Windows CE SDK Which version do I need for dev?

Until recently I was working on the Sharp Wizard 700 series for all my pocket application needs. In assembly and basic etc. Someone stole it a few weeks ago. I can't find a new working one so it looks like I am a new windwows CE convert. For this end, The real question is a bit longer than what the post implies. I just bought a sharp mobilon HC-4600 for $40, and the obligatory batteries. I plan do do some extensive development on the device and use it as my all around pocket portable daily driver for business and recreational use. The capabilities are shall we say, far more robust than my old sharp wizard with it's 32k program size limit. Ironically, it still uses the same RS232 serial port for the vastly larger programs though :<

The Sharp Mobilon HC-4600 (why change brands? ) comes with CE V2/2.11. I did enough of my own reading to know that is basically static, and I'll never have HPC2000 on there for some of the cooler ports. That doesn't bother me since I can just do the porting myself and release it to the community(if that turns out to be possible on the earlier windows revision). I read someone on here saying that Duke 3d was owned by GOG...but they might want to explain how I have an open source license for it... just for example.

Anyway, my question is this: For the SDKs microsoft has win CE 6(not to be confused with visual studio 6) for download on their site. Can I use that for CE 2 development? Does it provide that kind of support? Or would I need one specifically targeted to version 2.x? Also, if the answer is yes and no because I would have to know what features are missing myself, and not step on those landmines by experience...is that the case? If so, the other option I found on ebay is I could buy it(VC++ and VB6 CE add ons for a total of ~$120). I also found a number of books targeted toward CE 2.x at thriftbooks. Amazon wanted a fortune(452$) for one book. Anyway, I look forward to the answer. The answer may cost more than the device hehe.

Hello forbidden64,

Welcome to HPC:Factor.

If you hit downloads above, at the bottom is a link to developer downloads. Forget Microsoft.com, they go through a revisionist process every time a CE release end of lifes and pretend that it never existed. So you won't get diddly squat directly.

For 2.11 you either need Embedded Visual Tools 3.0 and the H/PC Pro SDK -or- Visual Studio 6 + Embedded Visual Toolkit for C++ and/or Embedded Visual Toolkit for Visual Basic. The latter is the "commercial" way to do it. If you wish to port up or down you can port down to 2.00 with the CE 2 SDK and up to 3.00 with the HPC2000 SDK using eVT 3.0. To port to CE 4.x with compiler enhancements you will additionally need Embedded Visual Tools 4.0 + SP's.

If you try and run eVT 3 / Visual Studio 6 on Windows Vista + you'll get a bunch of warnings, but it does seem to work. I tend to just use a VM.

DN3D's source code was release to public in2003. The game asset files are copyright (though there is a shareware version). The source code and the assets are two differnet points. If you own the assets, you can run them on any open source port.

What are you looking at porting? I am very intreagued!

Sorry for your loss!

If you know windows programming then CE will feel pretty familiar. If not, then you could consider some used books like Boling's programming windows CE. Or borrow it? https://archive.org/details/programmingmicro00doug I learned from this book series (prior edition than what is posted there, but that should still be relevant).

The older code sharing sites likely have more relevant answers than stackoverflow or exchange, so do broad searches on a web search provider with the relevant keywords. In addition to the CE sample projects included with the SDKs there are many older CE projects posted at codeproject.


Regarding on-device programming... well, tricky. Unsure how that could be achieved.

I also like our admin's new spelling of intrigued, but share his thoughts. What type of stuff will you build and port?

Edited by smb_gaiden 2018-12-06 5:20 PM

Well, to that end I am going the "commercial route" I think then. I found a copy of windows CE VC++ and VB on ebay for just about $120 for both. I don't mind plunking down the cash for a hard copy. After all, this is my new platform. (after reading that paragraph again, I will look into both...)

To be honest, I was looking at porting things that had been ported already...just to make them run on 2.0 instead of just HPC2000 and above(I love doom). A good half of the hardware for CE out there is CE2.11 and below by the looks of it. All the reasonably priced used items are 2.11 and below. A almost bought the HC-4100 because of its >24 hour battery life...although none of them will hold a candle to the OZ-700's 120 hour battery life. In the end I went with the 4600 because of it's nice, bright color display, and decent memory(mine has 32MB of ram), and they are all broken and, therefore, cheap. The irony is that now I am going to spend way more on books and software.

Beyond that I would love to make some RPGs, RPG game engines, maybe a few platformers, and an reusable engine for that. There may be some utilities I develop as well along the way to make life easier when doing those designs. I have always coded from scratch on low level systems. Going from that to a modern compiler will be a daunting change. However, it does hold the promise of using tons of libraries, and saving lots of time coding and designing.

