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AA/AAA battery devices recommendations?

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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-04-07 10:12 PM
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Hmmm... I have an H-120F and it can run on AA batteries, but I don't know the difference between it and the H-120S.
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Ranomez Page Icon Posted 2022-04-08 11:47 PM
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Run on AA unmodified?
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null1024 Page Icon Posted 2022-04-09 8:23 AM
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Yeah.
Looking at your first post, the machine might not really suit your needs..
The device runs fine on two normal AAs. Battery life isn't amazing, although that's probably because I end up needing the backlight a lot.
The device is also quite slow on battery though, and I like to keep mine plugged into the wall adapter most of the time.

That being said, if you're still interested in one, here's how the device has handled for myself:

Writing stuff up in Pocket Word is just fine.
Save as .rtf or .txt if you want to edit the files elsewhere... but as far as I can tell, the native .pwd format is just .rtf with a different header and I haven't seen any reason to not just always save as .rtf.

If you can get a PalmGB 2.0 key, you could do some Game Boy emulation at quite reasonable speed, at least when plugged in.
Otherwise, there's the free 1.0 release in the SCL... but it is MUCH slower and has some game compatibility issues.

There's no way to pick up radio, but you can play .WAV files with the voice recorder program.
If you're adventurous, you can use this for music, although because of the lack of compressed format support, space might be an issue.
You can also get a 3.5mm female to 2.5mm male converter to use the undersized headphone jack. Audio output is slightly noisy from the device's operation over headphones, and very noisy over the internal speaker. I generally end up using 8-bit 22050hz files, since they're a similar size to (admittedly much higher quality) .MP3 files. That might be a bridge too far in terms of sound quality for you, although, those files sound a lot better on the device vs played back with interpolation on my desktop.
The internal speaker is quite terrible, so if you do bother using the device for music, use a headphone adapter.

There's a Python 1.x release that runs on the device. I think you might be able to get PocketC too, although IIRC that also needs a registration key.

You can use the .NET Compact Framework on the device, but it has several caveats (like some things just not being supported by CE2.0 and you'll just have to figure out what is what via trial and error), and .NET applications may fail to start when on battery. I have no idea why, I'm maybe assuming some timing loop is erroring out or something since the device runs slower on battery.

You can get Pocket Paint to draw with in the CE2.0 PowerToys. Caveat: AFAIK, you need to run the installer. There might be a way to get the program out of the installer so you can just copy it onto a memory card, but I just used the installer. The file format is a 2-bit variation on .BMP that almost nothing supports, however. Standard BMP files are 1-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, and 24-bit.

Transferring data to and from the device is easy, it supports Compact Flash. I have a 512MB card in mine. You can just copy files on/off the perfectly boring FAT filesystem.
I've also synced my device using ActiveSync and a USB serial cable... but I used a Windows 2000 VM instead of trying to sync with my Windows 10 host. Still, 90% of my data transfer has been through just popping out the CF card. The remaining 10% is for programs that have installers that need to run on a PC, so I copy those to the Win2k VM and sync them the old fashioned way.

Windows CE 2.0 has fairly little software available, so finding more software might be difficult.
The unit has an SH-3 CPU.
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CE Geek Page Icon Posted 2022-04-09 4:29 PM
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null1024 - 2022-04-09 12:23 AM

Writing stuff up in Pocket Word is just fine.
Save as .rtf or .txt if you want to edit the files elsewhere... but as far as I can tell, the native .pwd format is just .rtf with a different header and I haven't seen any reason to not just always save as .rtf.


The desktop version of Softmaker Office can also read and edit .pwd files.
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Ranomez Page Icon Posted 2022-04-10 2:14 PM
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Thanks for the detailed information.
It's interesting to find out they behave differently on battery than on the plug but good to know, for the emulation part I'll likely just get a Leapster Explorer GS and put retroleap on it, I own a few CE compatible emulators from back when I had my first Windows Mobile phone but don't think any of em are gonna be compatible with this specific version (only tested them on CE 5 and 6 up to now).
As for the Pocket C thingy I actually think I have that somewhere but there's also another language I may be able to use on the desktop for creating apps: FPC, I know it has support for some CE version but not entirely sure which CE versions it works with and only older Lazarus versions have a template for that. The .NET thing is interesting and annoying.
For the text writing stuff rtf or txt is good enough but TBH whenever I get whatever devices I decide to get I may just build my own app that has support for some open source format (or port one if I find anything simple enough, definitely ain't gonna attempt porting Libre Office).
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Ranomez Page Icon Posted 2022-09-07 1:45 AM
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So it has been quite a number of months since I opened this thread and in the meantime I actually did get a few devices so I thought maybe someone else would be interested.

