The Casio Cassiopeia E-15 was my first Windows CE device, running with version 2.11. My original device has long since died
(an internal component that looked like a ferrite core cracked
) and was dissected decades ago. However, I managed to snatch one up from a UK ebay seller, and I paid a pretty penny for a device with a monotone LCD display.
My goals with the new E-15 is to load it with monochrome MPEG's such as the first Godzilla movie, 'I Love Lucy', and 'The Honey Mooners', among other things. Originally I was encountering various obstacles, but then I managed to find a working Pocket Core Media Player MIPS for PsPC binary and MIPS compatible plug-ins. Obviously it has still been a bit of work finding a balance between resolution, bitrate, and framerate. That being said it appears that TPCMP is out-performing the PocketTV MPEG player.
Short version: Made some progress with PocketTV, but the frame rate was atrocious. Ultimately I found a MIPS compatible version of TCPMP
(The Core Pocket Media Player
) along with plug-ins on this very site. It turned out to play my MPEGs more efficiently, as well as other formats. Still, nothing to write home about on this "monotone" display with 16-shades gray. However, I was able to arrive at encoding settings that were sufficiently satisfactory for a 'Star Trek' episode, 'Knights of Sidonia'
(aka 'Sidonia no Kishi'
, and Patlabor.
Side note, I picked up an E-125
(color screen, double the memory of the E-15, faster CPU
) and spent part of last night re-encoding the first episode of 'Ranma 1/2'. I'm a little confused because I feel like the E-15 was willing to play one more format than the E-125, but I'll investigate later.
The specs are pretty standard specs:
The Cassiopeia E-15 was the last model of Palm-size PC introduced by Casio that used a grayscale display. It appeared at the same time as the E-105, and functioned identically to that device, except for the screen.
Operating system: Microsoft Windows CE 2.11 Palm-size PC edition
Size: 127 mm x 80 mm x 15.2 mm :: 190 g
CPU: NEC VR4111 MIPS at 69 MHz
Memory: RAM 16 MB and ROM 16 MB
Display: FSTN LCD, 240 x 320 Pixel, 16 shades of gray
Interface: Serial and IrDA
(ver. 1.0
)
Expansion slots: CompactFlash Type I and II
Battery 2x AAA rechargeable, up to 25 hours of running time; CR2032 for memory protection
Input: Touch Screen, Microphone, 3 user-configurable buttons, a control pad
Extras: Speaker and
Stereo 3.5 mm headphone jack *
(Mono; these Wikipedia specs are incorrect in this area
)
The original one I bought around 1999/2k, was an open-box floor display from Circuit City. A week before I paid $200 of my confirmation money for it, it still had a rechargeable battery pack. The following week when I purchased it, the device only had the cradle and AC/DC adapter. Luckily, this device supports the use of standard AAA batteries. In my youth I used alkaline, but when I recently got the "new" E-15, I was already been using Panasonic Eneloop rechargeable batteries for a few years. I even bought a fresh 8-pack of additional rechargeable AAA batteries for good measure. Powering it has not been an issue.
Memory card support was surprisingly decent. The only caveat is that high capacity cards need to be partitioned. Nonetheless, I'm still getting access to more capacity than what I can currently get on my way newer iPaq HX4700. while I can't use SD-HC cards in the newer iPaq whatsoever, the Cassiopeia E-15 works quite fine SD to CF card adapter, and a number of other CF cards. The SD card CF card adapter has been super convenient. That said, I think there is a limit to how many partitions I can have.. so I can't make 20 partitions on a 128gig card. I'll have to investigate further. Still, I find it funny that my E-15 is cooperating with SD HC cards
(via CF adapter
) while the fancy HX4700 is only mounting non-HC SD cards.
