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What have you done with an H/PC today?

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fantablium Page Icon Posted 2022-08-22 5:52 PM
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@Tourch

Not tried SpreadCE but I saw there was an update so thinking I might give it a go, see if its faster than Planmaker which I currently use. There's nothing complex about the files and support for .xlsx would be nice!
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-08-22 10:03 PM
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torch - 2022-08-22 1:11 PM
Do you mind submitting it to the HCL with its exact model number and submit your Phenom test result whenever you have a chance ? I want to start keeping an eye out when one comes available for sale whenever my 2GB CF card goes bad. I’m trying to convert over to SD cards because they’re easily accessible.
Edit: also does CE2.0 ask for a driver .dll when you insert it?

As for me, I’m passing time on an airport layover playing Scrabble against the computers.


The CompUSA adapter I have appears to be this one, and it apparently supports quite a lot more than just SD (in fact, I just tried out an old 128MB Memory Stick I had lying around after looking up that image, worked fine):
https://www.timeshopzon.com/static/1033/60f1d4c46854b6d1fc4267e9.jpg
In case that link goes bad at any point, the exact text on the card is "CompUSA Multi-Format PCMCIA Flash Media Reader/Writer".
It doesn't ask for a driver of any kind.

As for the possibility of just sticking with CF (it has been pretty easy to find good media in small sizes and I was merely being very cheap this month by not buying a couple cards, since apparently there are a lot of industrial users that need to have 2GB or smaller CF cards still), the adapter I just bought was this () and the 2GB card I have is this (), which I bought a few months ago new (note: both links are US Amazon).

Edited by null1024 2022-08-22 10:05 PM




(reader.jpg)



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Attachments reader.jpg (59KB - 0 downloads)
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C:Amie Page Icon Posted 2022-08-23 7:40 AM
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I've added the CompUSA adapter, please go to the HCL and vote for device compatibility though!
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-08-27 7:07 AM
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Today, I set up WRP on my desktop so I could browse the internet in a more functional way.
There isn't really much setup honestly: you open a terminal on your desktop, you run the executable, you connect to that machine from your H/PC. It just works.
The only gotcha I had is that to type text into a page, you click 'Go', which had me thinking something was broken when I was pressing the wrong thing entirely.

It's both more and less functional than just using PocketIE directly. It's able to do a LOT more by virtue of being backed by Chrome and however powerful a machine your desktop is (it is genuinely kind of depressing when I think about just how much more powerful my desktop is compared to the H/PC chained to it lol, the H/PC is basically just a particularly bad terminal at this point)... but it's also really quite slow to navigate pages with due to the fact that a full page refresh needs to happen for anything whatsoever. It also really isn't helped that my internet connection is over serial.
The version of PocketIE on here really hates images that are 640px or wider and (badly) downsamples them, so I have to set the horizontal resolution to be way low, a measly 600px even though scrolling around a wide image would be way more convenient.
Running in 1-bit mode ended up being the best -- fast to decode the image, didn't have a constantly shifting (and occasionally just outright pessimal) palette, meant I didn't have to fiddle with the contrast controls a bunch.

On an unrelated note, I thought I was having an issue with my card reader, but after doing some testing... modern Windows (I tried as far back as 7) kinda dislikes the way CE2 formats cards. It refuses to attempt a chkdsk, among a few other oddities. Nothing major, but mildly worrying.
CE2 also absolutely hates the way modern Windows formats FAT16 drives, and doesn't attempt to read them.
Guess I'll just say this: backups, backups, backups.
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-08-29 8:29 PM
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fantablium - 2022-08-22 9:52 AM
Not tried SpreadCE but I saw there was an update so thinking I might give it a go, see if its faster than Planmaker which I currently use. There's nothing complex about the files and support for .xlsx would be nice!

Let me know how it goes, I'd be interested in hearing how it compares with PM.
Quote
null1024 - 2022-08-22 2:03 PM
The CompUSA adapter I have appears to be this one, and it apparently supports quite a lot more than just SD (in fact, I just tried out an old 128MB Memory Stick I had lying around after looking up that image, worked fine):

In case that link goes bad at any point, the exact text on the card is "CompUSA Multi-Format PCMCIA Flash Media Reader/Writer".
It doesn't ask for a driver of any kind.

As for the possibility of just sticking with CF (it has been pretty easy to find good media in small sizes and I was merely being very cheap this month by not buying a couple cards, since apparently there are a lot of industrial users that need to have 2GB or smaller CF cards still), the adapter I just bought was this () and the 2GB card I have is this (), which I bought a few months ago new (note: both links are US Amazon).


