be300.org is dead :(

Not sure if you still have that Intermec, but I'd buy it from you if you do.

That aside, it looks like there's a big amount of work to do to port over a forum that used 2009 software over to a modern linux installation (lol). I've got the DB stuff done, but PHP nowadays doesn't support mysql directly. Lots of updates to do indeed! This shall be interesting.

I still have it, but I really don't want to part with it. I think you can understand that. It's a piece of computing history. A few CE devices I have multiples of, but I only have one 6651.

Right on. I thought I had the database work "figured out", but turns out getting it imported and converted properly to a modern forum has been a kick in the balls! I've been working on it for hours and will get it figured out. I've also tried to PM mutantcheese some weeks back asking for the backup before I asked you [CE Geek], with no response.

Will report back when I figure this mess out. Trying to get 11 year old software "converted" is real fun (^:

Great news! The B.A.S forum is live again!
It took 3 days of sifting through PHP code and MySQL queries to get the 11+ year old software "working" good enough for me to run an upgrade.
I had to build old PHP releases (5, then 7) to get everything to run, then upgraded the forum software piece by piece using the old PHP builds.

The MySQL database was 4.8GB by itself. 99.9% of that was in the error log table. I flushed that out and I was left with a chunky size of 30 something megabytes. There's still much work to be done, as logins currently do NOT work (thanks SMF updates!).
This means some areas are still "off-limits" until I can get that working again...

The site theme may not be what it was, and I'm trying to figure that one out, but at least the forum and the attachments / uploads are all in place.

I had to sift through the posts and messages to update hyperlinks that pointed to be300.org -- and that was a doozy. I had to do a couple hundred by hand as search and replace didn't want to play nice with me.

Anyways, hope everyone can at least take a look and go through some history!

Check out the "new" site at: ------- BROKEN AGAIN -------


Edit: Please if any links aren't working, just send me a message on here. I spent a LOT of time fixing things and making sure they were good enough, and if for some reason something isn't, please LET ME KNOW! I ask for a personal message instead in order to not flood the thread.

Site is broken again after I fixed logins! Working on it!

Edited by ionbladez 2020-12-20 7:57 AM

Site is back up! CE Geek, or another mod, can you please undo the strikethrough text? And append my link again please?

And add the link! I got logins working for all the old members!

https://be.i0n.org

I ALSO GOT THE THEME WORKING!


Edit again:: There are still many features that do not work. Registration is turned off. But feel free to let me know of what doesn't work for you, what browser you are using, etc.

Also to note: If someone has any interest in mirroring the files/uploads, let me know and I'll get a directory made for you to scrape.

Edited by ionbladez 2020-12-20 8:22 AM

Wow, does it bring back fun memories. Great work getting it back up.

Thanks a lot! Seen your post there, too, lol.

I tried sending a couple of PMs to Shane but no reply. Guess he's off doing his thing, no worries.

I have no problem at all keeping it up and running as I already have a few projects on this server.

I said earlier that the original Pocket PC version of the .NET Compact Framework 1.0 won't work on the BE-300. But further testing shows that using PSBoot.exe to preserve the files in \Windows seems to at least partially solve the problem. When installing, you select a location on the CF Card to install it. It'll still install the basic runtime files (mscoree.dll, cgacutil.exe, etc) to the default folder (which on the BE is \Nand Disk\Program Files) while installing the rest (form controls like System.Windows.Forms.dll, Microsoft.Windowsce.Forms.dll, Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll, etc) to a folder named .NET Compact Framework in the location you specified on the CF Card. You then move the .NET CF files installed in \Nand Disk\Program Files to \Windows, and make sure aygshell.dll is also in \Windows as the apps won't open without it to facilitate creation of the menu bar. (Again, however, only a few aygshells will allow the apps to open, and only one of those - Dic's 25k version - produces a menu bar whose menus work even some of the time.) Also, the app's executable has to be located in the .NET Compact Framework folder (and not a subfolder there) to open; otherwise you get an illegal operation error. Results vary among OEs, though - so far it isn't working at all in BeShell 0.9b8 (which has its own feature for setting the system to preserve files in \Windows on soft reset).

One other feature of BeShell 0.9b8 that I haven't mentioned before is the presence of registry keys that identify \My Documents and \Program Files as those folders on the Storage Card. Those keys will also work in other OEs, which makes installing apps from CAB files a lot easier when the CABs are hard-coded to install files to \Program Files and/or \My Documents. But after importing those keys in another OE you have to delete the \My Documents and \Program Files folders from root before soft resetting, or else the virtual folders will show up as \My Documents2 and \Program Files2 after the reset.

I want to register as a new user on the revived BAS site so I can post there about my discoveries described here, but so far ionbladez hasn't been able to get that feature working again.

ionbladez, beware of the security flaws in that code. When I looked at it, it was a total nightmare in the making. So please do spend the time patching the forum, else I fear you'll be presiding over a data breach soon enough

I got the original Microsoft version of .NET CF 1.0 working in BeShell 0.9b8, though I'm not sure how. And both it and the CE 2.xx version are still rather quirky on any device: sometimes they stop working and start throwing "Cannot find" error messages for any .NET CF app I try to open. Or sometimes nothing happens and/or the device freezes up. I suppose the latter could be a memory issue, but the former seems to suggest that the system no longer recognizes the installed .NET CF runtime.

Repeated tests with multiple OEs seem to show that the original version of .NET CF 1.0 doesn't work by itself, but .NET CF 1.0 apps will open in their original form (executables without the ".net" extension appended) if you install both the original and the CE 2.11 versions: first the original CE 3-compatible version and then the CE 2.11 version. The BE-300/500 supposedly uses some APIs from the Palm-size PC, so maybe that's a factor in the lack of complete compatibility with the original CE 3-compatible version.

You're right about the BE-500 being Palm-size PC compatible, not fully compatible with Windows CE 3.0.

There's a Japanese site that talks about it here:
http://munalog.la.coocan.jp/mobile/lagenda.html#be500-2

Another thanx to ionbladez, who put me in on that site as a moderator. My first post after years of browsing the site:

https://be.i0n.org/forums/index.php?topic=3591.msg27410;topicseen#ms...

Hello all, Im the original tchart from the Be300 forums. I still have my trusty BE-300 but recently purchased my first HPC and more recently a Casio E-11 to add to my collection of (now vintage) handhelds.

My all time favourite handheld is a Radio Shack TRS-80 Pocket computer but the BE-300 was such a fun time!

Excited to be back!

Hey, Trevor, how are things in New Zealand?

Don't know if you noticed my posts here and on the revived BAS about getting Calendar Plus working in your Today interface (after enabling the Microsoft POOM databases). Try it out.

Now all I have to do is figure out why Casio Contacts data don't show up in Casio Contacts on the BE-500 running Bee 1.x or EpodXP. As I noted earlier in this thread, I did have to delete some files from \Nand Disk\Program Files in order to get them to boot at all with the slightly smaller memory, and I put the PIM apps and all related files on the CF card. Any ideas?