GP32 Handheld!!!

[giorgos_gs]

Did you know about a handheld device like Gameboy advanced that has:
* Hires Graphics
* Good sound
* Plays DivX and MP3
* Is OPEN SOURSE
* Plays Emulators for NES, SNES, GB,GBC,GBA, Sega, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum, Commodore, MSX
* Has USB
* Takes Smartmedia Cards
* Has ARM CPU around 133 - 160MHZ
* Plays Lucas Arts SCUMMV with sound

It's like a dream e? It's real and it costs only 150$
http://www.gbax.com/gp32review.html

If this has an ARM CPU 133 - 160MHZ and can run all these, does it mean that an NX70V also should be able to run all these emulators?

[Unregistered]

couple things:

I seriously doubt they actually got licensing for all these games/platforms, so these emulators will be running illegal software. They even say they send a CD with some of the software mentioned on that page (Spectrum (Dizzy), MSX (metal Gear), NES (mario), GBA (Contra), Sega (Fantasy Star) & SNES (UN Squadron)). Lawsuit time.

I can already see landfills filling up with used AA batteries from people using this thing. it says 10-14 hours on that site but I wouldn't expect anything close to that.

this reminds me a lot of that failed attempt at an open source linux video game system (can't remember the name) that was to compete with ps2, xbox, and gamecube. Everything was in line but just a month or so before release date, the whole project kicked the bucket.

[rhart00]

gahh.... got logged out for some reason as I was posting that. wierd

[Zork]

unregistered, you dont need any licensing when you own the real game. At the USA thats perhaps some prob, cause of the DMCA (but as an american I would sh*t on that crime against free speech), but at the rest of the world you could indeed play the games you own for a platform indeed also with some emulation tool.

[fingermouse]

Originally posted by Zork
unregistered, you dont need any licensing when you own the real game. At the USA thats perhaps some prob, cause of the DMCA (but as an american I would sh*t on that crime against free speech), but at the rest of the world you could indeed play the games you own for a platform indeed also with some emulation tool.

Coming from the UK I don't know the full consequence of the DMCA, but the uk computing press has kept a close eye on it.  My understanding was it is only illegal to create a program to remove copyright measure, but you can quite happily buy and use one, as demonstrated by the sklyarov case and his program that removes adobe ebook security.  Since the program was written and sold in russia it was ok and could be used by americans to use their copyrighted material within the laws of copyright.

This system would seem to fit the bill also.

[aaronchow]

Originally posted by Unregistered
I can already see landfills filling up with used AA batteries from people using this thing. it says 10-14 hours on that site but I wouldn't expect anything close to that.

I'm too lazy to login

I bought one when I was in Korea, and the batteries does last for 10hours+. I took a direct flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco, which is about 12 hours flight, and I was playing with it for the whole time (except eating).

For legitimacy, it's another issue. Most of my games are converted from my previously owned games, but I do searches for illegal ones on the web and occasionally download them to play. It's illegal, but considering the vast variety of games this machine can play, it's a dream.

[goyanian]

pretty amazing machine. can clie do those?

[cchan]

Well, as far as I know, it seems that under U.S. law you are allowed to play emulated games and keep the ROMs only if you own a copy of that game. For instance, with NES emulators and such, you are allowed to keep a ROM of Megaman 2 for your own use if and only if you own the original cartridge. You may play the game for 24 hours and then you must delete the ROM from your system/discard it from any storage device if you do NOT own the cartridge.

But, hey, I saw that gbax.com device a few days ago and wondered the same thing. It seems like a wonderful device, but I am concerned about both the longevity of the device (in terms of support) and the legality of the device's capabilities. If it were free and clear of violations, then I would be an amnesiac when it came to the Gameboy Advanced SP.

<rant>
Ah, technology without limitations. Unlike Sony. (I can say that, because I've been waiting for an upgrade from my T615 to a T-series device with Virtual Graffiti, larger screen, voice recording, MP3 playback, bluetooth, etc etc). TG50 is a step in the right direction though except for the inane buttons and keyboard.
</rant>

[yOyOYoo]

wow this looks pretty amazing!

When are our OS5 machines going to be this capable?!? AHhh!

I do wonder how well the emulation on all those platforms run. Do more graphic intensive games run choppy or are they smooth?

[giorgos_gs]

They say they all are smooth and fullscreen except SNES and GBA which emulators are in an early state and run a little slow. But they promise that this will be fixed soon.

[giorgos_gs]

Imagine watching DivX movies with it!
I think this handheld has a really good price.