The devices I currently have are:
1. LeapFrog Leapster Explorer - running a Linux CFW with emulators and stuff
2. LeapFrog Leapster Explorer GS - the far more powerful brother of the Leapster Explorer, same CFW is available but with more emulators and games available, worse button layout
3. Casio Classpad 330 - interestingly enough Casio basically just recycled the Pocket Viewer PV-S1600 for the Classpad 300, 300 Plus and 330, even the OS is just modified PVOS so you can hex edit apps for the PV-S1600 to run on them
4. Casio Ex-Word Dataplus 4 - Japanese electronic dictionary, a modded devkitpro is available so I'm working on figuring out how to write apps for it
5. Sharp Brain PW-G5200 - 2nd generation Sharp Brain, Windows CE 6, more powerful than the one reviewed here, I ordered that one a few days ago so still waiting to receive it

If anyone wants and explains how I'd go about it I can write a review of the Brain when I get it (and/or of any of the other devices if anyone's interested and I have somewhere I could post them). I will most likely try Linux on the Brain as well if anyone wants to know more about that particular part of using a Brain, however I don't intend to connect it to the internet.

Other than those I'd also want to get my hands on a LeapFrog LeapPad 2 cause that's a fairly powerful tablet and buildroot can be used to customize your own Linux CFW for it.
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torch Page Icon Posted 2022-09-07 8:49 AM
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HPC:Factor has a great article/style guide on writing reviews here:
https://www.hpcfactor.com/info/help/content/contribute/reviews/
And C:Amie is always friendly/able to review, give advice, and so forth for review ideas if need-be. Obviously, he can chime in far better than I, but that particular article did help me, as well as C:Amie.

I know what you mean, I went on a craze with devices too very recently!
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stingraze Page Icon Posted 2022-09-07 11:50 PM
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Ranomez - 2022-09-07 10:45 AM

So it has been quite a number of months since I opened this thread and in the meantime I actually did get a few devices so I thought maybe someone else would be interested.

The devices I currently have are:
1. LeapFrog Leapster Explorer - running a Linux CFW with emulators and stuff
2. LeapFrog Leapster Explorer GS - the far more powerful brother of the Leapster Explorer, same CFW is available but with more emulators and games available, worse button layout
3. Casio Classpad 330 - interestingly enough Casio basically just recycled the Pocket Viewer PV-S1600 for the Classpad 300, 300 Plus and 330, even the OS is just modified PVOS so you can hex edit apps for the PV-S1600 to run on them
4. Casio Ex-Word Dataplus 4 - Japanese electronic dictionary, a modded devkitpro is available so I'm working on figuring out how to write apps for it
5. Sharp Brain PW-G5200 - 2nd generation Sharp Brain, Windows CE 6, more powerful than the one reviewed here, I ordered that one a few days ago so still waiting to receive it

If anyone wants and explains how I'd go about it I can write a review of the Brain when I get it (and/or of any of the other devices if anyone's interested and I have somewhere I could post them). I will most likely try Linux on the Brain as well if anyone wants to know more about that particular part of using a Brain, however I don't intend to connect it to the internet.

Other than those I'd also want to get my hands on a LeapFrog LeapPad 2 cause that's a fairly powerful tablet and buildroot can be used to customize your own Linux CFW for it.


The Linux on Brain is quite a hit here in Japan, and a magazine called Linux Magazine has an article on how to install Brainux (Linux for Brain) on it.

Here's a link to Brainux for those interested in installing Linux on your Brain.
https://brainux.org/

I'll be happily waiting for the review on Brain.
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