Useless CFW for the Retrostone (1)

[Fishreeler]

It would be interesting to see the manual, since in my game Soul Reaver and Jet Set Radio asks me to press the keys on Dpad (I configured for Dpad 1 as in the manual from their forum), but nothing happens, Crazy Taxi works fine.

[Fishreeler]

cool i like it, thanks for the work!

[gameblabla]

Yes I tried from USA, EU and JAP and all of them play slow, the fps counter goes at 24 fps. I tried every config with the sound rate and nothing

Can you try this new OPK ?
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/retrost ... ostone.opk
Take your SD card, replace it over the old one.
Make sure to also remove the configuration file in .fceux or something like that, some settings could be causing that. (the FPS throttle option for one)

It would be interesting to see the manual, since in my game Soul Reaver and Jet Set Radio asks me to press the keys on Dpad (I configured for Dpad 1 as in the manual from their forum), but nothing happens, Crazy Taxi works fine.

Are you playing the GBA versions or Dreamcast versions ? My CFW does not have a Dreamcast emulator.
If you are playing the GBA versions, then you could reconfigure them in the Input settings.
I mean, aside from flashing the CFW & putting roms, it should be pretty self explanatory personally...

[jimfaker]

Yes I tried from USA, EU and JAP and all of them play slow, the fps counter goes at 24 fps. I tried every config with the sound rate and nothing

Can you try this new OPK ?
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/retrost ... ostone.opk
Take your SD card, replace it over the old one.
Make sure to also remove the configuration file in .fceux or something like that, some settings could be causing that. (the FPS throttle option for one)

I tried and delete the folder .fceux and still got the same problem

[Richard323]

Hello guys,
i've porting around 10 emulators or so, i've decided to release an initial build of it for the Retrostone.
Why make such a CFW when you already have RetrOrangePi ?
Well my Useless CFW is more suited for console use and uses GMenu2x as the GUI.
Each of the emulators are tweaked and made easy to use, as well as looking as good as possible on the crappy composite screen.

Also RetrOrangePi is a glitchy mess.

Here's what you get inside :

• Picodrive (Sega CD/Genesis/32X, upstream port)

• PCSX Rearmed (PSX, upstream port)

• Divi-Dead (Game engine for this old visual novel japanese game)

• VBA Next (GBA emulator, based on libretro core, itself based on VBA-M)

• Gnash (Adobe flash player, Actionscript 2 only)

• SwanEmu (Wonderswan emulator. A fork of libretro beetle wswan, itself a fork of Mednafen)

• NGPCEmu (Neo Geo Pocket emulator. A fork of libretro beetle ngp, itself a fork of Mednafen)

• FCEUX (NES emulator)

• Gnuboy (Game boy emulator)

• SMS Plus GX (Master system, Game Gear, SG-1000 emulator. My improved fork of ekeeke's SMS Plus GX)

• Handy (Atari lynx emulator, fork of libretro handy)

• PokeMini (Pokemon mini emulator)

• Virtual Jaguar (Atari Jaguar emulator)

• SnesEmu (SNES emulator)

Simply add this OPK to the apps folder on the sd card. The apps folder can be found on the FAT32 partition. (3rd one)

If you want to try it on your Retrostone, you can grab it here :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kGXmu ... h1EpGTqa4n

You can watch my video demonstrating some of the stuff :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zECS8kWkikE

If you want to install it on the sd card, it's the same process as RetrOrangePi, except that you also have to extend manually the FAT32 partition.
On linux, you can do that with Gparted. On Windows, you have to use third party tools.

Oh, and btw unlike RetrOrangePi, there's no emulator which forbids commercial usage so the whole firmware is free to use and open source.
... Except for Picodrive and PocketSNES which you will have to remove if you sell the console.

