be300.org is dead :(

Yeah, the ViewSonic Airpanel 100. There was a 4.0 ROM for that in addition to the 4.1 one. Nothing special there either - it was just a barebones ROM for a Web tablet IIRC.

Thank you!! I appreciate answering my many questions.

Is there any BE-300 software that runs on the MobilePro 790? Maybe we could archive that for the SCL if it works without modification/screen resolution issues?

I'm sure some do, though I haven't tested them myself. Remember we have the files in the HPC:Factor Repository, so you can check them out at your own leisure. Some, however, require a special version of mfcce300.dll for the BE called mfcce300_ca.dll (with that modified name kept intact). I don't know whether that DLL will work on other MIPS devices.

A heads-up to my fellow BE players here: ionbladez is transferring hosting of the BAS, so the site will be down for a bit, and it's gonna take a little more time than anticipated because the old domain holder abruptly pulled the plug with little advance notice. But there's a little surprise in store once the transfer is complete, so stay tuned. Thanx to ionbladez for all his hard work on this.

Meanwhile, I've tried a battery upgrade discussed over there: there are batteries for Minolta digital cameras (part number NP-200) that fit the BE nicely once you remove their plastic covers. They have the same voltage but higher capacity (1.3 Ah, compared to the 750-800 mAh of the stock and aftermarket BE-300/500 batteries), and they're cheaper: I've picked up a couple packs of four for 16 USD per pack of four.

What has me stumped, though, is that some of the devices in which I've installed them seem to revert to the same discharge time as the old Casio batteries they replaced after a few cycles, a couple running down in 24 hours in suspend mode. The new batteries have their own boards regulating charge, but this makes me wonder whether there is some software control over the discharge cycle coming from the device. Swapping batteries with another device with a longer-lasting used battery doesn't change the discharge time between the two, thus the same effect.

One other success for me, though: I was recently able to load a fully properly-working version of Bee 2.0 in landscape, on the BE-500 using the previously-mentioned display rotation utility DispChg, with the touchscreen working properly and even a fully-functional BeeBar that adapted properly to the 320-pixel width. (See image below.) I'm not sure how I did it, though.

Now if we can just figure out how to get DispChg to work on the BE-300 (so far only works on the BE-500, as previously reported).





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IMG_20230315_030502491-01.jpeg (18KB - 0 downloads)

That landscape view looks fantastic ! That device still really intrigues me!

Great work on that + transfer

Hello everybody,

I have just bought my first BE-300 on a local flea market and it is using eXpod firmware. Is this the best firmware for this device? Or should I go back to the original one? Is it even possible to do without the USB cradle? Or do I need to make a cable? I can if I have to but it is a lot of work to find the pinout. Does someone even know what the pinout of the USB cradle is? Can I install original Casio apps/games without the original firmware on my device? I used to develop for WM5/6 a lot, but never had any Casio devices before.
Thank you for the help in advance.

Andrew

Edited by silencer82 2023-07-06 9:41 AM

Which operating environment is best for you is a matter of taste. I like the OEs based on the core CE shell (eXpod, Bee, and even the older EpodXP) just because they give that desktop Windows feel that CE diehards like me love. But there are other reasons to prefer eXpod: it's faster and simpler to use. A lot of people like BeShell because it gives the BE a Pocket PC feel, but it has a few issues that were never solved before Dic abandoned the project. These show up as soon as you finish booting up, because they make the Today layouts (both Dic's own simplified version and his adaptation of Tcharts Today) have problems properly displaying upcoming appointment data drawn from Casio Calendar.

BeShell is also memory-intensive (Bee is also a bit more of a memory hog than eXpod because of the additional resources and graphics incorporated into the shell), and it's taken a toll on the BAS version, which is very unstable and often won't complete the boot process, requiring restoring the OE from a backup. At least that's been my experience. Pretty much everyone agrees, though, that anything else is better than the Casio native Top Menu shell.

Just one user's perspective though. In any event, we're hoping to resume this debate on the BE-300 Advancement Society site soon. Our friend ionbladez (known on the BAS as beshellx) is working hard on this as we speak.

Well, it looks like be300.org is dead again. I haven't heard from ionbladez in over six months, coinciding with the last time he visited this site. When we last saw our hero, he was working on putting the BAS back up under a new domain after his be.i0n domain got shut down. The little surprise I mentioned above was that he was acquiring the domain be300.org and was going to return the BAS to that classic domain. Instead, the BAS is now once again nowhere online (other than MutantCheese's original tiny starter site mentioned early in this thread). Maybe ionbladez, like so many of us, has moved on to other things. (Not me - I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up. ) Too bad - my discoveries (which I also made multiple posts about there) made it an even more fun and useful device (well, for me, anyway ). I even figured out how to make WinWatch usable on it - though it may not be needed now that we have a MIPS CE 2.11/3.0 version of FloatMe. (Could be an alternative to using the stylus though.)

