CE Runtime Foundation v6.8 pre-alpha

cerf.cx - more information about the project

A universal Windows CE emulator. It is a virtual hardware platform that boots real CE and Windows Mobile ROMs on modern Windows.

Important

Downloads are not available and builds fail. We remove third-party licensed code from the emulator core and write new code from primary documentation. Until this work is complete, there are no releases and no build artifacts. The tree does not compile.

Downloads

To use the newest features, download the WIP build (6.8) from the artifacts . For a stable version, go to the latest release.

Run launcher.exe and select a device. The launcher downloads the ROM bundle and boots it. The articles show how to run cerf.exe --device=... directly, and describe its command line and its logs.

Supported boards

SoC	Board / OS	Features
NEC VR4122 _{MIPS III}	Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 `casio_cassiopeia_em500` Pocket PC 2000
NEC VR4121 _{MIPS III}	Casio Toricomail / Message-Cam / Pocket PostPet `casio_toricomail` Windows CE 2.12
Intel XScale PXA255 _ARMv5TE	Falcon 4220 `falcon_4220` Windows CE .NET
Intel XScale PXA255 _ARMv5TE	NEC MobilePro 900 `nec_mobilepro_900` Handheld PC 2000 Windows CE .NET
Freescale i.MX51 _Cortex-A8	Ford SYNC 2 `ford_sync_2` Windows CE 6
Intel SA-1110 _StrongARM	HP Jornada 720 `jornada_720` Handheld PC 2000
	iPAQ H3100/H3600/H3700 `ipaq_gen1` Pocket PC 2000 Pocket PC 2002
	Siemens SIMpad SL4 `simpad_sl4` Handheld PC 2000 Windows CE .NET
	SmartBook G138 `smartbook_g138` Windows CE .NET
Intel SA-1100 _StrongARM	HP Jornada 820 `jornada_820` Handheld PC 3.0 Professional
ARM720T _ARMv4T	Microsoft Windows CE Hardware Reference Platform `odo` Windows CE 2.11 Windows CE 3
NEC VR4102 _{MIPS III}	NEC MobilePro 700 `nec_mobilepro_700` Windows CE 2.0
NEC VR5500 _{MIPS IV}	NEC Rockhopper SG2_VR5500 `nec_rockhopper` Windows CE 6
TI OMAP 3530 _Cortex-A8	OMAP 3530 EVM `omap_3530_evm` Windows CE 7
Philips PR31700 _{MIPS I}	Philips Nino 300 `philips_nino_300` Palm-size PC
Philips PR31700 _{MIPS I}	Sharp Mobilon HC-4100 `sharp_mobilon_hc4100` Windows CE 2.0
Philips PR31500 _{MIPS I}	Philips Velo 1 `philips_velo_1` Windows CE 1.0
Samsung S3C2410 _ARM920T	Siemens P177 `siemens_p177` Windows CE 5
Samsung S3C2410 _ARM920T	Device Emulator `devemu` Windows CE 6 Windows Mobile 5 Windows Mobile 6 WM 2003 SE Windows CE 5
Freescale i.MX31L _ARM1136	Zune 30 `zune_30` Windows CE 5

Running your own ROM

A ROM boots only if CERF implements that exact board. A matching SoC is not sufficient. The articles show how to use your own dump of a board that CERF supports.

To add a board that CERF does not support is emulator development. You must write C++ code for the memory map of the board and for each peripheral that its drivers use. You must also write code for the quirks of the SoC. This code must agree with datasheets, BSP sources and reverse engineering, at the quality level that CERF has now. This work is not a change to a configuration file. An AI cannot do it for you.

Important

CERF does not accept ROM submissions or requests for new boards. The devices that are worth the work are complete. Several boards took months of work, and almost nobody needs them. One more board gives one more Windows CE desktop, and CERF already has one. New requests get a refusal, unless a board is very interesting, or many people want it, and I want to do the work.

Building

CERF requires Visual Studio 2026 with the C++ desktop development workload.

Note

The first build on a new machine takes more than one hour. vcpkg compiles the dependencies from source before CERF links. This occurs one time on each machine. Later builds use the cached vcpkg_installed/ tree and are complete in a few minutes. Do not stop the first build.

Configure the clone (one time on each machine):

setup.cmd

This script initializes the submodules. It points git at the tracked hooks of the repo (core.hooksPath = .githooks). Git does not clone the hook configuration, so the hooks do nothing in a new clone until you run this script. The script also reports each missing prerequisite (the Python launcher, the vcpkg MSBuild integration). You can run it again at any time, because it is idempotent. setup.cmd -Check reports the status and changes nothing.

Build with the helper script:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File build.ps1

Or run msbuild directly:

msbuild cerf.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=Win32

Building the CE-side binaries (optional)

ce_apps/ holds the Windows CE binaries that CERF ships, and the Guest Additions display driver. To build them, you need a CE toolchain and a CE SDK. cerf.exe does not need them. If you work on the emulator core, the boards, the SoCs, the JIT or the host UI, use the prebuilt binaries.

To build them, install eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 (a free Microsoft download from the Microsoft archive). Then run one script. The full instructions are in docs/ce_apps_setup.md.

setup.cmd -Check reports whether the CE toolchain is present.

CERF builds the website from docs/website/. The command python tools/build_site.py --serve runs the website on your machine with live reload.