[Spiral]

Looks pretty interesting

[Zork]

giorgio, DivX looks ****ty compared with the FullScreen Kinoma and MPEG movies (cause some slow ARM CPU cant reach the quality we are used to from our OS 4.x and 5.x Clies - with some little help from the GPU ;) ). So thats some clear disadvantage. And at the site I gave to you, there is clearly no (!) indication of a GBA emulation. So dont tell that again and again, cause they also include other emulation software at early stages like the new FrodoGP32 which is now dead slow too (not only the SNES emulation as you mentioned), but surely become faster and faster when the first final candidates are done.
So for emulation stuff they are at stages where the Clie would be in appr. half a year (with the ARM CPU things already changed dramatically at the emulation scene. And even on OS 4.x devices emulation is not limited to Liberty anymore. You also have now a full fledged ScummVM interpreter and some awesome ZX Spectrum emulation software).
So the GP32 is some nice idea, but its just some competition for the GBA SP and not for PDAs at all. But as already mentioned, its kewl that you showed whats the least (its just a 66 MHz ARM CPU at the GP32, which could be overclocked to 130 MHz. So things look way better on OS 5 devices) we as Clie users could expect at the emulaton scene within the next months.

[Unregistered]

Emulators are 100% legal. They just emulate the hadrware specificaition of a machine, which is generally well known. But even if you're paranoid, and in the US, check the law.. you are allowed to create a machien to use electronic data somewhere else than its original form... so no biggy.

The real question is the ROM (or disk images, etc etc).

You are allowed to make backup (despite how bad companies are trying to stop you nowadays and always).

You are allowed (due to the law mentioend above) to copy from one medium to another (ie: Especiallty for backup). You can read EPROM's and drop them to a file and play them in your emulator..; you've bought the license to use that data and if you have to modify the medioum, you're allowed to.. that is your right in the US (and everywhere else I've looked).

You are *not* allowed to send that ROM around. You've bought it on a cartridge, you have to sell it on a cartridge,a nd most of the time you're not even supposed to sell it (thoghtheyr'e nto allowed to remove your right to make income, so thats BS)

Even if you own the ROM/cart/disk, you are *not* allowed to put it on a website, since you are now making it easy to distribute, and you do not have the right to distribute anothers work.

Lastly, you do not have the right to downlaod a ROM, just because you own it. That puts you in a party to distribution.. the other guy is not allowed to distribute it (so hes breaking the law), and youre' not allowed to download (*copy*) it. Just like.. if you own a car, and someone else shas that same car, well, you can't go and take his. Thats his, this one is yours.. even though they look the same.

So you can copy a ROM off yourself all day long, but you cannot copy it form someone else. Thats the letter of the law my friends :)

The implicaiton is.. if you buy a PC emu that includes games (like the various capcon emus, or atari emus, or williams emus), you can rip the roms out of *them* all you want, and play them in another emu. But downloading them form the web is still illegal.

Spork.

[JackAxe]

This is straight from Nintendos site;
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html

Can I Download a Nintendo ROM from the Internet if I Already Own the Authentic Game?

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.

<]=)

[rhart00]

so if you can't legally DL the roms from the internet, where do you get them from? is there an easy way to make copies of the cartridges (gba, nes, snes, etc cartridges) so you can play them on the GP32? that is the problem I see arising.

[jonesey]

The great thing about the GP32 is that the company who makes it distributes all the software necessary to make games for it and makes it available to anyone, and it uses smartmedia instead of proprietary cartridges so anyone can be a game publisher!

It's easy to see from the number of Emulators and ports that there is a good scene around this console in addition to the "real" games for it.

Reminds me of the dreamcast, which has a large "homebrew" scene despite being dead for over a year now.

[Spiral]

It's actually kidn fo sad that Palms only JUST have gotten a ZX spectrum emulator, it's been around on the ti-89 for at least a yr or two, and the ti-89 uses a 68k processor too.

[Zork]

JackAxe, thats how Nintendo like to see things, but it isnt reality. The surprisingly correct part of unregistered posting is, that you bought the license to use the software. This includes your right for backup. And if its the only possibility to build a backup of your software by downloading it from the net, then this is completely legal from your side (its illegal from the side of the provider, cause he got just the right to use the software. Not to publish it more then once (means selling his bought software to others. And even this is limited at the US).
Something which isnt true at unregistered posting is the fact, that you cant bypass protection schemes which avoids to fulfil your right to backup legally anymore. Any trial to bypass such protection schemes is strictly illegal according to the DMCA at the US. At europe on the other side we have also have some new regulation thx to the EU ;) . But there it is only prohibited to spread tools which bypass such protection schemes. But the use of them is only not allowed (and there is some huge legally difference between forbidden and not allowed. Not allowed means "Hey, dont do this. But if you do it, we wont harm you").
So at europe you still could make your backup legally (as long as you find the necesarry illegally offered tools at the net) w/o any limit, but at the US its only possible when there isnt any protection scheme at all used at the software. Aint the US some fine country to live in ;) ?