Can we archive these (like any be300 apps) to the scl with your and or C:Amie’s permission?
I’m not sure if they’ll work on hpc proper devices though
Like any programs we don’t have there already.


I’d be happy to put in the work
I wouldn’t want to see stuff lost

ionbladez has all the files, so unless we hear from him, we're SOL on that.

Well, I spoke just seconds too soon, as per usual:

https://be300.org/forums/

Read it and stop weeping.

Sorry guys! I would have seen the messages/emails but I lost an old domain of mine around mid May, and wasn't receiving any emails that were forwarded to/from it, ha! On top of losing my old Blackberry with a 2fa code I couldn't export and was too lazy to turn off and on again.

Talk about bad luck; but luckily it doesn't affect me besides accounts I registered when I was young. Hope an admin can help with the password reset! LOL

Edited by ionbladez-rec 2023-12-26 10:07 AM

Good to see it's back again.

-stingraze

Hey everyone, hope you are all well!

I've started working on getting password resets to work on the forum. This only means current users will be able to login. I'll eventually tackle emails too, if the demand is great enough -- don't get me wrong, I still would like to restore this great forum from my childhood to its former full glory!

Keep in mind:


I of course have to rewrite all the old mysql-based code to work with the new stuff without a major overhaul.
Anyway, there's a bit more work to be done to allow for all the broken theme code, but so far everything has been running smoothly.

I am also working with Cloudflare to get the website 'mirrored' on archive.org in case of the net going down at my office; because this subsequently causes the site to be offline or in some error state.

P.S: I've messaged C:Amie about trying to recover my original account, since an old domain of mine was lost and someone took it over, and that just so happened to be one of my main ones I had recovery emails to. Whoops! Always renew your domains folks!


P.P.S: I also made a post on the forum looking for Start Menu Pro. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the V4 posted by mutantcheese, but sourced from BE-Central. The funny part is I still have the hard drive from 2003 which I originally downloaded the old BE-Central stuff on, but most likely overwrote it re-installing Windows 7 on the old machine many years ago... ]:

Edited by ionbladez-rec 2024-02-04 8:05 AM

Some time ago I came across a small program for the BE-500 called DispChg that can rotate the BE-500's display 90 degrees. I've shown screenshots of it earlier in this thread and on the BAS. Like with Nyditot Virtual Display and Jimmy Software JS Landscape, the actual change in display rotation is executed at startup, so it resets the device whenever you change it. Unlike those two, it's free.

What it does is pretty simple: it inserts a registry key called "Landscape" in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Drivers/Casio, which includes calibration values for both landscape and portrait and a setting value (1 for landscape enabled, 0 for disabled). Then it copies new versions of ddi.dll, keybddr.dll, and touch.dll into the Patch folder.

As I've posted earlier, it works flawlessly on the BE-500, but it won't work on the BE-300. Once you use the app to set the display to rotate 90 degrees and reset the BE-300, as soon as the display rotates during startup, the display goes dark. You have to restore from a backup to get the display back.

I was able to get the display to show up in landscape on the BE-300 using a workaround: I imported the Landscape registry key with the setting value set to 1, flushed the registry, soft reset the BE-300, and then manually copied the new version of ddi.dll to the Patch folder and then reset again. However, despite the display now being in landscape, the touchscreen retained the calibration settings from the portrait orientation. This is normal the first time one uses DispChg on a BE-500, and the app has a link to the calibration screen to allow you to recalibrate it. (Or, of course, you can use TapAdjust.) But the recalibration doesn't work on the BE-300 with the original version of touch.dll - the calibration target just keeps cycling forever after each tap and never accepts the taps on the five positions. However, when I then copied the new version of touch.dll into Patch and reset, the touchscreen wouldn't work at all, including the hard icons. A hard reset won't cure this, so you have to restore a backup to get use of the touchscreen back.

Interestingly, I could copy over either keybddr.dll or touch.dll and landscape display still shows up, but if I copied both, then the display would go dark again during reboot.

Not sure how to solve this problem. I posted this over on the BAS as well, but I'm mentioning it here too in case anyone here has any ideas. The files I'm working with are below. The registry key is a Total Commander version.



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DispChg DLLs.zip (70KB - 0 downloads)
Landscape.reg (0KB - 0 downloads)