(Partial translation of an article that appeared in Bits & Chips nr 5, 2002)
In the early 1990’s Microsoft took its first steps towards creating an operating system for the embedded market. This 16 bits operating system, based upon Windows 3.0 was called “Microsoft at Work”. It was targeted towards office equipment like photocopiers and fax machines. This operating system was also basis for WinPad, a predecessor of currently available PDA’s. In parallel to the development of WinPad, a separate team at Microsoft started working on a new object oriented 32 bits operating system for generic embedded purposes. Initially two different targets for this operating system were defined:
- A set-top box for interactive television
- Pulsar, a small portable computer with broad communication possibilities
The fact that requirements for both targets were totally different led to problems within the development team. The settop box needed multi-media functionality and lots of RAM. Pulsar needed a small operating system with rich communication support.
Bill Gates took responsibility and combined the development teams for both products. They started a new project, led by Brad Silverberg. This new project, Pegasus, was initially targeted to create a new PDA with a Windows 9x user interface. The operating system for Pegasus was written from scratch, but the Win32 API’s were adopted. With this, Windows CE was born. So far there have been four major releases of Windows CE. The most significant versions of the operating system are:
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Windows CE 1.0 |
Initial version, mainly targeted towards handheld computers with a Windows 95 alike user interface. |
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Windows CE 2.0
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First OEM configurable version. Windows CE is componentized. Five standard configurations are available. Application development with Visual Studio plug-ins. |
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Windows CE 2.10 |
For OEMÂ’s the number of standard configurations is now seven. This is the OS version for the Palm-sized PC. |
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Windows CE 2.11 |
The Embedded Tool Kit (ETK) is released for embedded developers. The ETK makes it easier to configure Windows CE on specific target hardware. |
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Windows CE 2.12
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More standard configurations available. Platform Builder is released, a graphical environment to configure and build Windows CE operating systems for specific target hardware. |
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Windows CE 3.0
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First version of the OS with hard real-time behavior. For application development separate embedded Visual Tools (eVC and eVB) are released. This version of the OS is used in PocketPC (2002). |
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Windows CE.NET 4.0
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Real-time behavior at least as good as that of Windows CE 3.0. Significant improvements in Platform Builder. Eventually managed application development will become possible. |
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Windows CE.NET 4.1 |
IPv6 support as well as support for managed application development with the release of the .NET Compact Framework. |
Maarten Struys |
