8BCraft Forum

Posted: **Sat 26 Dec 2020 05:38**

Hello guys !
It's been a while but i just got a production ready Retrostone 2 a week ago and started working on a CFW for it.
I already got SDL 1.2 stuff working and it's already fully source code compatible with OpenDingux stuff.
SDL2 apps also work and so does kmscube but other 3D games won't work right now due to poor 3D drivers.
(I am using the open source Lima GPU drivers and they kinda suck unfortunately

)

This is what you will get with the CFW :

Games
Ganbare Natsuki-San
HeborisC7EX
SRB2 v2.2

Emulators
PCSX Rearmed (PS1)
Picodrive (Megadrive/Sega 32X)
FCEUX (NES)
Gambatte DMS (GB/GBC)
SMS Plus GX (Master system, Game Gear, SG-1000, Colecovision)
SNESEmu (SNES)
Temper (PC Engine/CD)
PCFXEmu (NEC PCFX, slow)
VBA Next (GBA, set the frameskip to 2 for decent framerates)
VBEmu (Virtual boy emulator. Runs perfectly on most games)
EasyRPG (RPG Maker 2003)

Applications
MPV (Video player. Stick with 480p videos on it.)
GPMark (for testing)

Here's a video of me using my own CFW :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w_X40hsl4Q

V1.21 (January 4th) :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VBkchO ... sp=sharing

Code: Select all

Features :
- Supports triple buffering, vsync and IPU hardware scaling for SDL 1.2 apps.
- Uses a mainline linux kernel (5.10) with several patches on top of it.
- Uses Paragon's upcoming mainline kernel implementation for NTFS. Very snappy NTFS implementation as a result.
- Features Lima and the 3D open source drivers.
- SDL2 support for simple games. (Makes use of 2D GLES1/GLES2 backend) 
- HDMI output with sound

Missing :
- 3D acceleration is very broken and only works for kmscube for now. (kmscube is found in /usr/bin and might require a reboot)
I hope next mesa3D release will fix these issues.
- Wifi support & analog stick support. (Right now, it targets a Retrostone 2 Pro as i was only given a bog standard unit)
- Add external joystick support. (i may handle this via a separate daemon for single player stuff)

Changelog

Code: Select all

1.21:
- Added HDMI output with sound
- Added EasyRPG
- Fixed FCEUX black screen issue and Picodrive's default mapping

1.1 Alpha :
Here are the changes compared to last firmware :
- Adds 3 new emulators : Gambatte DMS, FCEUX and SnesEmu (based upon Snes9x 1.43)
- Auto-expands the NTFS partition upon boot and tries to fix it too.
- Allows you to change the CPU clock on a per game basis. (Useful if you want to underclock and save some battery life)
- Minor fixes that should hopefully fix the black screen issues upon boot.

If you are a developer and want to help me with 3D acceleration in particular, here's the source code for the firmware :
https://github.com/gameblabla/retrostone2-buildroot

Hope you guys had a good christmas !

Posted: **Sat 26 Dec 2020 06:03**

Reserved.

EDIT: CFW v1.1 now supports extending the NTFS partition automatically. So no need to worry about it.

Posted: **Mon 28 Dec 2020 06:48**

I made a new CFW update available that fixes these issues :
- Adds 3 new emulators : Gambatte DMS, FCEUX and SnesEmu (based upon Snes9x 1.43)
- Auto-expands the NTFS partition upon boot and tries to fix it too.
- Allows you to change the CPU clock on a per game basis. (Useful if you want to underclock and save some battery life)
- Minor fixes that should hopefully fix the black screen issues upon boot.

The link has been updated accordingly in the first post. Please upgrade if possible.

Posted: **Sat 2 Jan 2021 14:42**

Hey THANK YOU MAN
great work...

can you help me with my games? I see nothing?
i have a ssd in my RS2 how can i use them?

Thanks in advanced

best regards

Ronald

Posted: **Sat 2 Jan 2021 21:20**

This is great! It starts up in under 10 seconds. Looking forward to more emulators becoming available. I think you are saving the RS2 single-handedly!

I flashed the SD card with the 1.1 image but it didn't automatically extend itself. How can I do this? It doesn't look like I can connect to the device (or find it) on the network, or quit gmenu2x or open a prompt?

Posted: **Sun 3 Jan 2021 12:53**

Thanks a lot.

Posted: **Sun 3 Jan 2021 13:13**

I extended the NTFS partition on the SD card manually.

After playing around with it a bit, some remarks/questions:
- the default gmenu2x theme is not very well readable, the font looks messed up and the icons are too tiny IMO, I tried copying other skins into the skins folder to try them out, but it seems I don't have the rights to copy them into usr/share/gmenu2x/ - can I drop them somewhere else?
- will gmenu2x ever support showing artwork when moving through a list of roms? (like gmenunx can)
- GBA and SNES emulators don't run roms that are in zip files, the emulator starts up but the screen stays black, a .gba file for example works though
- will emulators ever expose video filters? (I'm a sucker for scanline effect)

Thanks again for making this FW, this device has been sitting on the shelf for a year.

Posted: **Mon 4 Jan 2021 09:34**

Updated CFW to v1.21.
Here are the changes :
- Fixed NTFS resizing
- Added HDMI output with sound.
- Added EasyRPG port.
- Fixed FCEUX black screen issue and Picodrive's default input mapping.

You can download the new update in my first post.

- the default gmenu2x theme is not very well readable, the font looks messed up and the icons are too tiny IMO, I tried copying other skins into the skins folder to try them out, but it seems I don't have the rights to copy them into usr/share/gmenu2x/ - can I drop them somewhere else?

You should be able to drop them in .gmenu2x/skins on your NTFS partition.
So in skins, you should have a folder called "640x480".
You can use this skin as a test :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KLhBRw ... Rxs4z/view

Schrampel wrote: ↑Sun 3 Jan 2021 13:13 - will gmenu2x ever support showing artwork when moving through a list of roms? (like gmenunx can)

Not yet as it expects them in a previews folder relative to the folder you're in but i will change that behaviour so it looks for them relative to the files in question.
https://github.com/FunKey-Project/gmenu ... 57715ba900

- will emulators ever expose video filters? (I'm a sucker for scanline effect)

Not a priority for now, although the DMG emulator should have a scanline effect available or similar.

Posted: **Mon 4 Jan 2021 20:50**

HDMI output with sound

nice.

Skin: ok I didn't think of the resolution folder, will try that out then.
Previews: I renamed my artwork folders inside the rom folders to previews and that works perfectly.

Posted: **Wed 6 Jan 2021 11:32**

Thanks for releasing it!

It's great news!
Damn we send you the normal version that sucks. We should have sent you one with the joystick.

And Happy New year!

Edit: After watching the video I understand that it's not us that sent you one actually. Sorry about that we forgot to send you one...

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