I have about 10 books I managed to track down for the tasks I have in mind. That book and others are in my shopping cart on thriftbooks. I live a very mobile life as an Uber driver...as such you might imagine, I have time to read, and a palm top is perfect for in the car computing. When I said coding on the CE device, I mean writing the programs. I can then transfer them to my PC at home and compile them there, then transfer and test components and things. I did this on my wizard, and actually for multiple platforms. I would make VIC-20 programs on my wizard, transfer them to my PC, then place them into a vic-20 emulator. From there I could do the debugging phase. Then save it as a .TAP file, then play it from my phone to a cassette recorder, then I could edit and finalize on the real hardware. Just as an example of Cross-Cross-compiling heh. Maybe I'll call it crisscross compiling.

When it comes to finding answers that are obscure on the internet, I am the king. I spent a month on the way back machine when I got my sharp wizard oz-770 just getting software and SDKs and related information. All the main sites had been offline for over a decade. Only a few fan pages remained. From that I was able to write a hardware internals manual, gather over 200 software items, and get around 5 or so compilers that were made for it. That said though, there was no community for asking questions or...well anything! Contrast that with HPC:Factor and wow, what a difference. Active forums?! What a luxury!

I will definitely look into codeproject. Is that a website or a section of this site?

Edited by forbidden64 2018-12-07 3:28 AM

You need to target each individual platform/version seperately. You can't target CE 1.0 from VS6, only VS5 (and it is impossible to get hold of the Windows CE Toolkit for Visual C++ 5.0). So from VS6 you would need to have release processes for CE 2.00, 2.10, 2.11, 2.12 and 3.00 -- depending on the API level you use. People generally just perform releases for 2.00 (SH3/MIPS), 2.11 (SH3/SH4/MIPS/x86/ARM) and 3.00 (SH3/MIPS/x86/ARM) because they are building in eVT not VS.

There seem to be a few places where you can still obtain the 6.0 Toolkit e.g. "en_wince_toolkit_c_pp.exe" http://www.shoplack.com/detail.aspx?id=366 and "en_wince_toolkit_vb6.exe" http://www.shoplack.com/detail.aspx?id=367 (not an endorsement, I've never used them).
FYI https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/217/Q217375/

In the VC++ world you can use MFC libraries, however going native Win32 C++ is never a bad thing as it lets you avoid some Microsoft nuances.

You might want to start with eVT3 and test that you can setup the necessary build environment and see if you can cope with Visual Studio before you invest.

We are happy to assist you i n making released and testing. Please feel free to make use of the forums. If and when you want to release, we are more than happy to add them to the Software Compatibility List (SCL) and host the downloads if you wish.

Happy coding.

p.s. CodeProject is a different website https://www.codeproject.com/


Edit: They ripped off My copy on H/PC Explorer: http://www.shoplack.com/detail.aspx?id=1460 || https://www.hpcfactor.com/qlink/?linkID=5

Edit 2: On further review. I am pretty sure that that site isn't selling legit second hand copies.

I also strongly recommend eVT... It is free and does all you need. Also recommend win32 CE APIs instead of MFC or ATL. Less frustrations in develop/debug cycle.

Furthermore, there was some guide on the internet about using a later compiler and linker to produce builds suitable for running on CE versions 1.x. If I managed to save/bookmark them and they're still online will update this thread. or you can take a look in your free time in the meantime

Crumbs, you're right. I do remember that. I'll see if I have it too.

You might want to skim through: http://www.drdobbs.com/windows/windows-ce-win32-api-programming/184...

Definitely a lot of stuff to sort through. I got my HC-4600 today. The battery components are yet to arrive. When then do, I can pry open the battery and solder everything together. I can't wait to turn it on! Initially, all I will have for data transfer is the IRda port. I reckon that will get old fast. Perhaps immediately. I will go with eVT 3 for now at least as a matter of course. It is free, and also recommended. Dr Dobbs Journal! I was recently reading an issue of that(much older) where they were making a BASIC language that could fit inside of 4K and had math functions with the addition of hacking in a calculator chip to your computer(1976). No such chip is available now, so I doubt I could replicate the experiment.

Anyway, reading the article...It seems to be a theme. Stick to the win 32 API as a general rule. Stray from that rule and prepare to do a lot of debugging. I will definitely bookmark this article. I bet there are a number of CE articles on there.

Speaking of which, do either of you know what Visual studio 6 Enterprise will run under? I have a Vista machine and a win 7 machine. It crashed immediately in windows 7. It's an "era accurate" VC++. I have no problem running it on my older machine...I switch off usage depending on compatibility needs. What are you guys running?

Edited by forbidden64 2018-12-10 1:45 AM

Surely though, these operating systems can't be that incompatible with each other? You have to build a separate compilation for each version of CE? I understand the cases where the architecture is entirely different, and you are using code that goes closer to the metal...but stuff that is actually running completely under windows API is not compatible with itself a revision later????! Surely this is not true. For example, would a vanilla visual basic program need to be cross compiled for each version of CE if it is targeted at the earliest revision?

