What happened to GAPI for the J820?

There are several dead links in the forums and one more here:


https://web.archive.org/web/20080214005724/http://mscdex.game-host.org:80/hsr/software/microsoft-applications-os-updates-and-device-specific-downloads

Did no one archive this because it sucked or just because hardly anyone had a J820?

Edited by hassilon 2023-09-11 4:50 PM

I can’t guarantee I can locate it but could you add the file name and a few known sites (even if the links are dead) that had it available ?
And I can try to locate.

Here's the thread with two now-dead links.


https://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=818


Err, does "Stub file alert" mean it is a dummy DLL? I mean it has enough to satisfy a program that checks for its presence at runtime, but the functions in the DLL don't really do anything?



Edited by hassilon 2023-09-12 4:30 PM

The only thing I came up with were two more dead links that don’t show up on archive.org

https://pocketmatrix.com/forums//viewtopic.php?f=20&t=18269

The only thing new I found out was at one point there was a source code file too.

gapi_j820.zip
gapi_j820_src.zip

One more thought. We have this .dll in the SCL.

https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/1728/Elias_Zacarias/J720_GAPI_Hack

Along with the source code. I don’t know if it’ll work but maybe it can be compiled for CE2.11 ARM?

...those links aren't dead

Omg!!

I’m silly

Ok go here

http://files.futaris.org/jornada820/

p.s. Awesome find!

From the readme.txt:




I'm not expecting miracles, but it would be cool if a slightly more usable version of scumm were now possible.

Also. I’d try messing with the versions of ScummVM 0.7.1 and lower (I added all of the remaining CE versions there.)
Perhaps an older version make work better? Who knows, maybe worth a try.

I'm not sure if it it's useful but there was this universal-ish DLL which could be configured for each device.

https://www.hpcfactor.com/scl/380/WinCESoft/Game_API_GAPI/version_4.04?page=download

GAPI will install on the 820, but none GAPI Setup and the demo applications won't run: they say something is missing.

Executibility checker won't run either, with the same problem.

scumm 0.6.1b and 0.7 don't work any better or worse with the 820 version gx.dll in \Windows. I'm not sure what can make use of this gx.dll. Almost anything that requires gx.dll, also requires aygshell.dll and that definitely does not work on 2.11.

Since Exe. checker doesn't work, I'm grepping the strings in the ARM exe files (on my Linux PC) to find what dlls they reference. (strings armfile.exe | grep -i dll )

Is there something someone remembers that actually uses gx.dll on the J820?

I had some more ideas:

1-Go here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120106043257/http://hpcmonex.net/izemize/exec.zip
^This package has an HPC Pro ARM version of Exec Check. See if that works

1a-If the above doesn't work, try copying your ScummVM/820 GAPI files to your Jornada 720, and run Exec Check on that device and see what's required by both the 820's gx.dll and ScummVM

2-Furthermore, I found an unstable 0.7x build here
See if that fixes anything
http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/binaries/unstable/scummvm-0.7.x-branch-01-10-05-1-HandheldPC_ARM.zip
Also I found the release notes for 0.7.1 here

3-Fix for disappearing clock issue (pre 0.7.0) - install and run in your PocketScumm directory

here's a fix for that here http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/binaries/stable/FixTimer_ARM.zip

Thanks for the Exec check; I didn't think there was a version for 2.11.

Anyway exec check doesn't say anything for any of the versions of scummvm.exe I've tried. No info on gx.dll either.

grepping them for DLLs reveals only coredll.dll.

07xbeta behaves just like 0.7.1; maybe slightly faster but still very choppy and there is no way to exit. Can't remap keys because it can't read scummvm.ini. If the file exists, scummvm 0.7.1,x will not start giving heaps of errors to ok before you get to ok the final illegal instruction error.

Looks like 0.6.1b is as good as it gets: slow and choppy, but without 0.7's regressions of broken ini file and no exit. (Alt-X, ctrl-Z, etc. is deliberately disabled in 0.7 according to the change logs.....)

I found a workaround for the scummvm.ini problem!

The issue is that scummvm writes the ini file out on exit and it inserts all kinds of erroneous spaces or newlines into the file. So what I did was wrote a little batch script that copies an (edited) version of the scummvm.ini into place first, and then executes scummvm. Works like a charm.