[iebnn]

Originally posted by Zork
giorgio, DivX looks ****ty compared with the FullScreen Kinoma and MPEG movies (cause some slow ARM CPU cant reach the quality we are used to from our OS 4.x and 5.x Clies - with some little help from the GPU ;) ). So thats some clear disadvantage. And at the site I gave to you, there is clearly no (!) indication of a GBA emulation. So dont tell that again and again, cause they also include other emulation software at early stages like the new FrodoGP32 which is now dead slow too (not only the SNES emulation as you mentioned), but surely become faster and faster when the first final candidates are done.
So for emulation stuff they are at stages where the Clie would be in appr. half a year (with the ARM CPU things already changed dramatically at the emulation scene. And even on OS 4.x devices emulation is not limited to Liberty anymore. You also have now a full fledged ScummVM interpreter and some awesome ZX Spectrum emulation software).
So the GP32 is some nice idea, but its just some competition for the GBA SP and not for PDAs at all. But as already mentioned, its kewl that you showed whats the least (its just a 66 MHz ARM CPU at the GP32, which could be overclocked to 130 MHz. So things look way better on OS 5 devices) we as Clie users could expect at the emulaton scene within the next months.

There is a GBA emulator.

MPEG1 might be good quality on a clie, but you can't hold much video at all on a memory stick. Who cares about the quality when you can only hold half an episode on your mem stick. DivX definitely looks better than kinoma -- subtitles are unreadable with kinoma (that should say enough).

It is 130Mhz, but remember that there isn't all the other overhead a palm device has -- a GBA is <20mhz IIRC, and it can run games faster than most Palm games run.

ANyway, I talked to someone who owned the device. Its buttons SUCK. It feels like you're breaking them every time you press them. Nothign like the feel of GBA buttons. He sold it after a month.

[iebnn]

Also..... the 24 hours of using a ROM that you don't own is bs. Someone came up with that as an ethical justification for downloading ROMs. It's still illegal. I'm not even sure if downloading a ROM of a game you own is legal, but I may be wrong (the 24 hour thing is incorrect though, I'm sure of that).

[iebnn]

Originally posted by Zork
JackAxe, thats how Nintendo like to see things, but it isnt reality. The surprisingly correct part of unregistered posting is, that you bought the license to use the software. This includes your right for backup. And if its the only possibility to build a backup of your software by downloading it from the net, then this is completely legal from your side (its illegal from the side of the provider, cause he got just the right to use the software. Not to publish it more then once (means selling his bought software to others. And even this is limited at the US).
Something which isnt true at unregistered posting is the fact, that you cant bypass protection schemes which avoids to fulfil your right to backup legally anymore. Any trial to bypass such protection schemes is strictly illegal according to the DMCA at the US. At europe on the other side we have also have some new regulation thx to the EU ;) . But there it is only prohibited to spread tools which bypass such protection schemes. But the use of them is only not allowed (and there is some huge legally difference between forbidden and not allowed. Not allowed means "Hey, dont do this. But if you do it, we wont harm you").
So at europe you still could make your backup legally (as long as you find the necesarry illegally offered tools at the net) w/o any limit, but at the US its only possible when there isnt any protection scheme at all used at the software. Aint the US some fine country to live in ;) ?

The US doesnt do anything about people who download ROMs that they don't even own. It's just advised that you don't, and it is illegal. Only big distributors get shut down.

[ricardosalum]

how the hell are they going to know if you own a cartridge or not!
well i don't think so..!,,and no one is checking it anyways.!
do you think that they are going to check on everyone's home to see if they have ilegal rom files...I think not
and by the way there also a Quake port for this machine,,! and its sweet..!

[Zork]

iebnn, 320*250 25 fps on my Dragonball Clie T625 w/o any probs at all. You cant even dream of the same quality with DivX, cause DivX is build for way more powerful platforms then the ARM ones.

And bout the speed of the GBA : It only uses the same ARM subset. But everything else is diffeent. The CPU inside the GBA offers registers and opcodes beside the common ARM subset which is way more powerful then at any other ARM platform. So someone again were catched inside the MegaHertz trap ;) .

And finally : The GP32 surely is some nice stuff. But it isnt of any use for Clie users at all, cause you cant carry around a few dozen items with you. Folks, that aint a Sierra adventure with unlimited size pockets, thats reality. And there you cant carry a Clie, a mobile phone and a GP32 or GBA and/or a iPod with you.

[Zork]

ricardosalum, they will check it, when they catch your IP durin DLin from some F B I guarded DL site ;) .

[JackAxe]

This is the coolest game gizmo I've seen, but it's not for me. I'm buying my GBA SP when it's released.


