Thanx, Jake. The whole idea, of course, was to make the BE-300, which was significantly less expensive new than its Pocket PC contemporaries, have functionality comparable to a Pocket PC. The BE-300 was one of the first CE devices where the OS was installed in NAND flash storage
(like the CE 5 and later netbooks and tablets we've seen more recently
) rather than on a fixed physical ROM module.
(The ePods itself may have been the first.
) I got this information just from doing a lot of Internet research after I picked up a few BE-300s cheap and started playing with them.
(It's what I do.
) The original Wikipedia article on the BE-300 included most of this info, but I suspect it was edited out because it was somewhat poorly written.
(The original version can still "BE" found on some other wiki sites that basically copied it.
) A few additional bits of information are in order as well. BAS was born out of the union of two rival sites on the BE-300, BE-Central and Another BE-300 Forum, in an effort to resolve the feud between the EpodXP and EpodMX teams, who argued over who should get credit for the newer versions of the project. The latter of the two predecessor sites was where the development of the ePods-based shells started taking off. It started, however, on the Brighthand forums, but got shut down there by moderators who had concerns about intellectual property issues
(starting with the use of the original ePods firmware in the first place, even though those waters had already been muddied plenty by the development of shell hacks for the ePods itself
). Those original discussion threads can still "BE" found on the Brighthand forums.
(Given Pollard's eventual departure, it was clear that the feud never did get settled.
)
One of our more talented members here
(Geared2003, who was known for developing alternative skins for the core CE desktop, as well as an improved version of TCPMP that he named HPC Media Player
) was a regular on BAS for a while too. I never signed on as a memBEr, but nonetheless visited the site a lot.
I should also note that two other shell versions I haven't been able to track down are the earlier versions of Bee
(1.0 and 1.1
). I have the final version
(Bee Cobalt Edition
). Also, Pollard developed a standalone taskbar app as a free extra utility during his work on what was originally to be eXpod's successor
(PPX
) before shifting the PPX project to the Pocket PC as a no-longer-free add-on. I have the free standalone taskbar app, but haven't been able to figure out how to make some of its functions work.
(Presumably it's just a matter of finding the right registry edit.
)
(Bee also has a standalone taskbar app, but it only works within that shell and not in any others. CButters used Pocket Facelift to skin the core CE taskbar in EpodXP 1.5, which is shown in the first Russian link.
)
I've tracked down one of Pollard's pages about EpodMX in the Wayback Machine, and got all excited until I quickly learned that all the links are dead:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020713205716/http://www.gootron.com/ep...
The newer versions of this page cover XPod as shown above.
Of course, the ePods-based shells all provided the option of synching with a PC via ActiveSync as well as Casio PC Connect
(which was a scaled-down version of Intellisync designed specifically for the BE-300
). The BE-300's object store was completely different from the Microsoft POOM version - I have no idea where its PIM database info is stored. Pocket On-Schedule works in eXpod, Bee, and BeShell, as well as EpodXP 2.1, but then you have to use ActiveSync to sync PIM data to it.
(The Casio PIMs of course sync through PC Connect.
) But since Pocket On-Schedule can only read its own database if the ADOCE DLLs are in \Windows
(which dumps installed files on reboot
), you have to copy these to a special folder in the internal NAND flash storage, from where files are automatically copied into \Windows during boot.
(I only got it working in EpodXP version 1.5 after several steps to minimize memory usage - and even then it still requires manually copying over the ADOCE DLLs into \Windows after adjusting storage memory every time it is soft reset. Because there is insufficient storage memory allotted by default at reboot, it can't complete loading of the files from NAND flash storage, thus preventing it from completing the boot process - so it just hangs at the initial "Starting..." screen. In later versions of EpodXP it looks like CButters was able to figure out how to get the system to look in \Nand Disk for the Desktop and Programs shortcuts, thereby freeing up a little memory and eliminating the need to reboot the device to get new shortcuts to show up. Between that and sticking with the core CE taskbar instead of skinning it with Pocket Facelift, it appears that just enough memory was freed up to allow a few more files to be copied into \Windows.
)
Before the ePods-based shells were developed, the best option available to BE-300 users who wanted a desktop-style interface was SQ. Another project that developed separately was Greg Mason's KCmenu, which had some similar and some different features from the core CE shell. Unlike the ePods-based shells, however, it was not a replacement OS flashed onto the BE-300 in place of the default Casio Top Menu. Instead, it was simply an add-on that ran on top of the native Top Menu. It was popular but not free
(but pretty cheap at 5 USD
). But free scaled-down versions were written for EpodMX and Bee.
(I have the latter.
)
It was inevitable, of course, with Windows CE as a whole fading into the sunset, but still a big loss for us CE diehards. This was of relevance to us because the whole site revolved around revitalizing the Casio BE-300 Pocket Manager by replacing its stock (and quite lame) Top Menu shell with alternative shells, most of which were built on a MIPS build of core Windows CE 2.12 originally created for the Salton ePods One tablet: 
) So it apparently added little or no actual extra functionality. (As I recall, .NET Compact Framework 2.0 wasn't supported until CE 4.1, and since .NET CF 1.0 was already backward compatible with CE 3.0, there doesn't seem to be any gain even there.) 
