Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Handhelds Operating Systems Windows Hardware

Ask Slashdot: Best Software To Revive PocketPCs With Windows Mobile 5-6? 110

Posted by timothy from the don't-knock-interesting-hobbies dept.
An anonymous reader writes I recently got my hands on some amazing (at their time) pieces of technology, PocketPCs from the 2005-2007 era. All run with Windows Mobile 5 or 6, have storage SD cards (up to 4GB), 300 to 600 MHz ARM CPUs and 64-124MB of RAM/ROM. GPS chip is Sirf STAR III. I want to know what software you would install on them. Maybe a good Linux with GUI - if anyone can point on how to make it work. Creating some apps myself would be nice, but dunno where to start for WM5. One of my ideas was to use them as daily organizer / shopping list / memory games for people that don't own smartphones. So if anyone remembers such apps, I'd appreciate a reference. Tips or ideas for memory training or smart games are also highly welcomed. The power within these toys is simply unused and it's a shame!
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Ask Slashdot: Best Software To Revive PocketPCs With Windows Mobile 5-6? More

Ask Slashdot: Best Software To Revive PocketPCs With Windows Mobile 5-6?

Comments Filter:

  • Mobile is where progress is happening now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13, 2014 @02:46PM (#48590139)

    A device from 8 years ago is ancient. Just let it go. If you want to play with it for a sense of nostalgia, don't let me stop you, but don't foist that trash on anyone else.

    • Agreed. Maybe they can be recycled or used "for fun" but trying to make them useful for people without smartphones is probably going to take far more time and effort than it's worth. You can get off-contract Android or Windows Phone devices for $50 that are FAR more powerful and have a vast array of current software available. Trying to reinvent the wheel with a PDA from 2005 instead of a smartphone from 2011 is more of a hobby tinkering project that something that anyone else will find useful.

      *Also remembe

    • A device from 8 years ago is ancient. Just let it go. If you want to play with it for a sense of nostalgia, don't let me stop you, but don't foist that trash on anyone else.

      Pocket PCs happen to be a fairly bad case; but some old gear actually ages quite well, for certain purposes. I absolutely loved my Visor Edge with Weasel Reader and I can't even count how many books I read on that thing before Kindles were available, and back when they still cost a small fortune. Nice and portable, too.

      Also, you can have my '92 Model M when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands, assuming you brought enough backup to keep me from bludgeoning you to death with it.

      • If they do bring enough backup, call me, and I'll come running with a model M in each hand. This is equivalent to about seven marines.

        They may take our lives, but they'll never take our Model M's [slashdot.org].

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ebay (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sell each on eBay to enthusiasts such as yourself. Then use the profits to purchase a real smartphone.

  • Possibly android (Score:4, Informative)

    by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @02:53PM (#48590185)

    There were some community ports of linux to compaq ipaq series pocketpcs of that era, one of which is "Familiar linux".

    http://www.smartphonemag.com/c... [smartphonemag.com]

    There were also some efforts to port early android builds in the Froyo family, but i cant seem to dredge any up at the moment.

    These devices are a tad dated, but I could see them being used as a fancy IR remote control, and a few other things.

    • Re:Possibly android (Score:5, Informative)

      by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @03:11PM (#48590301)

      For the interested party, I found a github mirror of the original "Familiar Linux" distro, which is defunct.

      https://github.com/amatus/fami... [github.com]

      It should at least open the door to permitting a more "Recent" build using updated packages for those so inclined, since they have the build system and everything there in that mirror repository.

    • The actual project's site was also archived by the internet archive (wayback machine) and seems to include actual package files as well.

      https://web.archive.org/web/*/... [archive.org]

    • I used Familiar Linux back in the day, when my Compaq iPaq became little more than a paperweight. When it was new, I had bought the iPaq with the battery sleeve that had 2 PCMCIA card slots. I did use it for a couple things. One was a little wifi scan tool, kind a primitive Wifi Analyzer [google.com]. The other was the fancy IR remote that you mentioned.

      Since it was so limited, even though it was a little Linux box, it eventually just ended up sitting on my desk until the batteries died, and a few years later it e

      • I had an iPAQ H2210, which had the fastest CPU of the ERA - a PXA255 at a whopping 400MHz! I got it on sale with an extended battery around $175, IIRC. My new phone, under $200 brand new including a protector, has a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, sixteen times the RAM, more than 16 times the storage... etc etc etc. And that's a Motorola, I didn't buy the cheapest thing I could find.

