Friday 15 February 2008

Windows CE Codenames

Found this nice bit of text describing the history of Windows CE codenames which for some Windows CE Engineers might be interesting:

Before the Windows CE product was released we had an internal set of tools known as the Oem Adaptation Kit also known as the OAK - an OAK of course is a type of tree.
The initial releases of Windows CE were therefore named after trees, as follows.


Windows CE 1.0 - Alder (Nov 1996)
Windows CE 2.0 - Birch (Nov 1997)
Windows CE 3.0 - Cedar (Apr 2000)

Interestingly, there was a second team within the Windows CE group that worked on the tools, I guess you could consider tools to be something that makes a job easier, or cuts the job down to size - therefore the tools releases were named after things that cut down trees - as follows...

Windows CE 1.0 - Alder - Tools: Axe
Windows CE 2.0 - Birch - Tools: Buzzsaw
Windows CE 3.0 - Cedar - Tools: Chainsaw

For Windows CE 4.0 the original plan was to call the O/S DougFir (DouglasFir), the thing that cuts down DougFir trees was going to be Dozer (BullDozer) - interestingly, at Windows CE 4.0 the o/s team and tools teams merged together to form a new, combined team - the codenames for the operating system and tools also changed at this time from trees/tools to Whiskeys - so the codenames for Windows CE 4.0 onwards are as follows.

Windows CE 4.0 - Talisker (Jan 2002)
Windows CE 4.1 - Jameson (Jun 2002)
Windows CE 4.2 - McKendric (Apr 2003)
Windows CE 5.0 - Macallan (Aug 2004)
Windows CE 5.0 Network Device Feature Pack - Tomatin (Apr 2006)
Windows CE 6.0 - Yamazaki (Sep 2006)


* I found it on Test Embedded but it was originally posted by Mike Hall;

- Nigel

Monday 11 February 2008

New place of work

Thought I'd just let everybody know that keeps an eye on this Blog that over the last couple of months you might have noticed the new company web links appear.
This has been due to both my self and Graeme leaving Intrinsyc after they decided to close the EMEA office.

I'm sure Graeme will let you know more about his new plans creating ByteSnap but for this entry I'll focus on my self (but keep it brief).

I've joined another EMEA Embedded Gold Partner in the UK called Direct Insight Ltd.(www.directinsight.co.uk) as the "Embedded Platform Architect".
Direct Insight supplies embedded development platforms encompassing reference kits, production ready modules, embedded development tools, training and services. Thousands of developers across Europe rely on our expertise, support and product solutions to get to market. We are also experts in the field of JTAG test and programming.

Anyway enough advertising. But what I can say is this new role will let me continue to build on and keep my Windows Embedded knowledge up to date which I can share with you all and help enable more products to design in Windows CE, WinMo and XPe.

- Nigel

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Finding Cellcore examples for use in CE6.0

If you are trying out the Cellcore component in CE6.0 to dial voice numbers, receive calls, send and receive text messages and are looking for code examples then try the Smartphone SDK, there are examples under here most of which will compile as they are:

\Program Files\Windows CE Tools\wce500\Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone SDK\Samples\CPP\Win32\Cellcore\..

For example the SMS\HelloSMS code can be used for sending and receiving SMS messages, this uses the SmsOpen and SmsSendMessage functions which are identical between CE6.0 and Windows Mobile.

There are many code examples in here which certainly helped me out with the TAPI system for setting up voice calls for outgoing and incoming calls.