Thanks for your help! I tried looking around for the CompUSA one, but settle on trying the Dazzle PC card - I'll let you know/submit to the HCL on what happens with it. I really want to try SD cards on CE2.0! Then I can just drag around a mini USB-micro USB adapter to transfer data!
Quote
null1024 - 2022-08-26 11:07 PM

Today, I set up WRP on my desktop so I could browse the internet in a more functional way.
There isn't really much setup honestly: you open a terminal on your desktop, you run the executable, you connect to that machine from your H/PC. It just works.
The only gotcha I had is that to type text into a page, you click 'Go', which had me thinking something was broken when I was pressing the wrong thing entirely.

Yes! I was wanting to try this with my Raspberry Pi or my laptop. I'm debating between using the Pi for that or converting it into a WEP router so I can play around with my Orinoco wifi card
Edit: Fixed quote bbcode issues

Edited by torch 2022-08-29 8:30 PM
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-09-02 5:37 PM
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So I got lucky. This Dazzle 4-in-1 PC Card to SD card I found on eBay for about $6 USD works in CE 2.0 with my SD card. So, I think the problem might be, CE2.0 is a lot more picky for CF IO devices, but less so if they’re PCMCIA. I wager that this card may even work on CE1.0 (but I don’t have a device to try.)



(06E225A0-6F04-4106-A5A9-BE5E8189C839.jpeg)



(36F99338-9A28-4B69-AC99-100E35DFA595.jpeg)



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Attachments 06E225A0-6F04-4106-A5A9-BE5E8189C839.jpeg (15KB - 5 downloads)
Attachments 36F99338-9A28-4B69-AC99-100E35DFA595.jpeg (17KB - 2 downloads)
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-09-04 9:00 AM
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Today, I suffered at the hands of an "H/PC" that I got for a pittance, and clearly, there was a reason for that.
I now have a particularly cursed Sylvania 7" netbook thing. In particular, it's the WM8650 based model, so pretty much none of the information I thought I'd have been able to have found before getting the unit was accurate, nor was the OS image available here at HPCFactor valid for use on it. The model number of the unit is SYNET07WICV.

The OS image that it shipped with took 15 minutes to boot (never tried seeing if wifi would work, I wasn't connecting that mess to my network), and I genuinely have no idea how something like that even happens on a Windows CE-based system.
I spent ages trying to find an OS image that would boot before finding this one: https://unitedandco.net/2021/04/16/wm8650-laptops-all-over-the-place...
Wifi doesn't work with the image on my unit, apparently the USB Wifi card soldered in there isn't compatible with the driver since the card is too new, and all the USB Wifi dongles I have are also far too new, despite all being Ralink chipsets. Painful.

Owing to my general misfortune (and poor judgement in opening the device chasing after an issue, clearly exacerbating the rest lol -- there are now several parts that are superglued together since it's fairly brittle), the touchpad is flaky. The keyboard is flaky (the right shift key won't capitalize the home row 80% of the time, and this is after re-seating the ribbon cable like twice to fix a different dumb issue).
I feel like I've done some kind of equivalent exchange deal, where by removing the absolutely awful OS install on it and solving a minor keyboard issue, I've been forced to suffer in different, but equivalent ways. I had to reseat the mouse twice, and the mouse seems to be experiencing a failure mode I've seen before, where it glides to where you point like it has inertia as long as your finger is on the pad.

At least I can plug stuff in externally. Keyboard. Mouse. Ethernet. The USB polling rate is terrible for mice, it updates at like 20hz or something.
The unit goes on the internet with an ethernet cable plugged into a wifi extender. That's nice, at least. Was REALLY hoping I could use it as a little portable SSH terminal around the house, but as I'm tied down with a cable due to the machine's flakiness... yeah.
Also, I'm pretty sure the font setup on that image is busted after seeing a fun bit of Greek text while logging in over SSH to my raspi just because I set it to display with Courier New, 14pt; I'm using it because it's the only one I found.
The image is quite flaky and I probably shouldn't type my ssh credentials into it, even if I'm also pretty sure it isn't actually phoning home lol.
If I can find the original boot image for this model, I'd give it a whirl just to see if I can get the wifi working.

The screen is way nicer than I ever expected, at least. The build quality doesn't feel that bad, despite my experience with build quality actually being quite bad. I wish it had a touchscreen... although given everything I've dealt with, maybe I absolutely do not. Using CE without a touchscreen feels wrong.
I wish it had a real suspend mode. Maybe it does, and again, this image doesn't actually support it. There is a button marked ZZz... except that opens the Start menu when I press it.


