Emulator Limitations

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The Emulator has limitations in the areas of communications and networking, hardware support, multimedia, and user interface (UI). Some of these limitations are related to the architecture of the Emulator. For more information, see Emulator Architecture.

Communications and Networking

The Emulator has the following limitations in the areas of communications and networking:

  • By default, the Emulator runs with outgoing network address translation (NAT) connections enabled. When NAT is enabled, servers such as the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server and the Web server (HTTPD) do not work correctly. There may also be problems with connecting over a virtual private network (VPN) or connecting with Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). You can work around these problems by choosing Virtual Switch from the Ethernet box when you configure the Emulator. For more information about configuring the Emulator, see Downloading an OS Image to the Emulator.
  • Dial-up Networking does not work with a software modem supported by the Emulator. Dial-up Networking works only with a hardware modem.
  • You cannot establish a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connection from the Emulator to the development workstation running the Emulator. The display for the development workstation freezes after you provide your credentials.

The following OS features are not supported in the Emulator because of the limitations on communications and networking:

  • IrDA
  • Bluetooth
  • 802.11

Hardware Limitations

The Emulator supports a variety of hardware, but in some cases the emulated drivers have limitations that constrain the functionality of features relying on those drivers. The Emulator has the following hardware limitations:

  • It provides network support by emulating the DEC 2114x driver in software. No other Ethernet drivers are supported.
  • It provides display support by emulating the FLAT driver. No other display drivers are supported. When you run the Emulator at a display resolution of greater than 800x600 and a bit depth of greater than 16, the Emulator may not draw icons and bitmap images correctly. Internet Explorer and other applications also may not perform at the level expected. You may be able to counteract these problems by reducing either the display resolution or the bit depth.
  • The Emulator provides audio support by emulating the SoundBlaster 16 Wavedev driver. This driver supports half-duplex audio only. The Emulator does not support other audio drivers.

The following hardware and drivers are not supported in the Emulator:

  • Universal serial bus (USB) devices
  • PC Card devices
  • Storage devices, which include compact flash (CF) cards and hard disks
  • File system drivers, which include file allocation table (FAT), compact disc (CD), and digital video disc (DVD) drivers
  • IEEE 1394 devices

Multimedia Limitations

The Emulator does not support hardware acceleration for multimedia. Although some multimedia features have software emulation capabilities, the features experience performance or driver limitations on the Emulator. The Emulator has the following multimedia limitations:

  • The Emulator competes with the desktop OS for access to audio hardware on the development workstation, which can adversely affect audio playback.
  • The FLAT driver for the Emulator does not support emulation of hardware features such as hardware block image transfers (blits), flips, overlays, and video ports.
  • The Emulator does not support hardware acceleration; all rendering must be done through the reference rasterizer. The reference rasterizer is an internal mechanism for emulating graphics acceleration hardware. You can expect much slower performance than with graphics acceleration hardware.
  • The level of performance of Windows Media playback highly depends on the processing power of the development workstation.
  • The level of performance of DirectShow is restricted by the limitations of the audio and display drivers and depends on the processing power of the development workstation.
  • The level of performance of DirectSound is restricted by the limitations of the audio driver. The Emulator does not support DirectSound capture.
  • The quality of Waveform Audio capture is poor.
  • There can be problems with audio playback when the Emulator must interact and compete with the OS on the development workstation for access to audio hardware on the development workstation.
  • Minor ticks or disruptions during audio playback may occur if images on the display change during playback. Major changes, such as changes made with Direct3D, may result in poor audio quality or may even block the output of audio entirely.

The following OS features are not supported in the Emulator because of the limitations on multimedia:

  • DVD-Video API. Although it is possible to implement a software-based decoding solution, the DVD-Video API is delivered with the assumption that all DVD-Video decoding will be done in dedicated decoding and rendering hardware. The Emulator does not support DVD-Video decoding hardware.
  • Digital rights management (DRM) is not supported in the Emulator because of complexities associated with security and required OEM-specific DRM libraries. When you try to play a DRM clip in the Emulator, the Emulator displays a dialog box notifying you that DRM is not included in your platform. Playback fails gracefully.

User Interface Limitations

The Emulator scrolls and updates the display slowly. The Emulator does not support screen rotation for devices. In addition, the Emulator cannot emulate multiple-screen support for a Windows CE-based device. These limitations apply to the Emulator, but not to the development workstation that is running the Emulator.

See Also

Emulator

 Last updated on Friday, October 08, 2004

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