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Motorola/Symbol/Micros MC40N0 with Windows Embedded Compact 7

CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-10-02 12:35 AM
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After months of looking, I found this device at an affordable price on eBay:



Most of these devices have one version or another of Android on them, but point-of-sale device company Micros marketed them with Windows Embedded Compact 7. It has several nice features, including automatic display rotation and two display resolution options (400x240 [WQVGA] or 800x480 [WVGA]). It also has a capacitive touchscreen, which means you can't use a stylus - which makes it particularly difficult to navigate in WVGA mode.

The processor is an 800 MHz Texas Instruments TI Cortex A9-OMAP4430. It retains registry settings and files copied or installed to \Windows (including shortcuts) after reboot, but while it retains installed databases after reboot, it wipes all data from them. However, it does have a true suspend mode, and the battery life seems good, though I'm still testing that. It has a total of 8 GB of storage, in interestingly-named folders: Application, Platform, and On-Board IDE. The first of those is the largest at 4 GB, with Platform second with 2 GB. The file format in all of these is ExFAT. There is no card slot.

It is synchronizable, but apparently not supported by ActiveSync 3.8. (It connects and then disconnects on the device end a few seconds later without an error message on either end.) I did successfully sync POOM databases (after creating them on the device) in ActiveSync 4.5 on a second Windows XP PC that I have with that version installed (which I also use to sync Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices). Though, as I have previously pointed out in these forums, WEC 7 is very picky about working with older DLLs, the PIM apps I was able to open (CE Agenda and Microsoft PIM Today) displayed the synched-in PIM data properly. However, after I later reset the device, it would no longer sync correctly, giving me a 80004002 error in ActiveSync 4.5 on the PC end. (It should be noted that, before reconnecting the device, I deleted the partnership on the PC end in order to avoid overwriting the Outlook data on the PC with the empty data on the device.) Looking online, it appears that 80004002 is an Outlook error, and the suggestion was to try scanpst.exe on the PC to check for errors. I did that, and there weren't any found. I'm at a loss at this point about what's causing the error. Anyone else have a clue?
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2020-10-02 8:28 AM
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0x80004002 is Microsoft for 'interface not implemented', in other words it's trying to call code that isn't operable in the dll being used.

Does it do this for all sync categories? What if you try them one at a time?
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-10-02 9:03 AM
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I got the same error when I tried just Tasks or just Contacts. With Calendar I get a different error code: 8503001c. In that case, the error message suggests that I "try deleting and then re-creating the synchronization relationships on" the device. I tried deleting the partnership info in HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows CE Services/Partners, but got the same result. Are the "synchronization relationships" the keys in HKLM/Windows CE Services/Synchronization/Objects? That seems a little weird since they point Appointments, Contacts, and Tasks to the value pegobj.dll.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-10-02 10:35 AM
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I also tried hard resetting the device by removing its main battery, which did delete the files I added to \Windows as well as the PIM registry keys I added, but it did retain the device name I gave it. I still got the same error after re-creating the partnership in AS 4.5. Since there's a backup battery inside that's inaccessible without opening up the unit, I may have to let it sit with the main battery out for an extended period to fully hard reset it.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-10-13 10:39 AM
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I let it sit for a few days with the main battery removed, and now it synched properly again. But it definitely retains at least some of the registry persistently. (There are several .reg files in the Application folder, but I can't tell if they're reimported on boot or are just backup files.) I really have no idea what the issue was or how that eventually solved it.

It's a quirky little device. I'll keep playing with it and see what I can learn about it. Nice, though, to have a synchronizable WEC 7 device.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2020-10-15 1:40 PM
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I was wrong about the soft reset wiping the databases clean. They stayed put after several soft resets today. Not sure what I did that wiped them the first time.

I just wish WEC 7 weren't so picky about older DLLs. Few PIM programs are working properly thus far. Super PIMs like Agenda Fusion and Pocket Informant don't open due to WEC 7 not wanting to work with InkX.dll. But even the GEMini PIM suite so far refuses to see any data in the POOM databases.
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