Beta: Acrobat Reader Installer for MIPS

Ok, the Arm version has been out for a while now. So here for testing is a MIPS version.

This is not official or supported.
This is just a repackaged installer. It has NOT had any Adobe code modified. i.e. while all the necessary dll's are there, the file hasn't been hacked to prevent application conflicts with the HPC2000 MFC library.

This is for HPC2000 MIPS Only. I've tried it on Pro for anyone that's interested and it doesn't work. StrongArm users can get the tested installer from the downloads section.

All PPC dll's are included in the installer.

Please accept the default installation directory, trust me it wont do what you think it will.

Sample PDF's are placed into \My Documents. You can freely delete them if you choose.

Please do not redistribute this link. Hot-linking the files from other site is not permitted (and is enforced by the server).

If you try the installer, please post here whether it worked or not!! Thank-you.

Download MIPS Cab installer : 6.07MB

I'd like to try it but could use a little guidance. I've got the cab and expanded it. Is there a script to install to the device? What next?

Thanks.

PS I wil install on two dvices: Fujitsu Pencentra 200 and Intermec 6651 (Sharp) - will let you know.

CAB files are Installer scripts....

Just upload it to your MIPS based device and double tap it.

CAB file copied to device; installation completed quickly, successfully. Application started correctly and a smal pdf was opened successfully. Images on a page look fine, however, all text is "blocked out." Imagine highlighting text in an MS WORD document with the text remining black rather than inverting to white. Every line of text is a black horizontal bar of varying discrete heights. In cases where text is a color other than black, the text can be seen over the black blocking. All functionality apears to work properly except the application seems to run very slowly. It is as if the processor is dedicating significant time to the blacking-out of all non-image items. Platform is Fujitsu Pencentra 200 running HPC 2000 build 9546-126, MIPS TX3922, 64MB Ram

Most interesting.
Can you provide a screen shot?

Is it just that PDF file? If you open one of the samples in the \My Documents\ folder are they exhibiting the same symptoms?

The file I opened was one of the samples in the My Documents folder, "Acrobat Reader Users Guide". I have other PDF files of the type I'd like to read but the results are worse - solid back pages. I don't have a screen capture utility on the machine but can get a photo of a representative page.





Attachments
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Acrodsc00632.JPG (39KB - 87 downloads)

wow, that's bad!

Perhaps there is an issue with the PPC DLL's.
If we can find a user with a different MIPS device to see if the results are the same, that would be useful. Community?

No go on my 6651. AR crashes with the 0xc0000005 error. I didn't let it replace my mfcce300.dll when I stepped through the install. Should I have replaced it? Is it the ppc2002 dll that's trying to install itself? What would happen to the operation of my other programs if I let the ppc2002 mfc dll install?

I have tested this out on my NEC Mobilepro 790 (MIPS VR4121 168mhz). I don't advise replacing mfcce300.dll in the Windows directory. The ARM installer from HPC Factor replaces it as well on my HP Jornada 720 (StrongARM SA1110 206mhz) and there can be program conflicts. The arise the same on both machines. Here are the troubles I discovered and a temporary solution:

When the mfcce300.dll is replaced, Acrobat will load, however any programs designed to used the mfcce300.dll designed for the HPC 2000 will perform an illegal operation. Two such programs are "Enterasys Wireless Roamabout" client for the Enterasys wireless LAN PC card, and ftxBrowser 0.8 (a clone of PIE 4.0 with tabbed browsing and other useful goodies). ftxBrowser 0.9 on the ARM machine doesn't use mfcce300.dll and can run normally.

I've found that in order to have these two programs run at all, I needed to restore the original mfcce300.dll from the ROM, but first, I copied the new mfcee300.dll that this installer added into a temporary folder. Then I deleted it from the Windows directory and ROM replaces it automatically with the stock dll. Now the two programs (ftxBrowser, Wireless Roamabout) work again. But Acrobat does not. I copied the attached files (aygshell.dll and doclist.dll) and the "new" PPC mfcce300.dll into the Acrobat Reader folder with the main exe file. I couldn't do that using the main explorer, I had to use a file manager (I use Total Commander), because Adobe won't let you in through the normal method of browsing folders.

