Casio BE-300

The Cassiopeia BE-300 Pocket Manager was a personal digital assistant manufactured by Casio Computer Co. Ltd and first released in May 2002. In Japan, it was also marketed as BE-500. The Cassiopeia BE-300 used a cut-down version of Windows CE 3.0 that was not fully compatible with Windows CE applications. It featured a 65 million color 320x240 touch-screen LCD, a 166MHz MIPS CPU, and 16MB of RAM. It was also equipped with a CompactFlash slot, allowing for the expansion of internal memory with external flash memory cards as well as the use of peripheral CF-compatible devices such as wireless and network adapters.

Hacking, and reinvention

The BE300 became popular with hackers due to the ease with which the stripped down version of Windows CE could be modified. One OS, called [http://www.geocities.com/mutantcheese/epod.html exPod] (alternately xPod), was based on the OS of a device called ePods. It was written by an author under the alias Goofather (a parody of Godfather). This OS was unique in that it allowed some Windows CE programs to be installed via Activesync, while native Casio applications and their licensees required "PC Connect", Casio's synchronization program.

xPod was a completely new shell which allowed customizations that were unheard of previously. Applications were developed which required xPod to run.

Since the initial creation of xPod, various other homemade shells including Bee and PPX have come about.

See also

* Casio Cassiopeia

Links

* [http://www.casio.com/products/archive/Industrial_Devices/Hand-held/BE-300/ Remaining Information from Casio's site]
* [http://www.be300.org/forums/ The BE-300 Advancement Society!]
* [http://tvthemeguy.tripod.com/be300.html TV theme Guy's BE300 Page]
* [http://www.geocities.com/mutantcheese/be300 MutantCheese's BE300 Page]
* [http://www.groom-family.com ABF forums]