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Open Source Gaming Handheld Project Wants Your Money
YokimaSun writes to point out a Kickstarter project that may warm the cockles of your heart: "Fans of emulation and homebrew have not had much to cheer about over the years; the recent generation of consoles has pretty much killed off any hacking by constant firmware updates. The days of PSP homebrew have died a death and consoles like the Caanoo, GP2x and even the mighty Openpandora never really lived up to the massive expectation. There is a glimmer of hope from a team of homebrew developers who have developed a new console called the GCW-Zero, a new open source handheld system which uses the OpenDingux Linux OS. The specs are impressive, with a Ingenic JZ4770 1 GHz MIPS processor, Vivante GC860, capable of OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio, 512 MB DDR2 and 16GB of internal memory which can via external memory card be extended by another 32GB. N64 and PS1 emulation and everything below should be at full speed in time."
The specs are impressive, with a Ingenic JZ4770 1 GHz MIPS processor, Vivante GC860, capable of OpenGL ES 2.0, 3.5 inch LCD with 320x240 pixels; 4:3 aspect ratio, 512 MB DDR2 and 16GB of internal memory which can via external memory card be extended by another 32GB. N64 and PS1 emulation and everything below should be at full speed in time."
No, that is not impressive. Super lo-res screen, slower than any phone that is available today. But it's open source, so I suppose that's good.
But what is the point? Learning? Because the thing won't sell, like the previous models didn't do. You can have the best hardware, but if you don't have games for the device it doesn't matter.
I, for one, would rather game on my phone which is faster and has a much higher resolution display, with a bluetooth connected game controller of my choice.
Mini-USB is theoretically deprecated in favor of Micro-USB. You could have saved someone carrying an extra wire around, and it's not like the ports or cables cost much different when it comes to production.
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I'm one of the people working on this console. The point of it is retro gaming: emulation, classic PC games and homebrew and indie games in retro style. Touch screens and physical controls are completely types of input: you cannot play a game designed for physical input well with a touch screen or vice versa.
We've got a light embedded Linux distro on it and with C/C++ applications writing directly into the framebuffer (set up via SDL, usually) you can get very decent performance from these specs. For example, my prototype has 256 MB of memory and 240 MB of that is available for applications. Similarly, the OS footprint on the internal storage is less than 100 MB.
Short version: Dingux is Dingoo Linux and OpenDingux is a reimplementation of Dingux.
The project originates from the scene formed around the Dingoo A320. Ignacio García Pérez (aka booboo) ported Linux to this device and called that Dingux. Dingux worked great, but it was a one-man project and Ignacio didn't have time to keep supporting it. The code was based on the Linux kernel released by Ingenic (the manufacturer of the JZ4740 SoC), who often invent their own kernel interfaces instead of sticking with the standard ones. Also, the Dingux kernel was quite old (2.6.24) and difficult to update because also internally it took some shortcuts instead of using established interfaces.
There was a different device, the Ben NanoNote, that used a very similar SoC and had a much cleaner kernel (thanks to in particular Lars-Peter Clausen); many of their drivers are even integrated into the mainline kernel now. So we (mainly Paul Cercueil and me) started OpenDingux to merge Dingux and the NanoNote drivers into a modern kernel that uses standard interfaces.
When Justin Barwick started the GCW Zero project, he contacted Paul and me to port OpenDingux to the new device. The code is currently a mix of Ingenic's drivers and our own and while it still needs a lot of cleanup before it's ready for mainline submission, it is at least keeping up with mainline kernel releases (Linux 3.5 when we started, 3.7 now).
We just kept the name; many people who follow Linux handhelds news are already familiar with the OpenDingux name and we didn't have any great ideas for a different name either. I know I've probably answered a rhetorical question but I thought it was nice to present a little history nevertheless.
Its a MIPS instead of ARM so itll emulate PSP at decent speed.
Don't forget that the PSP has two MIPS CPUs, each with its own floating point processor.
And a 480x272 resolution, which it will be kind of hard to emulate on a 320x240 display.
The list of failed handheld gaming consoles is long. The list of successful open source one is empty. There's no way you're going to build a momentum, unless you are way ahead of the market leaders. And without a momentum, it'll die before it takes off.
Donate money to this, and you'll either get nothing, or another box that goes in the closet/basement/attic. Perhaps you'll get your money back after 20 years if you keep it in mint condition.
It's the best specced product in its class. Yes, it might be less powerful than an android tablet from 2 years ago. But that android tablet doesn't have gaming controls. This is for people who liked the Dingoo A320, but want something better. This is for people who wanted a Pandora, but couldn't afford one. This is for people who would rather replay Master of Magic on the go than whatever Nintendo or Sony are hyping today.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There are tablets now with gaming controls.
A 320x240 screen is pathetic.
They changed the bluetooth stack in 4.2. Apps will have to be updated. The SIXAXIS one should work fine for you. Likely all controllers will be working again shortly.
Either way a 320x240 screen is pathetic.
I'm "mth" and I'll answer as many of your questions as I can.
The devices are built in China by a factory who have done this sort of thing before. I don't know all the details, but while the yield of the first batch wasn't great, it also wasn't worse than what one would expect from a first production run. Justin has been a reseller of devices like the Dingoo A320 for several years, so he has practical experience in distribution.
Regarding the software, we build the root file system using buildroot with as few customizations as needed. Our SDL is using the Linux framebuffer for graphics and ALSA for audio, no acceleration is implemented but it's not necessary either: pushing pixels at 320x240 or synthesizing stereo audio at 44.1 or 48 kHz can easily be done by the CPU.
We do want to add acceleration for OpenGL ES. We're working to get the proprietary driver from Vivante up and running in our system (this wasn't trivial because we're using uClibc instead of glibc). We're also looking at the open source etna_viv project, but that's in an early stage of development, so it will be a while before it is usable as a full driver replacement. Note that the GPU renders from memory to memory; the framebuffer is handled by the LCD controller and that part is already fully open source, so if you want a fully open kernel you can run SDL applications just fine today.
All sources can be found on github. This includes the kernel, buildroot, the boot loader, the image generation tools and more.
As someone who doesn't want his retro gaming graphics stretched or blurred, I would prefer my 256x224 SNES games showing up matted on a 320x240 screen so there's a 1:1 pixel representation. 640x480 offers nothing for even Playstation, which maxes out around 320x240.
I never said anything about the size of the screen, only the resolution.
The DPI is only 114 on that screen. Which is just pathetic in 2013.
Yes it would, and it might add all of $10 to the cost.
Handheld? Ouya...? Perhaps you would be interested in something called a "smartphone", running the same OS as Ouya... Android....
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