Anyone else here have an ePods?

I have the hack running on my BE-300 and I have found that if Control.exe is in the \Windows directory then the menu option in Start => Settings=>Control Panel appears along with Taskbar. At least it does on my BE-300.

control.exe is the application version of the Control Panel interface. It's only found on non-platform core CE devices (primarily CE 2.12 and post-H/PC 2000 devices). It doesn't exist in H/PC 2000 devices because there the Control Panel interface is a folder rather than a file. So you're right in a sense; however, the Start Menu link would then point to control.exe rather than to the Control Panel folder.

Okay, so I couldn't resist trying out the hack on a MIPS Pocket PC, so I tried it on a spare Compaq Aero 2180 with a Pocket PC 2000 ROM. I've gotten the core CE desktop to show up (that's the easy part - just edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/init/Launch50 from shell32.exe [the Pocket PC's - and Palm-size PC's - version of explorer.exe] to explorer.exe), but I can't do anything with it. (The farthest I've gotten so far is a Start Menu - complete with the blue "Windows CE" banner - that pops up when tapped, but none of the shortcuts work.)

Another little bit of good news for ePods (and perhaps other CE 2.12 device) users: I tried copying onto the ePods the eVB runtimes for MIPS Pocket PC 2000 (with the OS version identifier hexedited on each runtime file from 3.00 to 2.11), and found that, unlike on CE 2.11 devices, the ePods is able to render working menu bars with MSCEMenuBar.dll, thus making a lot more Visual Basic programs usable on the ePods - and perhaps on other CE 2.12 devices with MIPS processors. (I'm going to check this out on my Pocket PostPet and report on my thread on that device if I have any luck.)

I picked up a second ePods recently on eBay when no one else bid on it (a little more than 20 USD including shipping), and I've tried the "Full" hack. The steps are a bit convoluted, and some have to be repeated (in particular the registry import) because they don't always take the first time. I confirmed that the files for the shell hack do indeed survive a hard reset (though again it took a series of soft and hard resets to bring the shell back, including re-importing the registry file). So far it seems like more work than it's worth, especially since it's pretty easy to make (and update) a backup in ActiveSync without having to set up a partnership (the backup file goes in the "Guest" folder).

Small note on eVB: the H/PC 2000 basic runtime files (the non-MSCE ones) appear to do the job tidier than the Pocket PC ones. The latter make every VB app's window occupy the entire screen even if the actual application only occupies part of the screen area. By contrast, the H/PC 2000 runtimes generate windows that are only as big as the application's interface, and as such they can be moved around the screen by dragging the title bar.