Also, on a more positive note, I was visiting family before I got the 7in netbook thing and used my LG Phenom as an actual H/PC for once, so I was mobile, untethered, free as the wind! Kinda.
It doesn't like rechargeable batteries, each pair got like 1h15m (and I had 2 pairs). Was able to recharge the batteries, so I was on my H/PC without the unit being plugged into the wall for a bit over 3h.
Still wish it didn't throttle so hard on battery -- a few of the things I typically do (GB emulation, video playback) were total nonstarters, and a few of the things I do (reading manga, listening to music) on the device were fraught with issues due to speed (each manga page took ages to load in an HTML page, and still took a fair bit of time directly loaded; music would stutter a lot in the background due to the underclock, but it'd also just stop if the buffer underrun was too severe).
Despite the issues, it was quite a pleasant experience, except for the battery life (or rather lack thereof). I could still type stuff up, I could still read stuff, the only absolute "this doesn't work lol" things were video and emulation, and the device isn't exactly good at either even when at full speed.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2022-09-05 2:57 AM
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The screen on those doesn't have a touchscreen overlay. If you want touchscreen, Rich talks about how you can improvise a hardware add-on:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=17463&po...

There was a homebrew version of Windows Embedded Compact 7 that seemed to solve most issues - and it did include a touchscreen driver that worked on some WM8650 tablets:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=17431&po...

The TechKnow forums where UberWinCE7 was developed are long gone, though some of their pages can still be viewed via the Wayback Machine at archive.org.

The 'Zzz' key functions strictly as a Windows key in CE on those netbooks. The hardware doesn't support true suspend, though the OS does. I've only found one WEC 7 device with true suspend, however - the Micros MC40N0 handheld scanner:

https://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=18908&po...
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-09-05 5:54 AM
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Adding a touchscreen overlay sounds like a fun project. Dunno if (or, if if, when ) I'll get to it, but that doesn't seem too terribly hard.
Honestly, the only issue I have with this customized CE6 image is no wifi working on it, a netbook that is tethered to the wall isn't much of a netbook.
It's been decent enough to use despite the myriad of issues. I really do wish I had the earlier model machine though, since all the neat OS images (also, all of the official ones) I've found aren't for the WM8650 models. Ain't about to go scurrying off to find one this soon after getting this unit though.

On a fun note, I tried to post here from it as-is in IE5 over Ethernet, but the captcha didn't load (didn't expect it to work, but I had to try). I could muck about with a fancier browser or using WRP, but nah (also, WRP is really miserable for text entry lol).
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-09-08 2:44 AM
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In an effort to make a more portable solution to give my CE netbook wifi access, I decided to turn an old Pi 2 into a wifi bridge, following this tutorial: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-wifi-bridge/
It's just dead useful for any old device that you can get ethernet on, but no wifi.

I was going to buy another Pi 4 just for this (my Pi 2 has definite issues with the wifi adapter I have for it, such as pings occasionally exceeding 4000ms lol), but then I got hit by the Pi shortage.
Getting a Pi at anything resembling MSRP right now is impossible.

It wasn't nearly as easy a tutorial to follow as it should be due to a missing part when editing /etc/dhcpcd.conf -- you should have this instead, which ensures that it won't prioritize the ethernet port over your wifi connection:
interface eth0 
static ip_address=192.168.20.1/24 
static domain_name_servers=192.168.20.0
metric 300

interface wlan0
metric 200

Also, if the wifi network you're connecting to is in the 192.168.20.x range, there will probably be problems (it's unlikely, which is why that IP was chosen, 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x is way more common).
It's not actually a straight bridge, this is setup is basically a router.

I also installed WebOne (https://github.com/atauenis/webone) to allow for https page access.
I had to change a few steps in the install instructions (replacing amd64 with armhf, and 0.12.0 to the current version). Was going to post the steps, but the site truncates the URLs so it's not a nice copy-paste thing, even when in a code block.

I was tempted to see if I could install WRP, but a: this is a Pi 2, and b: I don't have X11 (so no chromium or anything) set up on that Pi; I flashed a lite image just for doing this.

The last thing I had to do was set up SSH -- because the version of PuTTY on my CE device is old, I needed to enable the older key exchange mode.
In particular, adding "KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group1-sha1" to my /etc/ssh/sshd_config allowed it to connect. Restart sshd or reboot the Pi, and then it just works.

It's still not portable yet since I need a battery pack for my Pi (like $15, so not too bad), and I dunno if I'd be willing to take this setup outside. Connecting to another network is "fun" too, you have to SSH in and edit it in raspi-config right now.
Despite all that, now my CE netbook is (almost) mobile and has constant access to all the benefits of Linux (would be nice if I knew of a Linux release I could install on it directly though lol).

