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u/IllustriousWin4104

r/OldHandhelds
▲ 10 r/OldHandhelds

Is GCC 16.1.0 really available for WinCE4.2?

I saw the CEGCC 9.3.0 project on GitHub, tested it, and it actually supports the base. Do you think it's feasible to port GCC 16.0.1 to WinCE? The C++20 modules are especially interesting.

reddit.com
u/IllustriousWin4104 — 1 month ago
▲ 22 r/OldHandhelds

I built an online tool that compiles web pages into native .exe apps for Pocket PC / Windows Mobile (PPC2003 → WM6.5)

I've been reviving my old Windows Mobile PDAs and got tired of how little of the modern web they can actually load — expired root certs block almost every HTTPS site, and Pocket IE chokes on anything past ~2008.

So I built WM-WebDeploy: an online app builder that takes a URL or your own HTML/CSS and compiles it into a native full-screen .exe you can run on the device. Think of it like the "website → app" wrappers on Android, but for Pocket PC 2003, Windows Mobile 5, 6.1 and 6.5.

It's powered by MacSurf, a fork of the C-written NetSurf engine, cross-compiled for these old ARM devices. What surprised me is how capable it actually is:

Real adaptive layout — media queries work against the device's actual screen width, so one page adapts across 240×320, 320×240, 480×640, etc.

CSS Grid, Flexbox, custom properties (variables), border-radius, box-shadow — all actually rendered, not stubbed

Fixed HTTPS/TLS — every build ships with an up-to-date cert bundle, so it connects to modern secure sites the stock devices can't reach anymore

It's honestly not a modern browser though — roughly IE6-level HTML/CSS 2.1 plus a big chunk of CSS3. JavaScript is ES5-only (no AJAX/fetch, no canvas), so it's best for static pages, dashboards, or wrapping your own lightweight sites. The builder has a live preview + a linter that warns you about unsupported stuff before you build.

How it works: enter an app name, paste HTML or a URL, hit build, download a ZIP with the .exe + cacert.pem, drop both in the same folder on your device, and launch. Full-screen, just a thin title bar with the app name and a close button.

The screenshot below shows a test application I developed and ran on an emulated PPC2003 device.

Would love for people to dust off their old pockets and try it — curious what works and what breaks on hardware I don't have. Feedback very welcome.

GitHub

u/IllustriousWin4104 — 2 months ago
▲ 7 r/OldHandhelds

NetSurf PPC2003

Hi. I tried running the latest version of NetSurf on PPC2003. Once I built it, I realized it's completely unusable for rendering modern web pages—the quality is just too poor. Then I found the MacSurf project, which renders pages much better and supports more modern HTML/CSS. Even though you can design websites with a modern look for it, it still lacks JS support. NetSurf's built-in JS engine works terribly. After that, I came across the Wisp project, which features a new JS engine, but it's also barely implemented. It seems that the absolute maximum for PPC2003 is static HTML pages and TLS 1.2 / TLS 1.3 via wolfSSL.

reddit.com
u/IllustriousWin4104 — 2 months ago
▲ 31 r/OldHandhelds

Silent installation on a Storage Card

Hi. I'm creating a Windows Mobile app store for fun. I've implemented TSL 1.3 encryption, but there's a problem with automatic silent installation via wceload.exe on WM5+ versions of the OS. It doesn't read the CAB installation location from the registry and defaults to the device's internal storage. This method works fine on PPC2003. I also looked at Microsoft's Marketplace in WM6.5, and it seems to bypass wceload.exe and directly manage appinstall.dll, but I can't simulate this in my app. Does anyone know a way to implement silent installation to a Storage Card without changing _setup.xml?

u/IllustriousWin4104 — 3 months ago