        Back in the day, you could run Familiar linux on the thing OK, and it had a choice of GTK and Qt-based environments. Problem is, t

  • I actually looked into this earlier this year. I pulled 30 iPaq of various flavors out of a medical clinic as part of an upgrade. What I found was actually pretty grim. There was a NetBSD port for them, but it hasn't been maintained in years. Many of the tools used to build the images are just dead links now. Same with the Linux distros that are supposed to work on them. Hours of staring at 404 screens. I eventually gave up and recycled them.

    • You should have used the wayback machine.

      I found familiar-linux's git repository in there, circa 2008.
      https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]

      They also have the prebuilt packages in there (wayback machine), but you have to dig those out yourself.

      • In theory I have 0.8.4 of GPE and OPIE for H22xx devices, and HaRET 0.3.4 for booting it. If someone would like that, it is not very large and I could arrange to upload it someplace. I say "In theory" because I have no way to test these files besides unpacking the archives.

        • think there was gpe for the htc universal it booted but the phone side didn't work one thing it did have was slide to unlock :) you dragged a key to the lock.

          haret and z3 i think sound familiar.

          • HaRET was I think the most common loader for booting Linux from WinCE. I had (probably still have) the Sandisk 128MB CF+WiFi, I believe I stored my kernel and initrd on that and then had ext2 on my SD card. The H22xx series had both SD and CF, though it was pre-SDHC and also had only 3.3v CF as you would expect from a handheld. Once Linux booted I could only use the WiFi on the Sandisk card, though supposedly the driver will let you use both at once in more recent versions of the kernel — whatever wil

            • actually it might have been the toshiba e740 /e750 that i was thinking of and your right its been a long long time.

        • linux on htc universal
          www.unilinux.4fan.cz

          7 options including android
          openmoko , opie qtopia i think were the ones i played with there is debian (tchy).

          how much works i have no idea, but you can get a few applications working and a gui.

    • That's not true. The sources for hpcarm (the port for ARM-based handheld PCs) compile and run just fine. Every version of NetBSD has hpcarm binaries (6.1.5, NetBSD-7_BETA, sources compiled from -current). I think you just don't understand how NetBSD works.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What I found was actually pretty grim. There was a NetBSD port for them, but it hasn't been maintained in years. Many of the tools used to build the images are just dead links now. Same with the Linux distros that are supposed to work on them. Hours of staring at 404 screens.

      One of the benefits of not switching browsers too often and dragging your bookmarks with you is that you realize just how fragile the permanency of the web is. It is fairly grim that so many sites, even supposedly-profitable pornography, inexplicably take down your links, dmca does it for them, or the sites become domain-parked or lose maintenance. Bit rot kicks in on a resource that linked to other links, so all your leads end with 404s. And I'm talking about 3 to 5 years worth of time on STATIC sites. Whe

  • I had one of the original Casio Cassiopeia Pocket PC's. I remember thinking that it was the best thing ever. I could walk around with information in my pocket. Even had the network card with the dongle for reading my email. Had a 1GB IBM Micro Drive to expand the storage and play music in the car. I remember trying to install Linux on it at one point. Was only halfway successful and then the device bricked and never came back on. It was a great device at the time. But that was 15 years ago.

    • I remember those but I was more a fan of the Toshiba Libretto that was out at that time [ebay.com].

      It was quite a bit larger than the casio, but it was functionally more powerful and user friendly. However, it too had issues with getting linux on it, since the floppy disk drive was attached to a very proprietary controller via a silly looking detachable cable. With no peripherals attached, and the lid closed, it was very near the size of a vhs cassette. Very impressive for the mid 90s.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BancBoy ( 578080 )
        Loved the Libretto back in the 90s. Paperback book sized portable workstation. Had a Ricochet Wireless modem hooked up. Road Warrior stuff! I remember running the Windows NT 5 Betas and then 2K on it. I even had it dual boot into BeOS. If memory serves, the trick around the proprietary floppy issue was that we used a PC Card controller hooked up to an external portable CD-ROM drive to install alternate operating systems.
    • Man, a Micro Drive. Cheap flash has made those irrelevant; but I still admire their sheer beauty. All the 'I can't believe this possibly works, especially when they let it out of a lab and let an idiot like me bump it around' value of a mechanical HDD with a head floating on a cushion of air so thin that a speck of dust could ruin it; but on the scale of a nice mechanical watch movement, all crammed into a power envelope that a device expecting an normal CF card wouldn't choke on.

