Squeak VM for iPAQ and other Windows CE platforms

This page describes how to run Squeak on iPAQ and other Windows CE platforms.

Squeak on iPAQ

Recently, Andreas Raab and others reported problems aruond GAPI on iPAQ 38xx. And also Henrik Gedenryd reported that the GAPI-enabled VM doesn't work on E-200 properly and I suspect this is due to the difference of the frame buffer geometry.

If SqueakVM-alpha6-030206-PPC-ARM.zip crashes on your iPAQ or doesn't look right, try SqueakVM-alpha6-030206-PPC-ARM-noGAPI.zip instead. The display update will be (significantly) slower, but it should work at least.

If yours is a Pocket PC 2002 device, then try SqueakVM-alpha6-030206-PPC2002-ARM.zip

Squeak on iPAQ 36xx

Squeak on other iPAQ and other Pocket PC 2002 machines

Squeak Image Files

You might want to have a Squeak image files that are suitable for iPAQ. Of course, you can always make such image by yourself, but there are easier ways to get started.

External Memory Card for iPAQ

You can use external memory card for two purposes; one is to store more data and image files, and other is to increase the Squeak heap size.

When Squeak looks for the image files, it scans folders under "\My Documents" on the internal memory and the external memory, if it exists. Because of this, you need to create "\My Documents" folder on the card. I'd recommend to create "Business", "Personal" and "Template" under "\My Documents" folder.

The address space of a Windows CE process is limited to 32MB and the maximum Squeak heap size usually 12-13MB. However, if you have large free space on the external memory card, the VM trys to create a memory chunk mapped to a file on the external card. In this case, you can break the 32MB address space limit. The VM trys to do so if a) the available size of the normal heap is less than 2MB bigger than actual image file size and b) the space available on the card is larger than the possible normal heap size.

The VM trys to delete the memory mapped file when it exits. However, the memory mapped file could linger for some reason. In that case, you can delete manually the " Squeak.mem" file.

Other Windows CE devices

I have made several pre-compiled VMs for various settings, but, I cannot test all of the variety of the Windows CE devices. Try VM(s) appropriate for your machine and let me know if it works. Except iPAQ, the VMs don't use GAPI and you don't need gx.dll.

If you want to recompile the source by yourself, or tweak the VM, get the Window CE source tree based on Andreas' 3.1 Alpha build 6 source.

If you want to grab the older version (dated May. 4, 2002), visit here.

Contact

Yoshiki.Ohshima@acm.org