custom roms for 900c!

so hows it coming along???? Hey I was wondering what kind of graphical enhancements there will be in this realise

Cmonex - the idea of a pocket outlook suite would be amazing for those machines (900c) that don't have them. Is that something that is possible?

Guys: I'm currently working on a Vista skin for the WinCE window manager to be embedded in cmonex's ROM. The graphics will be based on either the real theme straight out of Vista or one of those Vista skins folks created for WinXP. (whichever is easier for me) If anyone has any XP themes they prefer over vista or something, I may consider those too. This will all be available to switch in ram anyway, if you get tired of the default look.

I'm also working on getting the WinCE 4.2 Pocket IE to coexist with IE CE 6.0 to that folks have the option of both browsers. Some may prefer PIE for more casual web browsing as it renders much faster than IE CE and takes up less RAM to boot. Its just not as accurate as a desktop browser like IE CE or Opera would be. Its identical to the version of Pocket IE that comes with the original Pocket PC 2003 platform and renders better than the older PIE in CE 2.11-4.10. Its needed to get programs that use htmlview.dll (like Mdict) working anyway, so it will be in the ROM no matter what (for compatability). It might as well be put to good use.

Geared2003: I figured out that there really is not much to getting the XP themed GWES/Commctrl working on CE 4.x/5.0. You just build em with PB and replace em in RAM OR rename GWES and change the GWES that gets loaded in HKLM\init. Years ago I kinda figured GWES was hardware specific...until I tried one from CE 4.2 on Pocket PC 2003 and it actually worked! Parts of it (like the LED driver) may actually optionally be hardware specific but I did not really notice anything on the devices I tested it on where it would matter. I've found GWES will even load from the 900c's flash disk after testing during my brief ownership of a 900c. The same is true on the Gizmondo. You can try it on your Mio but you must be sure that the flash disk is mounted BEFORE the OS tries to load GWES.exe or else you will need to do a hard reset.

I'll soon post my guidelines for converting Windows XP msstyles themes into XP-like GWES skins in a seperate thread.

The GWES I sent cmonex for use in her ROM has MouseKeys support compiled in it also, if I am not mistaken... (Just felt like mentioning that...)

Edited by TFGBD 2007-03-26 11:19 PM

hey TFGBD

yes TFGBD helped a lot with the cool skins.. they look real real nice.

ah, i've always wanted the PIE option! so let me knwo if you figure it out!!

no, gwes is not hw specific at all.

what's mousekeys? i noticed it always shows the mouse pointer - dont like that.

Am I allowed to bump this and ask for it to work on a 900

Sorry, that did not work on my Mio: I built an XP-style Gwes.exe with PB4.2 and copied it to my device (RAM). After a soft-reset, I got a complete mess with the graphical elements ( and yes, I had this stupid mouse pointer right in the middle of the screen).
Did you try this on Ce3.0 /HP2000 ? After all, Muis were not supposed to be supported on CE3... Maybe I'll try...
BTW, I would prefer to keep the original theme in ROM, and use MUIs to switch between different custom skins: just my 2 cents...

macmee: yeah later i'll do a hpc2000 version too


Geared2003: no idea what the problem is, care to send your gwes so that i can look at it?
i do prefer the xp style gwes, it makes it a lot better looking. also allows you to access more stuff to skin as some stuff cannot be done by using mui's.

update: first version of the base rom ready with deleted / added files. need to edit registry and initobj and then i'll test the rom and put it up for download finally
i'll make a list of what's changed / new. i will be happy to add / change additional stuff on request.
also a tutorial is in the works. one thing is scary though: all the tools (even isotherm's xipbin) have at least one bug.. lots of workarounds needed until some new ultimate tool is written
that's also a reason why it took longer, i thought i would be finished yesterday but i found out i relied too much on one tool so needed to do changes by hand..
well that's it for now

forgot to answer this.. it will have LOTS of graphical enhancements and this is only the start of it, there will be more themes later... send your thanks to TFGBD




yes it seems to be possible, getting it out of a hpc2000 rom, but work has been delayed on that (so far i have a half done pocket access), because i realized i need a tool to automate part of the work, to speed it up and make it less tedious
the tool writing isn't going too well right now - i've talked to someone who promised to help but he's kind of busy right now. if anyone can write basic enough code in any common language (not assembly ) let me know please.

Dear Cmonex,

I really appreciate all of your hard work? Could you tell me from where could I download this modified rom? I would die for it!!!

nounousomes@gmail.com

nounousomes: i will do the registry today, and then release it.. no worries, stay tuned!

new update: it was bugging me why i couldn't put files in the last ~2MB of the rom (2MB minus 400k kernel minus padding). it would be equal to 3MB's worth of uncompressed files..

to explain, the rom looks like this: 512K bootloader, then 29.5MB space for OS, then 400K kernel, then the rest is empty and cannot be accessed by default.

i tried to flash images that contained data after kernel space (i.e. after that 400K), but the bootloader would just choke on them and not flash them.

so i remembered there is this nice updater bootloader, and i cracked that to accept my extra data (i used this external updater as i'm not willing to flash in a modified bootloader, yet). as a proof of concept i replaced explorer.exe (with one that has no backup battery warnings ) and put the new explorer.exe after kernel space. the hacked updater bootloader accepted it and flashed it and ... it booted fine..! no battery warnings either heh.

so now accepting even more suggestions as to what to put in the rom!!

Edited by cmonex 2007-04-05 7:14 PM

Will have to give this more thought. I just bought a spare on ebay so will have one to test your wares on...

thats cool any suggestions what i could put in the extra space? or just release first version and bother with this later?

If you havent included flash, opera or minimo they would be nice to have if you could..

If you're releasing this rom, when my Mobilepro 900 came in, would I be able to use it on that?

Thanks!
- David Z