      I'd be hard pressed to f

  • Some things (Score:1, Interesting)

    by drewsup ( 990717 )

    are best left dead, WM, WinCE are 2 of them. Set them on fire, piss on them to put them out, then have fun by throwing them 1 by 1 into a wood chipper and get a good nights sleep knowing you just did the world a solid.

    the only possible use i could see for them is for a cheap satnav, assuming they even have a GPS module.

    • He said that at least one of them has a GPS module, and cited the generation of the radio used.

      I am not sure if Familiar Linux still has binaries and sources up or not... Let me check.

      I found a github mirror of the source.
      https://github.com/amatus/fami... [github.com]

      It should be possible to build an image using a cross-compliler.

  • If you really want to tinker with that old technology, why don't you start out right by making it useful? Install Linux on it. It's too slow for Android, but you could try Firefox OS on it. Then you wouldn't be wasting your time learning an api for a dead OS.

    • It's too slow for Android, but you could try Firefox OS on it.

      Firefox OS is based on an Android kernel.

  • .NET Compact Framework (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MtlDty ( 711230 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @03:18PM (#48590329)

    I've coded for those WM5/6 mobile devices using .NET Compact Framework, using C#. You might think these things are beyond use, but they're suprisingly capable. We still use ruggedised WM6 devices in warehouses as there still isn't a good cheap alternative.

    So coding for them is simple enough, but the underlying OS has a pretty horrible UI by today's standards.

  • opie / familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Saturday December 13, 2014 @03:34PM (#48590413) Homepage

    i had 9 of those smartphone / pocket-pc style devices back at the time: the absolute best one was the HTC Universal, as it was more like a hand-held clamshell laptop with built-in 3G. you _used_ to be able to get information about them on handhelds.org but we coordinated through #htc-linux (since taken over by android dummies) and used wiki.xda-developers.com (since taken over by android wannabe modders). [note to xda-developer forum users: i may be being slightly unfair though about the android dummies and wannabes: i apologise in advance to any of you that aren't so stupid as to be able to find and pay attention long enough to read slashdot :) ]

    so you're going to have to dig... and you'll almost certainly need to begin with the 2.6 era linux kernel tree, which should give you a very very big hint about what you face, here. to give you an example: the fastest i've ever been able to reverse-engineer linux onto a device was 3 weeks and that was because it already had a [GPL-violating] linux kernel on it, where they had left some clues around and it was possible to poke around in /proc.

    beyond that, the fastest i managed - and i could not get PM/wakeup to work because i could not locate the correct RAM/device re-initialisation parameters - was six to eight weeks on the HTC/Compaq Ipaq, i believe it was called the hw6915.

    beyond _that_, the _longest_ i ever heard someone taking (and this was because it was worth it) to get full driver functionality was THREE YEARS, and that was for the HTC Universal (aka O2 "XDA III").

    please please DO NOT underestimate how much work it takes to do reverse-engineering. these handhelds are actually far more complex pieces of kit, in engineering and in software terms, than any laptop or desktop PC you've ever encountered. the HTC Universal had SEVEN audio output paths for example, and over four audio input paths. there were over 110 GPIO pins on its Intel PXA ARM processor, but these were nowhere near enough, so they had to use an external GPIO IC (we called it ASIC3). but... they actually ran out of GPIO pins on that *as well*, so they ended up utilising the 16 pins of GPIO on the Ericsson 3G GSM modem (only contactable over USB!) in order to control some of the functions such as camera light.

    so in many ways you are actually better off designing (and paying to have made) your own device. that is not a joke, in the slightest bit. it will take you less time and will cost you less in lost earnings from having to work full-time on the reverse-engineering. and before you splutter in disbelief, there are people who have done exactly that: Dr Schaeller did the GTA04 fairly recently (fits into a Neo FreeRunner case), and in that way he at least got to pick a) a modern-ish processor b) the best components that were available c) he got CONTROL OVER THE DEVICE DRIVERs, and he didn't have to _guess_ what the GPIO maps and memory maps are.