Changelog

Version	Release Date	Changes
v6.8	TBA	📱 Devices 🆕 Casio Toricomail: bezel touch buttons 🚀 Launcher 🆕 Copyright removal dialog listing each bundle repository's abuse contact, reachable from the Download ROMs window and the download confirmation ✅ Installed devices are listed and launchable immediately at startup instead of waiting for the bundle catalog on a slow or absent connection
v6.7	23 Jul 2026	📱 Devices 🆕 Casio Cassiopeia EM-500 support (bare bones) ✅ Sharp Mobilon HC-4100: fixed suspend crash 💿 Emulator 🆕 Discord Rich Presence - shows the current device and OS in your Discord profile 🆕 UI updates ✅ Fixed framebuffer not relatching on suspend/resume ✅ Fixed 100% CPU usage and UI deadlocks on Windows XP on non-framebuffer tabs 🚀 Launcher 🆕 UI refresh ✅ Metadata-only remote updates no longer re-download the entire ROM ✅ Fixed the command-line interface producing no output ✅ Configuration, updates and removal are now blocked while a device is running ✅ Single click on a device preview now launches it everywhere ✅ Merged the two launcher builds into a single Windows Vista+ executable ❌ Removed the redundant soc_family and board_name fields from cerf.json 💾 CE Apps ✅ CerfDemo: UI and performance improvements ✨ Guest Additions 🆕 High refresh rate support - use Windows CE with 240 hz display! (Or whatever Hz you have). Yes, this should be taken LITERALLY. WinCE WILL render 240 fps on your 240 hz monitor. The guest video mode and host window scanout follow the host monitor's refresh rate 🆕 --screen-refresh-rate flag to set the refresh rate manually 🆕 Touch-calibration helper - offers to switch to the stock input device when the guest opens a calibration screen, and switches back afterwards 🆕 Color scheme overrides - colorize grayscale devices with a forced system color scheme ✅ Input devices now run at the proper priority, staying responsive under heavy guest CPU load
v6.6	18 Jul 2026	📱 Devices ✅ Fixed Device Emulator crash booting Windows Mobile 5.2 ROMs 💿 Emulator ✅ Device names with spaces and absolute rom.* paths in cerf.json are now supported 🚀 Launcher 🆕 New-device wizard: create a device profile from your local ROM dump 🆕 Rename a device from its right-click menu
v6.5	17 Jul 2026	📱 Devices 🆕 Sharp Mobilon HC-4100 support (Handheld PC, Windows CE 2.0) 🆕 Casio Toricomail support 💿 Emulator ✅ Fixed Integer scale 2x/3x not resizing the window under "Match guest size" ✅ Fixed moving the window releasing the "Match guest size" lock (now only a resize does) 🚀 Launcher 🆕 Added downloads count sort 💾 CE Apps ✅ Fixed bundled CE2 apps (ROM dumper and others) crashing on launch - their coredll imports were bound by version-specific ordinal instead of by name ✨ Guest Additions ✅ Display driver unified onto a single mips1 build across MIPS devices
v6.4	15 Jul 2026	📱 Devices ✅ Fixed NEC MP700 touch
v6.3	15 Jul 2026	📱 Devices ✅ Fixed a crash when PC Card was re-inserted too fast in DevEmu boards 💿 Emulator ✅ UI updates ✅ Dev only: SDK/Build tools reorganization 🚀 Launcher 🆕 Added multiple bundle repositories configuration ✨ Guest Additions ✅ Fixed IMGFS ROMs regression introduced in v6.0 ✅ Software rendering is fully removed and replaced with hardware rendering. Microsoft dependencies dropped. ✅ Fixed incorrect hardware communication approach for display and shared storage. Now rendering and shared storage is stable.
Previous versions - see the full changelog.

Known Issues

For the issues of each board, see the board database of the launcher.

Claude Development Environment

Caution

DO NOT USE THE CERF CODEBASE AS A REFERENCE FOR SoCs, BOARDS OR PERIPHERALS. AI written code might include mistakes a developer did not notice.

Built with help of Claude and Claude Code.

CERF includes a development environment that uses Claude Code. You can work on the emulator with it, and you can add new boards from their ROMs. Run it from the root of the repo:

run_claude.cmd

This environment runs Claude Code with a custom system prompt. The prompt puts the full project documentation into each agent (CLAUDE.md and each reference page in agent_docs/). Thus each session starts with the rules, the architecture and the subsystems of the project. You do not tell the agent to read the documentation first.

The environment gives you the /start-board-implementation skill. Put your ROM into bundled/devices/, or give the agent the path to it. Then run the skill. The agent identifies the board and the SoC from the ROM. It then examines what CERF supports and estimates the work. If you agree, the agent starts the work and writes a tracking document that stays between sessions.

Warning

The development environment runs Claude in skip-permissions mode. Claude can run any command on your machine, and it does not ask you first. The environment also stops its own Claude instance, and any clangd.exe, that uses more memory than a limit. At the first start, it shows an explanation one time. Press Enter to accept it.

License

MIT. Third-party components and studied references are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 517 Commits
.claude		.claude
.githooks		.githooks
.github		.github
.vscode		.vscode
agent_docs		agent_docs
bundled		bundled
ce_apps		ce_apps
cerf		cerf
docs		docs
launcher		launcher
licenses		licenses
references		references
tools		tools
.gitattributes		.gitattributes
.gitignore		.gitignore
.gitmodules		.gitmodules
.ignore		.ignore
.last-release-version		.last-release-version
CLAUDE.md		CLAUDE.md
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
README_SOURCE.md		README_SOURCE.md
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md		THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
build.cmd		build.cmd
build.ps1		build.ps1
cerf.sln		cerf.sln
compile_readme.py		compile_readme.py
gweslab.png		gweslab.png
run_claude.cmd		run_claude.cmd
run_claude.ps1		run_claude.ps1
setup.cmd		setup.cmd
setup.ps1		setup.ps1
vcpkg-configuration.json		vcpkg-configuration.json
vcpkg.json		vcpkg.json

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