A newbie with a Pencentra

Look,
None of you have really answered my question. Is there anyone out there willing to 'enhance' my PenCentra to a reasonable degree; perhaps without a thousands-dollar ROM rework/upgrade? All of your techno-babble, regarding Unix 'tunnels' and so on, are all fine and well, but mainly, I am interested in yes, a Unix and/or DOS 'upgrade,' which includes thorough documentation, and backup disks. Yes, I am willing to pay for this service, but certainly not into the thousands range. Please let me know what an of you blessed souls can do, and of course, I am willing to send the machine to you. Perhaps a cloning of whatever it is that you already have running on your PenCentra would suffice. Let me know. My contact info has already been posted, so bring it, insofar as you are able to. I have several Pencentras - 4 (working) of the 200 model, and 1 of the 130 range. Bring your best, if'n y' can. Hee. Money. Cash Money. ($$$).

here's my REAL post:::

Look,

None of you have really answered my question. Is there anyone out there willing to 'enhance' my PenCentra to a reasonable degree; perhaps without a thousands-dollar ROM rework/upgrade? All of your techno-babble, regarding Unix 'tunnels' and so on, are all fine and well, but mainly, I am interested in yes, a general CE and/or Unix and/or DOS 'upgrade,' which includes thorough documentation, and backup disks. Yes, I am willing to pay for this service, but certainly not into the thousands range. Please let me know what any of you blessed souls can do, and of course, I am willing to send the machine(s) to you. Perhaps a cloning of whatever it is that you already have running on your PenCentra(s) would suffice, if you are not skilled enough to do hardware adjustments. Let me know. My contact info has already been posted, so bring it, babies, insofar as you are able to. Heh. We are watching you. I have several Pencentras - 4 (working) of the 200 model, and (only) one of the 130 range. Bring your best (skills), if'n y' can. Hee. Money. Cash Money. ($$$). Seriously. No emoticons. Text only, for the for real. Eh?

I hope that you understand that I'm seriously attempting to get you guys to help me enhance my basic PenCentra machine(s). For money. Help. Thanks.

so you are happy enough with getting some software working? what kind of software do you need?

Well, I'm not really aware of the complete range of what's out there, but here's what I'd like:

eBook reader(s)
programming language translator/compilers
DOS emulator(s)
games
and so on...

Of course, I'd assume that (because of the limited native storage available) pretty much everything would need to be loaded onto a CF card, which would be inserted into a PCMCIA CF card reader. I have a PCMCIA Iomega Clik! [40 Mb capacity per disk] drive, which also might be useful for this project, but I am not certain as to whether drivers exist to make this device (Clik!) recognizable by the PenCentras. I appreciate the responses.

The Clik! drive you have does have a Windows CE driver, which you can find in this site's Hardware Compatibility List:

http://www.hpcfactor.com/hcl/

Look under "Other Storage."

DOS emulator:

http://www.pocketdos.com/

e-book readers: Mobipocket Reader 4.8, uBook (a Google search will turn up several places where these can be downloaded)

programming compilers: PocketC ( http://www.orbworks.com ) and NSBasic ( http://www.nsbasic.com ) are a couple of examples

BTW, a ROM upgrade (from H/PC Pro [CE 2.11] to H/PC 2000 [CE 3.0]) is a simple matter of replacing the ROM chip, which is a rather simple operation on H/PCs with upgradeable ROMs (which includes the PenCentra 200 but not the 130, AFAIK) - and the ROM chip, if there are some out there, may be as cheap as $20. (At least that's about what, for example, NEC 790 ROM chips go for.)

Edited by CE Geek 2008-08-02 2:47 AM

exactly which programming languages..or you don't care about that just want to learn programming?