    basically, what i'm trying to say is that if you cannot find a pre-existing project (you didn't mention what devices you actually have) that has done the reverse-engineering, unless you are actually thinking of learning reverse-engineering as a useful specialist marketable skill, either throw those devices into landfill, give them to someone who doesn't mind winceouch, or break them down for parts and sell the components on ebay. check beforehand to make sure that they're desirable parts of course.

    of course... i say "throw them into landfill", which is directly and vehemently against our social responsibility, but unfortunately when actually buying these devices we make selfish decisions, not socially responsible ones, not least because they *aren't any alternatives*. now http://phonebloks.com/ [phonebloks.com] is looking to change that in the smartphone space, and i'm looking to change that in the everything-else-device arena (starting here https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com])

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gigne ( 990887 )

      seconded. Agree 100%

      I did some reversing on the msm windows phones. Took us 3 months to reverse the shared memory for radio interface and GPIO for the keyboards. Ahh the good old days.

      I say gather the ce devices all up, dice and slice them and make art pieces out of them. Make build some semi functional cool robot sculptures. Looks nicer than in landfill and would certainly be a better use of time

  • We had developed an app for them (which didn't move very well, although it did win a Control Engineering award). A few months ago, we tossed everything as our cubes were being reformatted.

  • I owned two PocketPC devices back in 1999. They ran linux horribly, and sucked at everything else. I can say one thing for sure: SELL THEM. I'm pretty sure you could get $20-40 for each of them. When you're done with that, buy a no contract ZTE Zinger and don't activate it, normally $40, but at one time they were $10. YES $10 without a contract:
    http://slickdeals.net/f/733309... [slickdeals.net]

    I own 2 of them as backups to my Nexus 5. Best dirt cheap phone ever. Dual core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon 200, 512M ram, near stock Android

  • Microsoft has intentionally made their mobile devices expire after a few years.

    They have done it with every iteration of their mobile platform from Windows CE all the way to Windows Phone.

    It works like this:

    1. Buy our new mobile device! It's amazing! It does everything and we'll support it forever and ever, we promise! It's okay, go ahead and put all of your contacts and data on our devices. What could possibly go wrong?

    2. New generation of our mobile platform is out! Buy our mobile devices! It's amazing! O

  • Ignoring all the people advocating A) Linux or B) Trash 'em you can turn them into decent little shopping list gadgets for people if they have decent battery life still. Avoid anything that requires Internet or other connections at all - just turn off any wireless, etc. becasue you may not have the battery for it anyway and you certainly don't have the software/updates.

    HandyShopper was a great program for Palm and Windows Mobile back in the day, is free and still available: http://chrisant.home.comcast.net/

    • Ignoring all the people advocating A) Linux or B) Trash 'em [...] HandyShopper was a great program for Palm and Windows Mobile back in the day

      If they were palm devices which took normal batteries then I wouldn't say trash 'em. But they're wince devices which take special li-ions which you'll only be able to get old or cheap crap replacements for, and which stink on ice anyway. Palm vs. WinCE is very, very like Amiga vs. Windows back when Amiga was still a thing. Obviously, WinCE outlasted Palm, so that only adds to the congruence, but also because the Palm devices had less raw horsepower and yet were still far more pleasant to actually use.

  • Trashcan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday December 13, 2014 @04:25PM (#48590645) Homepage Journal

    The power within these toys is simply unused and it's a shame!

    The power within those toys is pathetic, based on the fact that $30 will get you something newer which runs Android and which has more CPU and RAM. Throw those fucking things away. All of the environments for them are dead, Familiar linux is based on OpenEmbedded which is a goddamned nightmare to build, just drop them into the recycling at the landfill and buy something newer.

    With that said, if you have an absolute shitload of them, the fact that they have a halfway decent (which I think adequately describes STAR III) GPS chip suggests that you should do something GPS-related with them. The problem is, the GPS isn't very good by modern standards (even cheap phones will use GLONASS as well now) and the battery life will be atrocious.

    Those devices are dead, and all the software for them is dead or dying, you will waste a lot of time just dealing with their problems and if you don't manage to find another OS which will run on them, WINCE UGH WINCE.

