Gadgetoid

Completely silly offline RSS reader in a *heavily* patched Windows CE 6.0 🤣

Do I know anyone with a Lebencoin account? 😅

Trying to get hold of a Windows CE CD-ROM for an archivist.

Leboncoin 🤦‍♂️ Désolé, je ne parle pas français.

Jesus how are coop’s microwave curries so fucking good

Seemed like the obvious thing to do…

Realised in all the fun I forgot to fix the keyboard driver so I still have absolutely no idea how to type even numbers on this thing 😅

Sub LCD is a great always-on reminder of what Shift and/or Function combos will get you.

youtu.beSHARP PW-A7300 touchpad mouse driverYouTube video by Gadgetoid

Tiny touch screen is an obvious choice as a trackpad 😅 youtu.be/VYoORH4UN4w

This started out mostly as a curiosity but since switching to my own pixel pipeline accelerated non garbage display driver the cursor is suuuuper smooth and usable as hell! Boy howdy did SHARP phone this thing in 😅

Both the SHARP PW-A7300 and the PW-SH2 shipped with the weirdest display setup- a TE (Tear Effect, kinda vsync-ish) signal routed from the display controller to the MCU. A signal that was mostly ignored. Since the portrait native screen is driven in landscape there's diagonal screen tearing abound!

Opening a window or navigating the start menu updates a lot of pixels, so it was really, really obvious the tearing was happening, and a diagonal tear in particular is hard to miss. Turns out we can just patch the CE driver at load time (u-boot copy from ROM to RAM) and tear-b-gone.

i herd u like sharp so i put sharp on your sharp so you can sharp while you sharp

Unfortunately shortly after this my batteries ran out and I couldn’t get the overdrawn menu icon fixed. Was just a POC anyway- next step is to strip the stock Windows CE back to absolute basics.

Getting there, need input handling but this is a distraction from getting the CE environment dialled in nicely.

i herd u like sharp so i put sharp on your sharp so you can sharp while you sharp

Unfortunately shortly after this my batteries ran out and I couldn’t get the overdrawn menu icon fixed. Was just a POC anyway- next step is to strip the stock Windows CE back to absolute basics.

Trying VERY hard not to add another one of these to the growing amount of stuff I need to pay through the nose to ship from Japan.

A second weird handheld has landed!

Oh and this isn’t just a second screen ITS A SECOND TOUCHSCREEN!!!

Pretty sure I’ve found a way to self boot this into Linux or a patched CE. Trying to verify if that’s a new discovery or it’s just arcane knowledge in Discord somewhere.

Don’t think I made enough gravy

A second weird handheld has landed!

This cost me like £12 for a whole ass computer with two screens and endless scope for derpy hacks 🤣

youtube.comSHARP Brain PW-SH2 CE patched at bootYouTube video by Gadgetoid

Dual boot Linux and an in-flight patched Windows CE 6.0. Uses a customised u-boot to load the Windows CE image into DRAM, skipping SHARP's DLLs and patching in a new launcher stub that launches your choice of shell (including O.G. explorer.exe) www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xtN...

Note that due to how CE is loaded into DRAM and treated as a "ROM" stuff is linked assuming absolute addresses. None of the skipped DLLs trigger a re-alignment of anything after them so it saves load time, but still leaves zeroed gaps in RAM.

The chain-loader for your custom shell *just* fits into the ROM's trailing ~20k free and that may vary from model to model. Suffice to say I'm keeping an eye out for a at least an SH1, SH3 and SH4 and have some other models on the way for more experiments.

youtube.comSHARP Brain PW-SH2 CE patched at bootYouTube video by Gadgetoid

The guiding principle for this madness is twofold- 1. no need to distribute a full patched CE ROM, it's done on the fly 2. you remove the SD card and your PW-SH2 returns to stock CE-Restorer and CE-Opener also exist, but I wanted a return to -mostly - stock CE 6.0 experience.

Building myself a distraction free writing device from a handheld the price of a Christmas lunch

There's a microphone and sound, too, and a 3.5mm jack so you can chill to tunes in the good ol' wired way while you tappety type away and forget where / is.

ALSO ITS TEAL I MEAN C'MON NEED I SAY MORE?

Building myself a distraction free writing device from a handheld the price of a Christmas lunch

Boots right up into Linux with just a couple files on a microSD card. Absolutely nonsense!

Since it's intended to be, largely, for education and kids it's also pretty hard-wearing, touchscreen, and folds back on itself into a little tablet and comes in all the colours you could ever want. Some models even have an auxiliary input touchscreen for character input.

Building myself a distraction free writing device from a handheld the price of a Christmas lunch

It’s an awesome and quirky range of devices hobbled mostly by a complete and total (deliberate) lack of wireless connectivity. Oh and the weird keyboard 🤣 (spacebar is enter Aaaah)

I don't care about your hackathon go away

Ironically the single digit "4" is also a valid PocketC registration key.

Without even touching the software or really turning it on (I'm poking the hardwaaaaree over USB) the Xteink X4 Classic is really fucking nice. Hardware, packaging and the magnetic dock have all just pushed the O.G. X4 to the next level. Xteink are absolutely smashing it.

I think sat in its dock with some custom firmware it could be a really, really nice ambient display. And that's ignoring how damn good Crosspoint is.

Solar battery monitor for the fridge!

*I wonder how mastodon feel about all this*

the extreme vibe-code-smelling test heavy fuckery of an 11k line php fix with a one line description does not instil confidence. long, long overdue a static site generator I think 💀

github.comAvoid state corruption via bailout · php/php-src@31c0ea7- Replace bailout on OOM with UnwindExit - Properly reset various globals that may be accessed during startup Fix GHSA-w8hw-w9fx-j79w (CVE-2026-109618) Fix GHSA-6wmf-4rv5-p3rp (CVE-2026-109619) C...

one commit. 11.5k additions. touches 423 files. Am I high as balls or is this real? github.com/php/php-src/...

really enjoying the weather extremes detaching kilos of artex coving from our ceiling...

Look dynamic lighting water undulation and caustics probably have no place trampling over the original vision of this game but it's kinda cooool!

Lookin' for a god damn shellsuit style raincoat and all I find are COSTUMES!!! COSTUMES!!! IS MY FUCKING CHILDHOOD A JOKE TO YOU!?!?!?!?

I wonder if barbour wax (or y'know offbrand stuff that isn't mad pricy) would waterproof a genuine shellsuit top...

I'm the kin of person who has unironically re-waxed a barbour jacket and tbh it doesn't feel like it makes any difference

Lookin' for a god damn shellsuit style raincoat and all I find are COSTUMES!!! COSTUMES!!! IS MY FUCKING CHILDHOOD A JOKE TO YOU!?!?!?!?

😭

Punch these two assholes, take the shellsuit top, make it a robust raincoat, add a hood, TAKE MY MONEY

youtube.comI Built a Tiny Classic Mac With a Raspberry PiYouTube video by Rich's Random Retro Reviews

I kinda need this TIIIINY FUNCTIONAL CLASSIC MAC www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f4G...