You can check out my source code here :
https://github.com/gameblabla
https://github.com/retrostone-dev

Changelog :

Code: Select all

Version 0.32
- Switched to NTFS, which should allow Windows to mount it properly.
Boot times might be slightly slower though. (i might do a version using ext2 instead)
- Updated Picodrive with newer 32X JIT, allowing for faster 32X emulation.
- Added SnesEmu, a libretro snes9x2005 fork. It allows for input remapping and supports save states, SRAM and SRTC.

Version 0.31
- Added Ganbare Natsuki-San port.
- Updated Handy to fix issues in some games like Roadblaster and Ms.Pacman.
- Updated VBA Next to fix an issue with Summon Knights 2 effects not being displayed properly.

Version 0.3
- Added Picodrive, PCSX Rearmed and Divi-Dead game interpreter.
- Updated SMS Plus GX Port. It can now emulate Block Dude, alibaba and the 4PAK game.
- Added back ability to use ethernet port. Nothing uses it still though.

Version 0.2
- Turned all emulators into OPK packages.
- Greatly improved boot times.
- Fixed issues with FCEUX being configured improperly.
- PokeMini now saves in the root directory.


Version 0.1
Initial version.

Thank you, it works!

[jimfaker]

Yes I tried from USA, EU and JAP and all of them play slow, the fps counter goes at 24 fps. I tried every config with the sound rate and nothing

Can you try this new OPK ?
https://gameblabla.nl/files/ipk/retrost ... ostone.opk
Take your SD card, replace it over the old one.
Make sure to also remove the configuration file in .fceux or something like that, some settings could be causing that. (the FPS throttle option for one)

I tried and delete the folder .fceux and still got the same problem

Ok, I got, it, you must have in the setting of FCEUX, the audio quality down to 0. By default is in 2.
Again thanks!

[gameblabla]

So sadly i did not finish this as i was hoping that Pierre was going to send me a working final revision screen for the Retrostone 2.
However, partly due to the Coronavirus outbreak, it was never sent to me... There was also a unit on my way but alas, i never got it either. Trying to contact Pierre about it on Discord lead me to nothing so i hope he can see it now.

I am posting this as a lot of you asked me about Retrostone 2 given that it seems that RetrOrangePi seemingly stopped development.
It's a shame, because the A20 will get working HDMI audio for Linux 5.10 upstream, meaning the old kernel can be ditched.

I am planning on redoing the firmware for the RS1, this time with 3D acceleration and using glibc, but it will still have to use the old ass kernel sooo i really can't promise having simultaneous HDMI output and LCD display support.

[h3mingw4y]

hey gameblabla!! thx so very much for your work. i like it a lot... looking forward to your new image!
perhaps you could point me into the (general) direction how to create opk packages for the stone... i would like to see some exotic emus on the device...

[geab]

Would be awesome gameblabla ! Hate RS1 lying around and hype rushing to RS2 with RS1 not finalized.

Looking fwd to have time during to undust RS1

So sadly i did not finish this as i was hoping that Pierre was going to send me a working final revision screen for the Retrostone 2.
However, partly due to the Coronavirus outbreak, it was never sent to me... There was also a unit on my way but alas, i never got it either. Trying to contact Pierre about it on Discord lead me to nothing so i hope he can see it now.

I am posting this as a lot of you asked me about Retrostone 2 given that it seems that RetrOrangePi seemingly stopped development.
It's a shame, because the A20 will get working HDMI audio for Linux 5.10 upstream, meaning the old kernel can be ditched.

I am planning on redoing the firmware for the RS1, this time with 3D acceleration and using glibc, but it will still have to use the old ass kernel sooo i really can't promise having simultaneous HDMI output and LCD display support.

[gameblabla]

Btw, while i ponder what i will do about the Retrostone 1,
you can still port things to the existing CFW if you want.

Here's my buildroot/toolchain :
https://github.com/retrostone-dev/buildroot

compile with make sdk.
Your toolchain should be in output/host. You can move it to /opt/retrostone-toolchain.