    • The problem is, the GPS isn't very good by modern standards (even cheap phones will use GLONASS as well now)

      Let's have some references before turning this into a USA vs. Russia fistfight. Oh, and Galileo FTW :D

    • We just picked up a bunch of Stream7 tablets running full blown windows8.1 for $99 each. So guess, I'm saying why save the old hardware at all?
  • http://axdroid.wikia.com/wiki/... [wikia.com] However it looks like nothing has happened for years... I own an Axim X51v and would like to give it a second life.

  • Maybe, just maybe they might be useful if you can develop WinCE apps for them. No, I wouldn't waste time with anything too complicated. But.. if you are in to building one-off hardware projects and if the devices have any usable sort of IO (maybe a serial port that could be connected to a microcontroller with lots of GPIOs) you might be able to use them as one-off control interfaces for something or other. I wouldn't go any deeper than programming by dragging controls into place, sending commands out the

  • There was an amazing XCOM or Ufo - the enemy unknown port on one of these, with reworked controls that matched stylus screen perfectly. Available on sourceforge or some place. There was a decent chess proggy too.

  • Streaming Internet Radio Player, Baby Monitor (Score:3)

    by gaiageek ( 1070870 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @05:51PM (#48591041)
    Sorry few others here seem to see the value in finding a function for still-useful technology that you probably picked up for free.

    Up until a couple years ago I used an old WM6 device as a streaming internet radio player. Perfect function for it, as it remained plugged in and so battery life was never a concern, and it meant rarely having to interface with the device (which was of course clonky and sluggish by today's standards).

    Another possible use which I recently stumbled upon is using them as baby monitors. No idea if there are dedicated apps for this for WM, but it sounds like you might be willing to create one yourself, which is great (and if you do, I hope you share it). This is actually a brilliant use for old smartphones because:
    1. many of the dedicated solutions on the market use analog transmission (which results in static) or, if digital, are quite expensive ($100+)
    2. they can remain plugged in so battery life isn't an issue
    3. it's not really an issue if the phone's screen is cracked
    4. they can potentially interface with someone's current smartphone, which they probably have close-at-hand anyway

  • Play streamed video (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Courtesy of integrated Windows Media Player (WMP), these devices can play Windows Media Video (WMV) at native screen resolution. If they are network attached, you could have VLC on a desktop machine transcoding video to WMV3/WMA and making it accessible via an MMSH transport. Might be useful as a cam monitor, etc.

    For your sanity, configure one of the hardware buttons to launch WMP w/ the server address so there is no futzing with the stylus oriented GUI when you want to use it.

  • Use it as-as for games, lists, Excel (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If your goal is sustainable re-use, I think it's a waste of time to force-fit linux on them. (Better options for same device) Instead, merely reset them with the original OS, apps and games, pre-tuned to the hardware. Our firm standardized on late-model Toshiba/Audiovox Windows Pocket PC smartphones with faster processors. When we moved the cell-phone carrier accounts and issued newer platforms, our users wanted to keep them because the built-in MP3/AVI player and SD card slot was simpler to use/manage

  • My experience with this kind of hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @08:57PM (#48591731) Homepage Journal

    I had a pair of clients who were primate researchers. In late 2006 they went into the Tanzanian bush with a bunch of Dell Axim X5s, which we chose over the sleeker, more modern X50s because of the lower price and the availability at the time of a superb third party aluminum case. The differences between the X5 and X50 were mainly skin-deep; a chunkier PDA was actually a bit nicer to use in the field.

    They carried the computers and PDAs along with a sophisticated solar-powered field biology lab to their research site via motorized canoe, then by native bearers -- just like in the old Tarzan movies. Then I didn't hear from for two and a half years, except for a message that bandits had stolen their stuff and could we send replacement hardware, which we did. I was very gratified to learn that the data backup procedures I recommended worked -- that the principal investigators always carry an SD card with an up-to-date backup of all the expedition data on their persons. Previous experience supporting field researchers in Africa suggested that anything not nailed down was bound to disappear over the course of two years.

    When they returned in 2009, they were agog. They'd gone into the bush with the most advanced consumer technology available. When they came back nobody was carrying PDAs anymore, there were iPhones everywhere. The left before the iPhone was announced and returned after everybody had one, and when they saw the user interface, there were staggered. They were like Rip Van Winkle waking up in a strange new world.

