VNC viewer (Java) for ER5 machines

Waiting for a native VNC viewer for EPOC machines, I worked out how to start the VNC viewer in an ER5 machine with the Java runtime environment. It could be useful with a Series7/NetBook, but it works even in the 5mx in 3 Mb of RAM or so (JRE included).
Thanks to all people who sent me colour screenshots of Series 7s and Netbooks with the VNC viewer at work!

The package

I packaged all needed stuff in a .sis file for best ease of use; download it and install as any standard EPOC .sis file. The zip archive also contains the latest 5.10 version of SysRAM1 OPX by Symbian (needed) and all the source code.

To use it, start the VNC viewer by tapping twice on the VNC icon in the Extras bar, then:

- In the first dialog, type the host name or IP address and the display number;

- At the password prompt dialog, enter the password for your host; you may want to specify custom options, but the defaults are the fastest and works well for most scenarios; if you tap on "remove buttons" you will gain a row but you cannot longer recall them.

- Now your PDA tries to establish a connection; you should have already configured either an Internet connection or a Direct Cable connection to a RAS server.

Here we are: when the connection is established, an applet window should come up with the remote desktop.

I have succesfully used this viewer with a Series 5mx connected via the serial cable (@ 115 kbps) with an NT Workstation PC equipped with RAS and WinVNC server, and here is the result:

The viewer is a bit slow as you may expect from a 115 kbps connection and a Java app; I think that in a Netbook with an ethernet PC-Card (and a faster CPU) things go better, and you really can drive an NT or X server on your network.

 


Troubleshooting

Please refer to VNC site for all questions about VNC servers and clients.

Need to connect your Psion to a Windows 9x/NT machine? You can configure RAS directly as the needed software is already embedded in the OS, but it's a bit tricky to set-up: you can find detailed instructions here (this is a copy of the original document by A. Brown).

... or need to connect to a Linux machine? See how to setup a slirp (not PPP) connection and many other Linux-related stuff at 5-Tux. Thanks Stef for your support :-)

Latest news about VNC on a Nokia 9210 Communicator (Symbian Crystal OS):

Recently I had some feedback about the Java VNC client on Nokia 9210, and it seems to doesn't work without some heavy changes, due to the different structure of Symbian OS "Crystal" with respect to the previous version (EPOC v5). Since I have discontinued to use the Symbian platform, currently I'm not be able to support future releases of Symbian OSes, as well as other issues related to VNC on EPOC.
As a discontinued project, I provide
this package as is, without any other support.

 

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