40MB sounds useless, why not buy a nice big capacity CF card (2GB or even more!?)

the question is, did one ever exist for the pencentra?

another question is... I see it has potential to upgrade the ram to 64mb. but did this upgrade actually exist?


edit: I see there were both hpc pro and hpc2000 pencentra 200's. but the rom upgrade was nearly impossible to find and it wasn't cheap. so best bet is buying a dead hpc2000 pencentra, and put the rom from it into the hpc pro one. do your pencentra 200's run hpc pro at all though? or hpc2000? check in control panel system info applet...


edit2: ok, another edit.
valid, existing auctions for RAM upgrades, though it isn't on the very cheap side, but not too bad:
(pencentra 200: 32 to 64MB.)
http://cgi.ebay.com/32MB-RAM-EXPANSION-MODULE-FOR-FUJITSU-PENCENTRA-200_W0QQitemZ320279479294QQihZ011QQcategoryZ177QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

and
(pencentra 130: 16 to 48MB.)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220218779330&ssPageName=MERCOSI_VI_ROSI_PR4_PCN_BIX_Stores&refitem=320249641520&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&refwidgettype=osi_widget&_trksid=p284.m185&_trkparms=algo%3DSI%26its%3DI%26itu%3DCR%252BUCI%26otn%3D4%26ps%3D42

before buying, check if your pencentra's don't already have 48/64MB!

Edited by cmonex 2008-08-02 10:04 AM

To the HP/C Gurus...

Hey, I already know how to program; in fact, I've been doing so since the very early eighties {in high school, on an AlphaMicro system, and later on DEC PDP-11 gear}, where I actually used {one card per program line, for those of you that don't already know} punch cards, 8" floppy disks, and the huge Winchester disks (each one only held 20Mb), which were the diameter of a small garbage can lid, and weighed about 15-20 pounds (you had to hoist them out of a deep socket). The backup media for AlphaMicro systems was videotape! I've programmed extensively in AlphaBASIC, QuickBASIC, Forth, and OPL {for Psion handhelds}, but have experience with Visual BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, AWK, the C variants, and lot of other {mostly obscure} macro/shell/script languages. I know basic HTML and bits and pieces of Java, Flash, and the more 'modern' programming environments. What I'm really saying, is that I understand programming well enough to learn practically any new language, so whatever might be good coding tools for the CE 2.11/3.0 platform, I'd use.

As for the Iomega Clik! disks; yeah - 40Mb is pretty minimal storage nowadays, but the MTBF {mean time before failure} for those disks is very good, and they could be used for routine system backups and lots of other purposes. Like I believe I already mentioned earlier in this thread, yeah, I've got a PCMCIA Compact Flash adapter, and cards, so I could use that as well.

I have heard tell that there actually is a ROM chip changeout available for the PenCentra 200, but haven't had any luck locating one yet. Does anyone know of any other retail/wholesale or auction (like Ebay) sites, that are more specialized toward offering obscure tech-stuff like that?

Anyhow, thanks a lot for all of the replies, you guys are really helping me a lot with all of this information!

Edited by phoenixx100 2008-08-02 10:28 AM

By the way...

Is there a reasonably good multimedia player for Windows CE 2.11? You know, WAVs, MP3s, WMAs, OGGs, MP4s, FLIs, and other audiovisual formats? Please only respond if you have actually used whatever software on an actual 200/130 PenCentra...

Thanks...

that's good.
I was only asking because I didn't know what your goal was.

if you don't mind having a PC for the development, you could also look at evb and evc3, evb lets you use a subset of VB, and evc lets you use the full C/C++ with the CE version (subset) of win32 apis.




how much is the MTBF? just curious

40MB isn't really much though, so maybe buy two big CF cards, and do two backups? still cheap enough solution




I think you could ask my1990 (who is selling the RAM upgrades). he has lots of HPC stuff

The best media player you can find for CE 2.11 is The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP, aka BetaPlayer), which is free and supports WAV, MP3, OGG, MPEG-4, and several other audio and video formats. (The version compatible with CE 2.11 does not support WMV, however.) It's available on the Downloads page of this site.

FWIW, my PenCentra 200 came with 64 MB of RAM. (Of course, it also came with H/PC 2000.)