Now, I still can't run Acrobat with ftxBrowser open or the Wireless Roamabout client in the background, but if I close both, Acrobat will open. If I want to web browse and use acrobat at the same time, I can still use the wireless card with the client closed, and I can use the pocket internet explorer without conflict.

I must say, however, that there are some funny bars that this mfcce300.dll adds. Normal viewing of pdf documents is fine, but the splash screen, as well as the preferences screen and file info screen have a bar running just above the taskbar that obscures some of the text. Also, the "find" function appears to not work at all and puts some kind of grey window in the upper left corner of my screen and I lose my acrobat buttons. I'm not too concerned with these bugs because my main concern has simply been to VIEW pdf documents and this does the job just fine.

Good work so far!

- Ian Robertson

Edited by irobertson 2004-10-19 3:27 AM




Attachments
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Acrobat_DLLs_MIPS.zip (5KB - 107 downloads)

Installing the DLL's are required.
The work around is to modify the adobe code, however we are at pains to issue a compiled release of it with fully working modifications that wont interfear with existing apps.

If there's sufficient commentarty supporting us doing it, we will reconsider.

I'm too lazy to log in. Update.
Perfect functionality on my 6651 if I do as irobertson suggested. I copied my ppc2002 mfccce30.dll, aygshell and my doclist.dll (my last two files are signifigantly larger than those provided by the installer) to the AR executable directory, shut ftxbrowser down and started AR. Perfect!!

FWIW, my AR is installed on a CF card and I deleted the installer provided ppc2002 dlls from \windows.

Great work c-amie! Another valuable program added to my arsenal. Keep tuning for the rest of the MIPS crowd. I'll keep beta testing on the 6651 to make sure you don't break anything

More good news. AR opened a 200 page Toshiba service manual w/o a hitch. It used 2007kb for this and drove my cpu load to 24%.

Nice work Ian regarding the ftxbrowser/mfcce300 conflicts. I'm going to bug toshi to compile us a MIPS .9 version to avoid this problem. The mystery of my many non-hex edited programs running/crashing is solved. Of course, when I hex-edit them to call another mfcce300 all is well.

edit: I uninstalled AR after copying the directory to a network share. It runs fine from my network share. Awesome. No storage ram required , no CF space needed. Of couse, for mobile use it will have to reside on a flash card.

Now c-Amie, is there any possibilty of cobbling together a version for SH3 processors? Adobe does have a ppcsh3 download in the archive section. You cobble together an installer and I'll hex-edit to call the proper dlls.

Edited by wallythacker 2004-10-19 2:11 PM

Bummer. I missed the edit time window.

Anyhow, if we hex-edit the AR exe we can place the ppc2002 dlls in their own dir and extend the systempath in the registry. That saves us from having multiple copies of the ppc2002 dlls all over the place.

But for the registry shy types who won't be installing many ppc2002 apps having the dlls in the same folder as the app isn't so bad.

edit: how about changing your installer to place the mfcce300.dll in the AR executable dir?

Edited by wallythacker 2004-10-19 2:27 PM

my personal recommendation is for all ppc cracked dll's to be stored under \windows and not in the filing system.
My sugggested renaming schema for all DLL's is to simply ammend a P to the file name, so for example the PPC mfcce300.dll becomes mfcce300p.dll.

This way you can hold a global catalogue on the files and hack all applications into the same scheme.
Currently the suggested naming schema varies from site to site some say use x some say add a number, others renaiming it all together.

I hear you. I'm a real scrooge with my precious ram and all my hacked dlls renamed with a 1 at the end are on my storage card in a \system directory. My systempath points to it. I hack my apps to call these. Of course, w/o my cf card I'm toast but it rarely gets removed for any reason.

My j690 also benefits from this scheme. Lots of stuff won't run w/o mfcce200.dll and olece200.dll so they reside in my j690 cf card in a \systems dir. Saves me >600k of my precious ram.

I don't think I have a single app installed in storage. I've managed to offload everything to my cf card. Maybe I've just been lucky as I've seen some apps won't run from cf. I learn to live without them, especilally if it's a game.


You say tomayto, I say tomahto, same thing accomplished.