MS Emulator

[glook]

This might be a bit OT, but I wondered if any of the experts out there have some experience with Microsoft's standalone WM5 emulator?

I've finally got the emulator itself to work, but when executing my compiled Basic4ppc program it fails to start - giving an error on SQLDevice.DLL. I assume that this is due to not finding .NET 2.0 - I also tried Erel's TestNet2 (thanks Erel) program and that also fails on its DLL (a program with no libraries will run).

I installed .NET CF 2 SP2 to the emulator and it appeared fine throughout (looked the same as on the real device, asked for a reset). The "host" XP machine also has .NET 2 installed.

It would be nice to have an emulator to try different screen sizes etc.

Anyone tried this?

Geoff.

[agraham]

I've only used the WN2003SE emulator but I would guess that the WM5 one is similar.

I've just tried this with an exe that needs the network.dll and it worked fine for me on the WM2003SE emulator running standalone outside Visual Studio.

Make sure the device exe and the required libraries are in the same folder - they should already be as B4PPC will have copied them to your development folder. Start the emulator and configure the shared folder to point to the exe folder. Start File Explorer in the emulator, go to the Storage card and you should see the exe and the library. Click the exe and it should go (very slowly - I've a 3.4Ghhz CPU and it's slow even on this!).

I guess that you have found that as long as you save the emulator state you don't need to reload .NET 2.0 each time you start it.

[Erel]

The easiest solution is to use WM6.0 emulator instead.
It comes with .Net CF 2.0.

[glook]

I've done everything pretty much as you described, including the save-state between re-starts. The somewhat frustrating thing is that it all looks right - until I start my program! You are absolutely right about the speed, and it's on a laptop!!!

I'm still wrestling with WM6 emulation, I think I have the right files - followed instructions on a Microsoft Exchange Team blog page. So far the installs fail every time, but without any meaningful error messages - just says "unsuccessful". Still working on it though!

Geoff.

[agraham]

If you still get nowhere you may care to read this thread for an alternative.

http://www.basic4ppc.com/forum/chit-chat/503-freeware-program-see-your-pda-pc.html

I occasionally use MyMobiler http://www.mymobiler.com/ which in some ways is better than the emulator. Be sure to read my caveat in post #5 of the thread.

[Erel]

You should first install Microsoft Standalone Emulator: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Afterwards, install WM6 image:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[glook]

Thanks, for info. Yes, that's the way I did the original install attempt - still haven't worked out why the WM6 images part kept failing. However I have got an update:-

Finally got WM6 to install and run, but only after installing the update to version 2 of the emulator. It was a beta when I first looked, but now seems to be generally available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
After this, the same WM6 images installed OK.

My run program runs but now I've got a different problem with it - I get a "FormatException" failure every time it attempts to read or write a picture in a database BLOB field (tried different parts of the code, different records, tables - it's always the same). The same program works fine on both the desktop and my actual WM5 IPAQ. Everything else is OK, including all the other DB data.

At least it's progress!

I will also definitely have a look at MyMobiler.

Thanks again - this forum has already solved a lot of issues for me.
Geoff.