Viewpad 100

Hi,

Well, I got myself a new toy. Not a Piddle PC, but not an H/PC either. It's a Viewsonic Viewpad 100. The specs look pretty nice:

Windows CE3.0 (Build 126)
206MHz StrongArm SA-1110
128MB SDRAM (only about 104MB seems availale, though)
10" TFT display, 800x600 resolution, up to 32bpp color depth
Type II PCMCIA slot and Type II CF slot
USB host port

The biggest problem of course is...no built-in keyboard. So I lose the USB port for a keyboard. (I don't think CE 3.0 has support for hubs - anyone know for sure?) The other big problem is the operating system itself. As I said, it's not a Piddle PC (i.e. not PocketPC 2000) and it's not an H/PC (HPC2000) either. The shell looks a lot like H/PC, but there are glaring omissions from the OS build. (The one that's got me stumped is the lack of a Remove Programs icon in the control panel.) So far, most H/PC software seems happy with it. PPC software hates it of course (no AYGSHELL). I've got a lot more diddling to do, but I wanted to test out the USB keyboard I got for it today, and posting seemed a good way to test that.

You shouldn't need extra software to support USB hubs. The USB (1.x) host standard is supposed to take a maximum of 127 devices per host. As far as I can tell the hub does not need to have any logic.

In any case, tell us how it turns out

well, i do have a CE3.0 machine here, running core CE 3 just like your viewpad. my device is not a ppc, not a hpc, and not even a tablet. then what is it?! try to guess! i can help a little: it has 640x480 resolution, has no keyboard, and its screen is 4".
it DOES have remove programs in the control panel
also does have a PIM, not MS's pocket outlook though, the OEM included it, and looks almost exactly like pocket outlook, can sync with AS&outlook too. does have email (MS) and word (MS) and a spreadsheet able to handle xls (isn't MS but bsquare), a media player (of course not windows mediaplayer), voice recorder (again not MS) etc...

but you're right CE 3 itself doesnt have these by default. still it is strange that the viewpad lacks even remove programs.

so what is this CE3 machine?

Well, I've found the device to be a bit tricky to set up (I've had to hard reset it a half-dozen times now at least because I've messed something up), but it works pretty well once you get it configured. I've got my Wifi card running, most of the apps I want installed and configured, USB keyboard working perfectly, and even managed to get a USB mass storage driver installed and working for FAT16 formatted devices (it doesn't recognize FAT32 formatted USB drives as being formatted for some odd reason).

Finding out that the Viewpad is the same device as the Abocom MA1000 and the NETA 980 really helped. (I stumbled across that when WR-ResInfo identified my device as an 'Abocom Mirror 1.0' device. Also downloaded the CE 4.1 ROM image from Viewsonic, and the ReadMe said it was good for an 'Abocom MA1000' as well.) The NETA 980 hack for getting ActiveSync also works on the Viewpad, which is good since there's no other way to ActiveSync over 802.11 w/o it. I did briefly play with trying to re-flash the OS up to CE 4.1, but no success with a 64MB card. I think I need to locate a 32MB CF card somewhere, which is nigh on impossible in this age of 2GB CF cards for $100 US.

The biggest problem I'm having is no ability to uninstall ANYTHING once I install it short of a hard reset. There's no Remove Program icon on the device, and the ActiveSync add/remove software doesn't seem to uninstall when I try. Unless there's some registry key I'm missing, I may just have to spend $8 and get a 3rd party utility to uninstall crap from this thing. Stiill, with just over 100MB of memory to play with, I'm not too worried about running out.

cmonex: I haven't a clue. It's not a Casio BE-500 is it?

Edited by btrimmer 2006-03-19 3:21 PM

is that VGA?

answer: PC ephone-II, lol.

It isn't VGA as far as I know, but never having seen one....like I said I haven't a clue.

Anyway, so far so good. I'm having a bit of trouble getting MobileCubed H-bomb installed, and none of my Astraware games will run on it (they start, and then complain that they only run on PPC 2002 or later - guess they need a later revision of the CE 3.0 core or something). USB hub works fine with the USB host port, so I can use keyboard/mouse and other USB devices at the same time after all. Now, if I can just find a CE driver for my 802.11 USB dongle...

If it has the PRISM chip then there are USB drivers. You may need a little bit of config file editing to get it to recognize your particular brand and model. Search for it right here on this site.

I emailed the Prism USB based drivers to C:amie awhile back. They should be here somewhere for download.

I never had any luck getting them to work but I didn't really spend a lot of time with them. Please post up if you have any success.

Will get around to this some day - but it's low priority since my Pretec CF WLAN works just fine. I guess I really wanted to get a newer USB Wifi dongle (802.11g) to work with it, but that's not going to happen with Prism 2.5 drivers

Which reminds me, apparently CE 3 does support USB hubs. It's CE 2.11 that doesn't have USB hub capability. Now I just have to get a small powered USB hub so I can run all sorts of crazy things off the USB port.

So far, so good. Most things for the J720 will work with a bit of hacking. (Noticing that ExecCheck allows you to hexedit executables w/o a hex editor was quite the revelation to me. ) I've got the USB Mass Storage driver working pretty well (the Deje one - Clik! USB didn't work at all), and most of the applications I want work with some hexediting and stub DLL's. I even have Netfront 3.3 tech. preview running just fine.

I got Pocket Hack Master (speed scalar application) running, only to find out it doesn't support SA-1110 CPU (only Xscale PXA25x, 26x and 27x CPU's supported for now). But it might be of interest to you MP900 users out there that PHM can possibly be hexedited to run in CE 3 environment. I use PHM on my Dell Axim X5, and run a 400/100 PXA255 at 600/200 without any problems.

One thing that I haven't been able to do is get card games (CTFreeCell for example) to run, because I'm missing the DLL for drawing playing cards. Anyone know where I can get an ARM copy of DISPCARD.dll to install?