Windows CE for gaming

[Christer-swe]

I'm thinking of buying one of those Windows CE laptops floating around on Ebay to use it purely for retro gaming.

Getting a hold of the perfect computer for retro gaming is hard, considering it can't be too old because it might not work anymore, and it can't be too new either, because some older games might not work. There were plenty of games I used to play on my old Win98SE that didn't work on XP, and still don't work on Win7, unless you do some workaround of some sort, which I prefer not to.

So in conclusion, it has to be a new computer that does have Windows, but not XP and later versions, and on top of that it has to be a laptop, otherwise I'll never get it out. USB and VGA would be nice, but I'm not too picky.

So am I doing right, targeting these cheap Windows CE laptops? I haven't really understood if CE 5/6 are NT or DOS based, but if they're NT based that's a deal breaker.

[alphagamer]

Why not install Win98SE in a virtual machine on your current Laptop or PC?

WinCE is not a good choice for gaming at all.

[Ss4gogeta0]

years of dreamcast abuse are now floating in my head... CE is seriously not for gaming...

[unclejun]

Good luck finding a Windows CE x86 laptop...most are ARM based.

[Christer-swe]

Good luck finding a Windows CE x86 laptop...most are ARM based.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. x86 is a must.

[AntiPasta]

I'm sure CE is neither based on DOS or NT! I think you'd be better off buying a Pentium (ie P5) based machine with a built-in CD-ROM drive and a decent sound card. Joystick ports are almost always absent though.

[HEX1GON]

Is it possible to install Windows 7 Netbook edition on them?

[7Force]

Is it possible to install Windows 7 Netbook edition on them?

No, there's no way you're putting any version of Win7 on an old ARM-based laptop.

[HEX1GON]

No, there's no way you're putting any version of Win7 on an old ARM-based laptop.

Than that laptop is balls.

[nameless hero]

Those cheap win ce laptops are mips based, they have the same cpu as the dingoo or the ben nanonote. 400 MHz. Iirc debian runs quite good on it. ^^
If you want win98, why not go for an old laptop?

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

It'd probably be easier and cheaper to just to buy a modern case, put some old components in it, and install Windows 98 on it. If I remember correctly, 98 was mostly compatible with 95 and DOS software.

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

If you have a decent PC you can probably run most older games in a virtual machine.

[splith]

NEVER get a windows CE device for gaming, I've got a few CE SDKs installed and unless you're using it as a PDA or something basic or an embedded system, you will find it absolutely useless.

[syntax error]

CE devices can emulate old systems like GBA or PS1 or even run DOSBox

[Shadowlayer]

If its one of those libreto WinCE from the late 90s when I was a kid then its going to be extremely retro gaming since those things sucked.

If you mean a new one then spend a little more and get something with a E350 APU

This girl at work has one and its pretty powerful for a netbook, it can even emulate N64 games, and not-so-old PC games like GTAIII/VC/SA

[Nipedley]

Windows CE is made for very specific applications and playing games is not one of them. I've also had trouble getting decent hardware for playing old games, at the moment I'm using an IBM Thinkpad from 2000 (Pentium 3 700mhz and ATI Rage 8mb). Has framerate trouble with some of the later 90s 3d games (though generally you can get those to run on Windows XP/7 anyway), but for everything else and running windows 95 up to xp it's the best I've found so far.

[Christer-swe]

Windows CE is made for very specific applications and playing games is not one of them. I've also had trouble getting decent hardware for playing old games, at the moment I'm using an IBM Thinkpad from 2000 (Pentium 3 700mhz and ATI Rage 8mb). Has framerate trouble with some of the later 90s 3d games (though generally you can get those to run on Windows XP/7 anyway), but for everything else and running windows 95 up to xp it's the best I've found so far.

Thanks for the advice. I'm afraid that's the way to go to have a decent machine to run old games. I think PIII is the ideal CPU, hardware that comes with that is generally compatible for that kind of gaming.

[Nipedley]

I've had my eye out for a Thinkpad A22p, I think it's probably among the best laptop P3 platform you could get. They are 900MHz - 1GHz Pentium 3's, with a 16MB Rage 128 - should handle all the windows 95 and up OS/applications but the later 90's 3d games would fare pretty well too.

The model I'm using (700MHz Pentium 3 & Rage 8MB) was the Thinkpad A20m, incase you're interested. I dual-boot Windows 98 and XP (it runs XP better than most of the P4's I've used in the past) and I even installed the latest Fedora linux on it, just to see what would happen and it actually ran pretty well. Integrated ethernet and USB too.

These old laptops tend to go up pretty cheaply on ebay, I've tried looking for other P3 hardware and there really isn't much decent available anymore.

[alecjahn]

We have (had?) an old tiny IBM z50 that ran on CE. I couldn't see any use for it except to maybe take notes on it or draw in Paint.