Retrostone 2 is coming soon

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zxdunny
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon 30 Jul 2018 11:21

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by zxdunny »

deerwings wrote: Sat 14 Sep 2019 17:36Only thing is, can we please please please get the case lengthened by about an inch at the bottom before they go into production?
There's a few of us have been begging for this since the RS2 was announced, but he's going with the same stumpy dimensions as the RS1 unfortunately :(

If the case was the same proportion as the original GameBoy, I'd have backed it in a heartbeat. As it is, I'm gonna wait for a post-kickstarter production run as the SOC being used is weaker than the RS1 also.
ldeveraux
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed 26 Sep 2018 15:44

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by ldeveraux »

Voice your disapproval with your wallets! Don't buy!
zxdunny
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon 30 Jul 2018 11:21

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by zxdunny »

ldeveraux wrote: Thu 19 Sep 2019 13:27 Voice your disapproval with your wallets! Don't buy!
I'm holding off. If the emulation is good then I may buy, but having played with a the Pi4 and RetroPie, there's no way the RS2 will match it.
deerwings
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Joined: Mon 8 Apr 2019 23:47

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by deerwings »

My understanding is that hardware acceleration will be part of the new SOC, something that the old SOC was lacking because of proprietary blobs. So even if it's 'slower' than the original Retrostone, the new hardware will actually likely be faster for most things. Proper hardware acceleration will improve performance so much more.
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gameblabla
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Joined: Sun 7 Apr 2019 10:02

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by gameblabla »

deerwings wrote: Tue 24 Sep 2019 03:22 My understanding is that hardware acceleration will be part of the new SOC, something that the old SOC was lacking because of proprietary blobs. So even if it's 'slower' than the original Retrostone, the new hardware will actually likely be faster for most things. Proper hardware acceleration will improve performance so much more.
Actually there's more to it : the Allwinner H3 which is inside of the Retrostone 1, can also use an upstream version of Linux as well as the open source GPU drivers.
The issue is that upstream does not support composite output, meaning that you also can't use the open source GPU driver.
There's another, more recent kernel release (4.12) that seem to support TV out but its still too old for the open source GPU drivers or Cedrus.
This means that the only way to achieve 3D acceleration on that practically is to use the old kernel and the proprietary GPU drivers, which have a number of issues.
Building the legacy kernel from source is also very non standard and an exercise in frustration.

Because the Retrostone 2 uses an RGB screen and support for the Allwinner A20 is much better (apart from HDMI audio, which is missing), this means that we can use upstream on that device. However, Pierre & the RetroOrangePi team are still going (at least initially) to use the legacy kernel so in that case, it won't benefit from the open source GPU drivers and still use the old ass proprietary ones.

Once pierre sends me his sample, i'll work on a new CFW for it using the mainline drivers, even if for the lack of HDMI audio. (which can always be worked around with the headphone jack port while they work on it)
deerwings
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon 8 Apr 2019 23:47

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by deerwings »

gameblabla wrote: Tue 24 Sep 2019 18:59
deerwings wrote: Tue 24 Sep 2019 03:22 My understanding is that hardware acceleration will be part of the new SOC, something that the old SOC was lacking because of proprietary blobs. So even if it's 'slower' than the original Retrostone, the new hardware will actually likely be faster for most things. Proper hardware acceleration will improve performance so much more.
Actually there's more to it : the Allwinner H3 which is inside of the Retrostone 1, can also use an upstream version of Linux as well as the open source GPU drivers.
The issue is that upstream does not support composite output, meaning that you also can't use the open source GPU driver.
There's another, more recent kernel release (4.12) that seem to support TV out but its still too old for the open source GPU drivers or Cedrus.
This means that the only way to achieve 3D acceleration on that practically is to use the old kernel and the proprietary GPU drivers, which have a number of issues.
Building the legacy kernel from source is also very non standard and an exercise in frustration.

Because the Retrostone 2 uses an RGB screen and support for the Allwinner A20 is much better (apart from HDMI audio, which is missing), this means that we can use upstream on that device. However, Pierre & the RetroOrangePi team are still going (at least initially) to use the legacy kernel so in that case, it won't benefit from the open source GPU drivers and still use the old ass proprietary ones.

Once pierre sends me his sample, i'll work on a new CFW for it using the mainline drivers, even if for the lack of HDMI audio. (which can always be worked around with the headphone jack port while they work on it)
Well, either way, it makes more sense that the new hardware will likely perform much better than the old hardware for a variety of reasons but there'll likely still be some other issues along the way. At least that's what I gather from your response.
zxdunny
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon 30 Jul 2018 11:21

Re: Retrostone 2 is coming soon

Post by zxdunny »

deerwings wrote: Tue 24 Sep 2019 03:22 My understanding is that hardware acceleration will be part of the new SOC, something that the old SOC was lacking because of proprietary blobs. So even if it's 'slower' than the original Retrostone, the new hardware will actually likely be faster for most things. Proper hardware acceleration will improve performance so much more.
How so? Hardware acceleration (such as GL drivers) will only help for systems that perform texturing on 3D polygons - so N64 and up. And they'll only help for display generation, not for the intensive part of emulation - the emulation of the various CPUs that the system uses. So for any systems below that generation (basically PS1 and down) hardware acceleration won't be much help at all.

As I said, I'll be curious to see what kind of performance we get from this chipset, but pessimistically I'm expecting that PS1 will be the highest we can go. N64 will be hit and miss, and DC/later arcades will be unplayable.
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