I think this is a common problem for all developers using Windows CE 6.0 operating systems on specific hardware. I have a client that needs a custom operating system for its ICOP PDX-089T PC with Touch panel, that is based on DM&P SoC CPU Vortex86DX-1GHz.
I do not have the hardware with me, so every time I make a change I have to send at least the NK.bin file, or the whole ghost image to the client to make the tests for.
Is there any way to build a custom Windows CE emulator to add it to Visual Studio 2005 for testing or may be a custom virtual machine to launch it through VMWare or Virtual PC?
I tried some guidelines from the internet to build one, but every effort in making one resulted in hanging up my PC.
Does anybody have similar needs and some solution?
Note: The emulator I need is for Vortex86DX processor and ICOP board.
Microsoft abandoned the x86 Emulator some time ago, choosing to support only an ARM emulator (the BSP ships in the box with Platform Builder 6.0). This means that you can’t create an emulator for the x86 processor, though I’m hard-pressed to think of a scenario where you’d really need to and where just getting hardware isn’t a better solution for anyway.
There is a BSP for doing Virtual PC OS builds that would run on x86. It’s not had much activity in some time, and I’ve never tried it, so YMMV.