Anyone doing QB on a IPAQ Pocket PC?

[Dav]

I read on the PocketDOS homepage that by using PocketDOS you can run Qbasic on your Pocket PC. Anyone have experience doing this? I just got me a new ipaq and would LOVE to have good old QB on it.

- Dav

[red_Marvin]

Not me, but Shogun goes on about that one can run linux on
a cellphone if you find a way to install it...

...So why not?

[Plasma]

My friend has a Casio PocketPC with PocketDOS, and he even has a portable keyboard for it (looks kind of doofy though)...QBasic runs fine, but I think there might have been a problem running QuickBasic (not sure though). But it was pretty slow...

Of course, you could always get ScummVM and play The Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island. :wink:

[Dav]

My friend has a Casio PocketPC with PocketDOS, and he even has a portable keyboard for it (looks kind of doofy though)...QBasic runs fine, but I think there might have been a problem running QuickBasic (not sure though). But it was pretty slow...

Of course, you could always get ScummVM and play The Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island. :wink:

Thanks for the info, Plasma.

I'm looking into scummVM now. This IPAQ is a cool little toy.

- Dav

[Kackurot]

Dav, is there a webpage for ipaq? How and where did you get it? I want one!!! :bounce:

[Dav]

I got it from a local computer store (a refurbished model) along with the expansion sleeve with the extra battery. That expansion sleeve gave me a PCMIA slot which I stuffed with a novatel wireless modem. Yay! Wireless internet access from anywhere now using the built-in Pocket Internet Explorer. :bounce: It has email access too. qbasicnews.com looks good with Pocket IE, BTW. Hotmail.com and sites that use secure connections can't be used without a Registry hack. Speed is kind of slow - reminds me of a good 19200 baud connection.

I put some homemade Mpegs and MP3's to show it off to my family. A full length movie can fit on one 256mb SD card. (low rez though). The 'Pocket TV' program plays average quaility Mpeg's at about 24fps. The MP3 playback sounds ok using 'PocketMusic' and I can stick hundreds on a SD card. There's tons of stuff out there for Pocket PC. I never knew how much until a couple of weeks ago.

You can get iPaq's directly from HP: http://www.hp.com

Here's a page with a pic of the model I have:http://www.idg.net/english/crd_internet_1145979.html

I wanted the newest iPaq model, but just couldn't find them around my area yet, or scrape up the 200 extra bucks to order it from HP. I also read that those have some problems and are being called back.

- Dav

[Dav]

Plasma357: It turns out that QB45 runs fine with PocketDOS too. And programs made in QB does as well.

[Plasma]

Cool

[red_Marvin]

Just curious: Can you use normal screenmodes on those,
or does it have totally different x,y settings that will mess it up?

[Dav]

red_Marvin: Sorry for this late reply...

So far, I've only had success running text-mode apps, which all run perfectly. The locate command in qbasic.exe works as it should. I'm using an older version of PocketDOS which doesn't support higher resolutions, giving me an ILLEGAL FUNCTION CALL when I try to set unsupported modes (sometimes it will crash Qbasic with a 'Far Heap Currupt').

The text-mode apps I've compiled under QB45 (like THIS one) runs fine too, but screen updates are on the slow side, and screen colors are a little different than appears on my PC (but close to them).

The newer version of PocketDOS supports many more screen modes, allowing games such as Monkey Island to play. I'll update to that version soon.

- Dav