Pocket PC Software & Emulators

[FLaRe85]

I just ordered my first Pocket PC last night! I decided that the Palm just wasn't cutting it anymore. I decided to go with an iPAQ H5550. It's mainly for tracking business-related finances and my agenda, but I don't see why I can't have a little fun with it as well. I think I might've gone a little overboard on the specs, but I hated the fact that my Palm could do so little. I'd rather have something that can do too much. I also have an expansion pack and a 1 GB CF microdrive on the way. So, I think I'm set.

Since I've never looked into Pocket PC software, I'm totally clueless. I know I want PocketQuicken at least as I loved the Palm counterpart. Though, what are other handy pieces of software out there? In particular, I'm looking for something that can track automotive maintenance, something to track a weightlifting/workout schedule, and a QuickBooks-style app for PPC. Of course, I'll welcome any other suggestions. If you know of any cool toys or fun games, let me know.

Next thing I was wondering about is Emulators. This is totally foreign to me. I'm aware of the existance of emulators for Pocket PC, but that's about it. What are the best emus out there? Can I go as far as PSX/N64 emulation?

Any help is appreciated.


EDIT: Oh, and if anybody is interested in my old Palm Epocrates m500, I've put it up for sale on eBay.

[Snake785]

I highly doubt you can go with decent psx/n64 emulation. You'd probably get as far as SNES emulation. Yea I wanted to get a PocketPC for the emulation but I'm not too sure on how compatible these emulators are as well as how they perform.

[VDDZ]

MorpeGear is the muti-emulator for the pocket pc, it does Snes, Nes, GB, GBA, Gens, GameGear, SMS, and one other, something like TNC16. My 3870 runs it all well but the Snes and Gens, but mine is only a 200mhz, yours should give you decent gameplay with decent framskipping. FPSCE (I think thats it) is the psx emulator and on the next gen ppc's(Dells MyPals, 600mhz ppc's, etc), it's ok. I could run MMX4 riped without sound at an almost playable level with my 3870. If you want any of them (there's alot more) go to www.zophar.net

[gameman733]

I use morphgear on my h1945 ipaq (266 mhz samsung proc.) and i can play NES, and GBC games at full speed. I can also play sega genesis games at near full speed with no sound and GBA games at about 1/3 speed with no sound. dont know about SNES games. Also IIRC the xscale processors were slower then a samsung processor at the same speed, but the xscale is overclockable.

[Janus]

dunno about you guys, but when im doing my coding for mobile apps i usually use MS emulator of ppc? Since ints all windows and all.
Altho if you are alittle more adventurous(like <---) you could try flashing your ppc to use linux..open source apps are easier to find too actually.

Regards.

[Chrono Archangel]

http://www.zophar.net/ppc/ppc.phtml
zophar has a PocketPC section. although i doubt youll get nice PSX/N64 emulation. you have GBA, SNES, NES to play aorund with

[Razor Blade]

>>I highly doubt you can go with decent psx/n64 emulation

With Flare's specs he can get a good 30-45 fps or even higher (depending on the game) with fpsece. He's gonna have to overclock which is a regular thing when it comes to PPC's (not like dektop overclocking at all)

Anyways head on over to www.pdai.org and register on their forum's flare. You will find a ton of helpful people there. I know I did. Personally I'm gonna wait till DirectX makes it way to PPC's.

[Viper_Viper]

With a top of the line ppc you can get good fps with psx games. The best part is that u got the 1gig microdrive. THat helps alot. I only got a 512mb card and its hard to get psx games on it.

[Razor Blade]

I thought most people can compress their games (with taking things out) to anything between 2mb-60mb for a good compression Check out the link I posted Viper_Viper, if you havn't been there already I learnt tons of stuff.

[VDDZ]

2-60mb?! The smallest game I've found was Mega Man X4 wich I put down to 20 after sucking out the movies and music (all that's left is a couple dozen 2d maps and some sprites).

[Ipswitch]

my sharp zaurus has pretty much the same specs (well, overclocked to 470mhz) and runs snes9x fine. not as high fps as my computer, but pretty close.

[Razor Blade]

>>2-60mb?!

I know it sounds crazy, but I'm not joking. But yea, that's with ripping a lot (if not all) of the sounds and all movies out

[Viper_Viper]

Ive looked up the ripping stuff, and when i tryed it on FF7, i got a 700mb cd down to about 300ish mbs, and i did not want to erase everything on my 512card. But I know i probbably did somthing wrong becasue it was my first attempt.

[retroK]

Here is another list of emulators running under PocketPC: http://www.aep-emu.de/Emus-file-emus...-PocketPC.html

[gameman733]

Originally Posted by Razor Blade

With Flare's specs he can get a good 30-45 fps or even higher (depending on the game) with fpsece. He's gonna have to overclock which is a regular thing when it comes to PPC's (not like dektop overclocking at all)

Is it possible to overclock the samsung processors? I havent found any programs that will work with them (only xscale).

[Razor Blade]

I don't know if anyone has been successful with overclocking a samsung processor :/ I know most people can overclock Xscale but even some seemed to be 'locked up' and some are more overclockable than others while still being stable.

[FLaRe85]

Hey, cool! I like the look of Morphgear. While it's a little overpriced, most of the modules I'd want are already provided free. I might go for the GBA and NES modules, though I'm doubting the GBA would be worth it as it sounds like it performs poorly. FPSEce looks cool. I was wondering where LDChen had run off to. I take it that it's like running games in ePSXe with a soft plugin?

I remembered visiting palmgear.com a lot way back when I first got my Palm. I just found out that there's a pocketgear.com too! This is great!

[moomoomoo]

No need really, those emulators are availble seperately..

http://pocketnes.retrogames.com/

Come to think of it, not too sure about the GBA - as far as I know there are emulators for it around, but how the match to morphgear's attempt I don't know.

[FLaRe85]

It came! I'm actually writing this post from my Pocket pc! Transcri ber rox!

[Razor Blade]

Wicked! Post some shots of it if possible