Windows CE Launcher for Dreamcast?

Discussion in 'Sega Dreamcast Development and Research' started by americandad, Sep 11, 2013.

  1. americandad

    americandad Familiar Face

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    I've seen that iso floating around but I never got the chance to test it out as my Dreamcast won't boot most of the time.
    What can it actually do? Like fire up the calc.exe app from WinCE or iexplore.exe or better yet explorer.exe? :p Maybe it can even launch WinCE games (not made for dc)? Have you guys had any experience with it?
     
    americandad, Sep 11, 2013
    #1
  2. petterk

    petterk Spirited Member

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    I've been wondering about this too.
     
    petterk, Sep 15, 2013
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  3. darcagn

    darcagn Site Supporter 2013, Site Supporter 2014

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    You can't do anything with it.

    To put it simply, a program needs to be written and compiled for an operating system and processor architecture. Windows desktop applications are compiled for the x86 or x86_64 processor architecture, and normal Windows CE applications are compiled for the ARM processor architecture. The Dreamcast uses the SH4 architecture. So unless you wrote an ARM emulation layer for Dreamcast, or you had the original source code for the programs and spent the time to get them compiled with the Dreamcast Windows CE SDK, you can't do anything with this.
     
    darcagn, Sep 17, 2013
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  4. rso

    rso Familiar Face

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    Actually, back then there where three main architectures WinCE was available for: ARM, SuperH (-> SH4) and MIPS (well, and x86, but that was used almost exclusively in debugging - for the device emulator - iirc). Meaning, it'd not be impossible (however not very likely either) to find WinCE software from that era that was compiled for SH4.

    That being said, unless you're planning to do some CE-based DC development - in which case you probably wouldn't have needed to ask your question - it has no practical use, so just forget about it.
     
    rso, Sep 17, 2013
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  5. Tripredacus

    Tripredacus Peppy Member

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    Windows CE for Dreamcast does not contain the normal Windows applications that the other Windows CE 2.1 OS releases have. There is no shell included at all. The kit should still be available somewhere on Microsoft's website, but its going to be behind auth screens. I can't find it on MSDN.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms834186.aspx#dxinwince_topic9

    Regarding CPU support, it is officially these: ARM720T, SA-1100, VR4111, VR4300 and SH1. The Dreamcast kit only supports SH4 and the regular kit doesn't.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2013
    Tripredacus, Sep 18, 2013
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  6. americandad

    americandad Familiar Face

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    Ok so what's the point of having this launcher? It seems like it's just a waste of time.
    @Tripredacus:
    I know that, i'm not asking for a GUI I'm asking about the dreamcast iso that you can find on the internet called "Windows CE Launcher for Dreamcast" (or something similar).
     
    americandad, Sep 30, 2013
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