Jornada 720: Getting Started

This page describes how to set up your Jornada and develop systems and applications for it. Specifically, it provides step by step instructions on how to use the hardware fully, integrate the Jornada with desktop programs, and download and execute a hello world program. To do this, you will need some software installed both on your desktop (NT) machine, as well as on your Jornada (CE). This tutorial will walk you through these steps.

If you are working in the undergraduate lab, you can skip this section, because the software is already set up for you.

First, you need to install the USB Driver on your desktop in order to enable high-speed USB connectivity. The driver is on the CD that comes with your Jornada. Insert the USB cable into your computer, attach the other end to the Jornada base (you may have to push the slider on the back of the Jornada towards the right to uncover the USB connector), and place your Jornada on the base. The New Hardware Wizard will want to install a USB driver to enable the USB connection to the Jornada. Choose "Specify a Location", put the CD that came with your Jornada in the CD drive, tell it to look on the CD, and click "Finish". It should then be able to use the USB cable.

Next, you'll need to install ActiveSync in order to have seamless connectivity between the Jornada and the desktop machine. ActiveSync 3.5 is required for installing software on Jornada and for debugging. Needs the above driver to work. If you download and run the self-installer from the link above, ActiveSync should be installed. Do not use earlier versions of ActiveSync.

Now, you can download software for the 802.11b wireless card that comes with your Jornada. Here is the device driver for the Orinoco card. You need this driver for wireless Internet connectivity. Unpack the archive in a temporary directory. Please follow the instructions for the wireless card installation at the start of page. The only difference is in starting of the setup program for the wireless card (you have to run program setup.exe from the temporary directory where you unpacked the archive with the driver). If you get stuck at this stage, follow these instructions for installing the driver using the machine we set up for you in the undergrad lab.

To develop programs, you will need a development environment and the platform SDK. You need to download and install these two packages:

Embedded Visual C++ for development.
Handheld PC 2000 SDK.

Congratulations! You are done. The boring part is over. Now you can go on to build interesting mobile computing projects.

You might also find some of these other programs useful.

Tips and tricks

What do I need to do in order not to repeat this process again ?

If you put the backup battery in its appropriate slot (under the Compact Flash port) and charge it properly, the Jornada will remember your setup even when the main battery runs out.

What do I do when things are jammed ?

If you have a runaway process, you can try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete, selecting the process with the task manager and killing it. This will most likely not work, however (why ? because the CE scheduler does not devote sufficient time to interactive tasks. your keypresses take forever to process).

A simpler approach is to use the stylus to press the reset button located to the left of the keyboard. All running processes will be killed. Expect to use this heavily when developing code for the Jornada.

What do I do when things are so completely jammed that the reset button doesn't work?

If you take the backup battery out, disconnect the main battery and pull out the power cable, wait about a minute, and reconnect them, your Jornada will be as fresh as the day it arrived from the factory. You will have to repeat driver installation from scratch.

Moving programs from desktop to Jornada There are different ways of doing this:

You can drag and drop files into the folder My Computer/Handheld. If ActiveSync is working, they will be automatically copied onto the Jornada.
You can set up a synchronization directory in ActiveSync. When you copy (by any means) a file into the synchronization directory, ActiveSync will move it to the Jornada.
When you run an executable from within Embedded Visual C++ (EVC), it will be first copied onto the Jornada and then executed. EVC will allow you to do this even for executables you build outside EVC - we use this to build projects with "nmake wince" and debug them using EVC.

Is there any interesting software for the Jornada ?

There is very little software that takes advantage of the mobility and wireless connectivity that PDAs offer. Mostly, the applications out there recreate the standard desktop environment on a smaller screen. We (i.e. you) will build interesting peer-to-peer, distributed systems for your Jornada for the final project in this course.