    As for the poster's question, as a geek I totally understand it, but from a perspective of someone who actually developed for the platform professionally, there's little attraction to working with these devices when you can get an 4.3 inch Android "tablet" for under fifty dollars, and its so much more easier and more enjoyable to develop for. There was some really nice hardware built to run pocketpc, but pocketpc itself was mediocre in the extreme. I certainly tried the Linux ports that were available, but there really wasn't a compelling reason to use them, however, other than the novelty of having Unix on the palmtop. But they didn't deliver a better handheld experience (as iOS and Android do).

    I'd still consider old-school hardware for sending into the bush for several reasons. The first is a removable battery. You're in the middle of a series of observations that will make your career (this often happens in field research) and your battery goes dead. So you carry a spare, which is more convenient and cost effective. The second reason is the SD card. You finish those career-making observations and head back to camp, but you drop your device into a deep, rocky gorge. With an SD or microSD card you just pop the card with your data out and it's just a minor mishap. Third, something a little more bulky than a razor-thin smartphone is better when you're chasing a troop of chimps through the jungle, your device in hand ready to record an observation at any instant.

    You can of course get android devices which have the virtues of old-school hardware, but they're not mainstream -- in other words they're pricey. Back when the X5 was being manufactured, it was being sold to people to keep their address books on. And it sold by the gazillions, which meant on a unit price basis it was a bargain. Scientists often have awesome tech, but it's because they absolutely need it. They don't have money to throw at inessentials. So it was really nice to be able to load our guys up with tons of bargain consumer tech. If they busted an X5 they could just grab a spare out of the crate. It was as close to my perfect world as I believe we'll ever be, where data is priceless but hardware is disposable.

    I got boxes of tech like this in my attic: Apple Newtons, Dell Axim x5s and X51s, practically every generation of Palm Pilot, very early proto-smart phones that ran "Windows CE", a ruggedized Trimble pocket pc with high accuracy DGPS built in. They all work too. And if anyone

    • You can of course get android devices which have the virtues of old-school hardware, but they're not mainstream -- in other words they're pricey

      The HTC Desire HD has those old-school virtues (SD card and removable battery), and I don't think it's pricey now. Of course it has to be bought second-hand or refurbished. If you can settle for even lower resolution, you can get an even cheaper HTC Tattoo or even older stuff.

  • NetBSD runs fine on that stat stuff. Look for NetBSD on Jornada 720 [netbsd.org] in this page, running Doom as a demo

  • A 5 second google returned http://www.anytux.org/hardware... [anytux.org]
    Linux compatibility for hundreds of old handhelds are on there.

  • Creating some apps myself would be nice, but dunno where to start for WM5.

    You might want to have a look at VS 2008 and the .NET compact framework [wikipedia.org] - I seem to remember the Express (free) version of VS 2008 supports it. It's pretty easy to develop. Expect far from fast performance and no easy way to scale across screen resolutions, but it should be good enough for things like "daily organizer / shopping list / memory games".

    I wouldn't bother, though - I have a couple of those devices (a Dell Axim x51v and an HP). They probably work like new, but I haven't used them for half a decad

  • Plug it in, turn on the backlight, start World Clock and use it a night light/desk clock. My HP 320LX has been doing that for 8 years or so.

  • I've got a Dell X51V from that era. The only thing that I've though about doing with it is using it as a touchscreen for a Raspberry Pie. You could probably write an HTML frontend to cmus or some other useful application. You would then just access the Pie using the device's built-in web browser (garbage) or Opera Mini 2.x (I still have a copy). This is easiest if the device supports wifi (like my Dell) and has a cradle to hold it while it is connected to power (like my Dell).

  • The Android ports all seem to have serious flaws. The Windows CE software can still be very useful, so long as running an older version makes sense. For instance, you're probably out of luck if you want to find an up-to-date browser or version of Skype, but if you want to use it as a calculator emulator, planitarium program, or gameboy emulator, you can probably find some fine programs for it.

    I have a couple of them (a Dell Axim PDA and a Windows Tilt 2 smartphone), but I just gave up on making anything u

Slashdot Top Deals

The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8. -- R.B. Greenberg [referring to PDPs?]

Close