Update: I was able to get VC++ 6.0 to install and test compile on my Windows Vista machine (Dell Inspiron 1520). I just had to change the working directory to \users\...\application data\microsoft visual studio\myprojects
I noticed when I was using another SDK it would write to some folder like this no matter what I asked. It is rather annoying. However, once you bend your puny will to that of Microsoft, it works. Why did they do that? I suppose it does make for easier backups... If you don't then it just has a melt down and says it can't find anything! Now I need to transfer over the evt 3

I tried to switch over to that computer but I can't log into the forum from there. It says my username/password is wrong...but I am pretty sure I put in the correct password. For now, I'll have two computers running lol.



https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/702/A-comprehensive-CE-class-li...

I found the above link which may be useful...Promises to replace MFC and ATL for CE. I don't know diddly squat about either but I am sure I'll get to know them soon.

I also found some neat software which I may upload if people want it...like a DIVX player for windows CE 2.00 for example.

I also stumbled across a visual basic IDE that runs on a windows CE device. That one is a little more dubious since the author still sells mobile basic stuff, but doesn't list the CE software anymore. I did find some links which indicate it can be found though(secret wayz). Barring that, it actually might be plausible to reconstruct it. All he did was use the VBscript.dll and create an IDE to tie into that. Anyway, their main site is NSBasic.com . Perhaps he could be persuaded to either offer it for sale/let us have it! Would be fun to use...

For VB, no. The problem with VB is that there are a constrained number of devices that actually support the VB runtime and you can't (natively) make a VB program into an EXE. It's a registered executable file type that runs accross the ininterpreter like a .jar in Java.

For C, the differentcompilers come down to a) widening support for different revisoins of the CPU architecture b) newer CE implemented more parts of Win32 c) Microsoft intentionally stopped allowing the newer compilers to compile for downward-level releases.

These are technically all the major variants of CPU architecture that there have ever been support for:
ARM720 ARM7TDMI ARM820 ARM920 CEF DEC Alpha
Intel 860 MIPS R2xxx MIPS R3xxx MIPS R4xxx PowerPC 601 PowerPC 603
PowerPC 604 PowerPC 620 PowerPC 821 SH3 SH3e SH4
StrongARM x86

The MIPS' have a mass of sub versions, the StrongARM and ARM likewise and x86... well.

If you don't compile using Visual Studio, sure you can do what you want. Alternatively, just compile using the CE 2.00 compiler, but only compile for SH3 and MIPS (and x86 is you have the non-free version), surrendering SH4 and StrongARM.

Have you installed Service Pack 6 for Visual Studio and checked the environment variables? I'd start there if not. Alas Vista uses a lot of symlinks/hard links because MS changed the organisation of the home folder between XP and Vista. It's likely just acting up - keep in mind that VS6 was written for NT4, which itself was completely different to Windows 2000/XP for user profiles.

If the software isn't in the SCL, we'd love to have it on-deck.

NSBasic were the go-to for VB on CE, asfter MS.

BTW. If you look in the SCL and search for .net you'll find .net frameworks which opens another door for you (official MS versions are in H/PC:Update for CE4.x+).

Where possible, I'd encourage you to use C++/Win32 over anything else

Well, it is just doing what Vista/7 always do. I think I will keep the work around for the directories, afterall, it does indeed make backing up a total cinch. Backup \app data and you're all set. I agree on using VC++. I don't want to box myself into BASIC again like I have done too many times in the past. The worst being MSDOS/QBASIC 4.5 where it was just capable enough to make me not broaden my horizons in the slightest. I think I learned my lesson there.

I'm not sure how I would be able to use the framework on my 2.11 system. I know...for a little more i could have gotten a Jornada 120/128. I may still get one(who am I kidding, I probably will) in the future. Funny thing is I learned C# first and found that I didn't like it very much. The whole concept of uncompiled slow language that takes up way too much memory and has crappy garbage collection just didn't sit right with me. It seemed way too much like Java. In addition, .net on a small machine seems antithetical. It would probably run extremely slow. I remember working for Time Warner, and they had embedded systems running java. Horribly laggy. Have you tried it? I may be talking out of school here...but that's what my gut tells me.

There is a CE 2.11 framework in the SCL, which can be targeted using newer Visual Studio releases using a .net CE 1.0 framework base. It's pretty generic after that. It is a compiled language, but it is managed code, so yes there is a performance hit. The real downside as you have already indicated is the framework bloat and the RAM requirement that goes along with it. The advantage is that it's newer, more accessible than C++ and have a broader class library behind it.

I don't mind C# or Java, both have their uses, although I prefer C#. I just do not like the way that Microsoft does things. Want to start a web project? Sure have 30MB of bloated "core" framework in which you are to write code the way we tell you to and wait 20 seconds every time you need to reinitialise your web-app. It is lazy and it has created a whole generation of programmers who think programming is downloading increasingly swollen ne bloated modules from GIT and mashing them together.

I don't suppose that I could encourage you to document your journey here could I? Record what you needed, issues you have overcome. "Developing for the H/PC in 2019"?