be wiped clean. So at the moment, there appears to be no way to configure the ROM size, and no way to save the contents of ROM unless you save state (which is useless if you require a soft reset). I'm eagerly awaiting their final release of the emulator.

Joelacrane
10-19-2006, 05:36 AM
How about this?

http://blogs.msdn.com/smakofsky/archive/2004/12/20/328001.aspx

Windows CE 5. Hmmm. Could be even better, its just not as pretty. I can't figure out how to save states, and It seems to be missing a few things like "Inbox". It looks like there is some sort of "platform builder" avalible, which implies that you can put together your own customized version of Windows CE. If I am correct, that is what Windows CE is all about. Customization. I've read that it can be shaved down to as small as 400k!

I'd download everything and start messing with it, but I have dial-up here at home. As soon as I can, I'll try to get this mysterious "platform builder" and see what it can do. Hopefully, we can put together our own programs and everything and maybe even host it for download somewhere, if that is legal. My bro has a website we could use.

And about Windows Mobile 5... Isn't Windows CE 6 due around November 1st? Maybe that finished emulator is just on the horizon.

You seem to know more about this sort of thing, let me know what you think of the whole deal.