I probably could install X11 and VNC into it too, although the VNC client I have on the device (the C# one) is EXTREMELY slow. Maybe another day.
I might be able to set up something for it to work with my Phenom over serial too if I don't find a PC-Card ethernet adapter, but I don't know how I'd go about setting up something like that MochaSoft PPP bridge on Linux.
I can easily get a terminal shell, but due to the flaws in the Windows CE serial terminal, it wouldn't be nearly as useful.
Needing to log in to gracefully power the unit off is lame too, I need to look into a way to add a poweroff button.

Also, on a less related note, my 2.5mm M to 3.5mm F connector that I used to plug headphones into my Phenom broke. Very lame.
I ordered a new one and cut the old one open to see what happened -- it's just really shoddily made. I'll probably end up fixing this one anyway, but I was too lazy to break out the soldering iron after setting everything listed above up.
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-09-08 3:22 AM
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Hi I’ll take the time to read / respond to your messages soon but I sA the wifi adapter part for the Pi. I highly recommend this wifi adapter. It works on my Pi1 out of the box with PiOS
Edimax EW-7811UN
But! Make sure it’s version 1 not version 2!! Version 2 doesn’t work right for me
I also use this same adapter for WPA2 wifi on my PowerMac G4 and G5
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-09-08 3:35 AM
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Oooh, that sounds helpful, thanks!
Honestly though, the one I have on my Pi isn't unusable and works well enough for general web browsing, but it does make certain things troublesome (namely, SSH over wifi is actually miserable because every once in a while, it'll just be unresponsive for several seconds at a time due to the ping spikes).
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-09-08 3:44 AM
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I THINK this might work but you need to ask them for a picture to make sure it’s NOT V2. Because the picture is blurry. I’ll upload pictures of mine so you know how to look. The V1 uses a more compatible chipset. V2 is just funky.
Otherwise just ask them that you only want v1 and to make sure with them it’s v1. Then just return if they were wrong.
And you can sell the second one or just keep it. I had bought a lot and sold the remainder I didn’t need

Edited by torch 2022-09-08 3:44 AM
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-09-08 7:47 AM
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Here’s a picture of my V1



(D31BE2AD-FFF3-4A62-9690-5606BE66160E.jpeg)



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Attachments D31BE2AD-FFF3-4A62-9690-5606BE66160E.jpeg (219KB - 10 downloads)
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-10-01 4:10 AM
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Just got another 2GB CF card for my Phenom (they're like $12 on Amazon -- terrible price/GB by modern standards, but like, if you're getting a 2GB card, it's because your device can't use bigger), so now I've got a whopping 4GB of disk in a CE 2.0 device, which just feels like a bit much.
Losing so much due to the gigantic 32kB FAT16 cluster size is awful, but all of the smaller cards I have (a 512MB, a 256MB, and a 16MB) are old and thus REALLY slow with transferring many files vs single large ones.
If I was using a CE2.11 device or newer (and it's not like I don't have a CE2.11 device lol), I could use FAT32 on the card (also, I could use a way bigger CF card)... but I've dug my own hole and I'm going to just lie in its slow, dim, and monochrome splendor.

Still doing the usual these last few days, mostly using the unit for text editing and to help me go to sleep due to the dim green screen, all alongside a bunch of multimedia playback that the unit has absolutely zero business doing.
It remains eternally cool that I can play music and video files on a device like this. It's not good at either, but it manages so much better than I expected that it's unreasonable (and possibly could do better with better software and formats if I'm honest -- the device is more than fast enough to decode MP1 audio at reasonable quality if someone wrote a player instead of me using less-than-FM quality 22050hz/8bit WAVs through the voice recorder program, and it totally could do something like Microsoft Video way faster than it decodes MPEG1 video if there was a player, but both are really just pipe dreams).

I've also started converting PDFs and webpages (which were saved as PDF) into image galleries so I can read them on the device. I convert them to .gif with pdftoppm and imagemagick, then run that to-gallery.py script on the results.
It'd be nice if modern web pages could be handled natively on the device instead of being flattened into images, but if I want to keep things like table formatting and CSS layouts and what have you, this ends up being the best way by far, and because the gallery script creates web pages with a .GIF on them, I can manually add any links as annotations under the image if need be (and usually, any pages I bother putting on the device are going to be self contained enough that I don't need to).
I spent a while looking for a PDF reader, but honestly, pre-rendering the PDF to GIF+HTML sets has been such a good solution that it doesn't matter, beyond the overhead of each of the HTML pages being 32kB minimum on my CF card (if you have a 200 page PDF, that is over 6MB lost to overhead, bleh). Having no zoom does suck, and PocketIE's insistence on downsampling any images wider than the screen ruins any hope of reading files with small fonts, but alas.

Edited by null1024 2022-10-01 4:17 AM
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