Hobbyist 6620 programming? — Nokia 6600 and 6620 — All About Symbian Forum Archive

WardXmodem 21 Sep 2004, 03:52

Hi, Ward Christensen here, inventor of "Xmodem" and with Randy Suess doing the hardware, programmer of the worlds first BBS (> quarter million callers on ONE phone line when we finally took it down!)

I just got a Nokia 6620, and pretty much love it!

I'm interested in programming the 6620 - but not "full blown stuff" or maybe what I mean is I am an avocational programmer, not a professional one. I'm still stuck in the C world, not the C++ world, i.e. don't do object oriented "yet" but know I'd have to.

I have written thousands of lines of assembler, C, APL, Cobol, PC editor Kedit Kexx macros, even some Pascal, etc.

I am rather haphazard, would need good IDE, and especially need tracing ability - I often program "part" then run under a debugger to "see what's in the buffer now" type programming. I produce COOL stuff, but don't have the discipline to write top-to-bottom applications.

I am willing to spend up to say $200 - since I don't plan to make things for sale (more likely for freeware). I love "utilities" - having written stuff like disk catalogers, disassemblers, etc etc. For example I have 10,000 files on my laptop for work and can "launch" ANY of them in under 10 seconds given a few keywords to search on (e.g. BladeCenter and PDF)... Wrote in "Kedit macros" - a truly NON portable language, haha.

Since this message is long please don't waste space with all of it in the reply quote, just net out what question you're answering or skip the pull quote.

Thanks!

[Serious replies only please?
- added after finding a "null" first reply]

neuro 21 Sep 2004, 04:00

The first BBS? Most of the folks here don't even know what that is.....but if you are the creator of the famouse X-modem...then you must be old..... 😃

doublec 21 Sep 2004, 21:55

Unfortunately there aren't too many 'easy' methods of programming the phone. C++ gives you the most power and all the tools are available for free. Forum Nokia (http://www.forum.nokia.com) has the appropriate SDK's available for download.

A couple of easier possibilities are:

AppForge - A VB-like development environment (http://www.appforge.com/)
OPL - A n open source basic like language for Symbian phones (http://opl.symbiandiaries.com/)
GoDB - Another RAD style tool (http://www.consigntech.com/godb.htm)

Chris.
--
http://radio.weblogs.com/0102385

N/A 22 Sep 2004, 01:46

In general, the 6620 is based on Series 60 2.1, which is also known as "Series 60 Platform 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 1". 😉 See http://www.series60.com/ for general and device information.

The principal, "native" programming language for your 6620 is, indeed C++. For that particular phone, you'd use the corresponding "Series 60 SDK 2.1 for Symbian OS" from the aforementioned http://forum.nokia.com/

The SDK includes everything needed, except the IDE (Integrated Development Environment), which you would need to acquire separately. The primary IDE's currently supported are the Metrowerks CodeWarrior or Borland BuilderX. The SDK for Borland uses Microsoft's code generator and people have also succeeded in making it work with Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET, I hear. Originally Symbian tools like these only supported MS Visual C++ 6 (Visual Studio 6).

If you decide to look into C++ programming for Series 60, then I'd also suggest you get this book: http://www.emccsoft.com/technology/series60.html

The "other primary" programming language for your phone is Java in the form of J2ME or Java 2 Micro Edition. Many times also just referred to as MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile). The 6620 is based on MIDP 2.0. Again, look for the "Series 60 MIDP SDK" on http://forum.nokia.com/ for that. I think the latest version also supports IBM's Eclipse as the IDE, by the way. More about J2SE/MIDP also here: http://java.sun.com/j2me/

There is no Series 60 specific J2ME/MIDP book out, but this one would be a decent starting point: http://www.symbian.com/books/j2me/j2me_info.html

AppForge, as mentioned, allows you to use Microsoft tools/programming languages like Visual Basic & provides a compiler and run-time environment called a "booster" (which must be installed separately on the phone itself) to run the resulting apps.

About OPL or GoDB I don't really known anything (except that OPL is originally from the old Psion Organizer devices which run the predecessor of Symbian OS called EPOC).

Another good site to bookmark for Symbian OS/Series 60 programming (guides, tutorials, code samples, discussion boards) is also http://www.newlc.com/

Ian D 18 Dec 2004, 03:08

WardXmodem wrote:Hi, Ward Christensen here, inventor of "Xmodem" and with Randy Suess doing the hardware, programmer of the worlds first BBS (> quarter million callers on ONE phone line when we finally took it down!)
I just got a Nokia 6620, and pretty much love it!
I'm interested in programming the 6620 - but not "full blown stuff" or maybe what I mean is I am an avocational programmer, not a professional one. I'm still stuck in the C world, not the C++ world, i.e. don't do object oriented "yet" but know I'd have to.
I have written thousands of lines of assembler, C, APL, Cobol, PC editor Kedit Kexx macros, even some Pascal, etc.
[Serious replies only please?
- added after finding a "null" first reply]

I too want to do this, and I'm interested in your level of success. I used to program large applications of hundreds of thousands of lines of C, and now write little utilities in C, Tcl, and Perl, and yet I find this C++/Symbian programming daunting. While I think I'm quite capable, I'm not sure I have the time to devote to learning how to do it "right." I'd like to write little utilities like "beep every minute when the signal is lost" or "conditional sounds based on regexp matching in a text message." Not sure if I'll ever get there...