Off subject:

SONY's probably not that far off from putting something like a Playstation GPU into their future Clie's. This allong with a faster GA would be nice. Then sidescrollers and games like Quake wouldn't be an issue. For 600+ bucks I want my PDA to rock<.>

<]=)

[iebnn]

Originally posted by Zork
iebnn, 320*250 25 fps on my Dragonball Clie T625 w/o any probs at all. You cant even dream of the same quality with DivX, cause DivX is build for way more powerful platforms then the ARM ones.

And bout the speed of the GBA : It only uses the same ARM subset. But everything else is diffeent. The CPU inside the GBA offers registers and opcodes beside the common ARM subset which is way more powerful then at any other ARM platform. So someone again were catched inside the MegaHertz trap ;) .

Which is exactly my point.... you yourself said that the GP32 wouldn't perform well because of its low clock speed.

Also... I don't know how the divx playback is on the GP32... but if it is fast enough to play them without dropping frames, it will look *much* nicer than the crappy cinepak codec. Kinoma videos look terrible. MQV videos are nice, but stupidly proprietary.

And finally : The GP32 surely is some nice stuff. But it isnt of any use for Clie users at all, cause you cant carry around a few dozen items with you. Folks, that aint a Sierra adventure with unlimited size pockets, thats reality. And there you cant carry a Clie, a mobile phone and a GP32 or GBA and/or a iPod with you.
How is it no use at all? Clies have terrible buttons for playing games (no shoulder buttons even with the addon), have no SNES, NES, or GBA emulator, and can't play regular DOOM or Heretic. If you're saying that's too many devices to carry... then you're saying GBA is completely useless (I have a GBA, but don't bring it EVERYWHERE in my POCKET with me.... I put it in my backpack or somewhere). And not everyone carries an ipod with them (you can use your clie for that)..

But, the GP32 sucks -- its buttons are terrible. Hardware quality matters.

[JackAxe]

Jebnn,

This is the problems I'm running into with Divx on my PPC. This file the Matrix was recommended by other PPC users as a good example, but as you can see it looks like complete crap when compared to Kinoma. Also these files people have refered me to have ".avi" extensions, even though they said they were Divx. Can you point me to a good site for Divx examples?

Forgot to mention that at this rez, the PPC never drops frames.

<]=)

http://bainne.com/divix.jpg http://bainne.com/kinoma.jpg

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by iebnn


But, the GP32 sucks -- its buttons are terrible. Hardware quality matters.

You know, they're a small company.. why not help them, rather than help kill them? :) Choice is good. I've got a GBA collecting dust, but my GP32 I use every night :)

I love my GP32; the buttons are fine.

jeff

[iebnn]

Unregistered: Hmm, maybe the person I talked to had a defective unit. Dunno, he said the button hardware was really bad. How do they compare to the GBA buttons? I wouldn't really want anything much different (for the button feel -- GBA buttons feel similar to PSX buttons etc, they're all pretty standard.... what does the gp32 use?)

JackAxe: that's because the pocket divx player is poorly coded, or you have a poorly encoded divx -- I haven't tried divx on a ppc so I don't know. Kinoma uses Cinepak, which is a really old codec that works on 33mhz etc palms (meaning it doesn't have very good compression). DivX 5, four pass encodes look amazing -- near DVD quality, but I guess a ~200mhz arm couldn't handle it. Apparently subtitles are unreadable with kinoma -- this shows how poor quality kinoma is (mqv has readable subtitles in Standard (not HQ) quality mode, but divx can get even better results).

[JackAxe]

The URL on the bottom is very readable %95 of the time with this trailer. I downloaded a japanese cartoon that was completely subtitled and didn't have any issues at all reading it. Just like watching my TV, but with compresion artifacts. Like most video, it's the sequence of frames that creates the illusion of clarity, where as a single frame is usualy lacking. As long as the filese are encoded at a higher k, they look nice and clean, much better then what I've seen on my PPC.

I would like to clean up the Pocket PC video since I have more storage and my Micro Drive is faster then the MS. BUt if this is the best it's going to get, I'll be kind of bummed. I guess I'll just need to buy a PPC with GA next time.

Leave it up to SONY to make movie files limited to their devices. They should have left the files as mov.

<]=P

[Unregistered]

a little of topic but did you see all the accesories avalable for this thing? my nx is so jealous

[iebnn]

Hmm, that's odd.. mrspic had said that the subtitles weren't readable with kinoma.

[skeezix]

Originally posted by iebnn
Unregistered: Hmm, maybe the person I talked to had a defective unit. Dunno, he said the button hardware was really bad. How do they compare to the GBA buttons? I wouldn't really want anything much different (for the button feel -- GBA buttons feel similar to PSX buttons etc, they're all pretty standard.... what does the gp32 use?)

JackAxe: that's because the pocket divx player is poorly coded, or you have a poorly encoded divx -- I haven't tried divx on a ppc so I don't know. Kinoma uses Cinepak, which is a really old codec that works on 33mhz etc palms (meaning it doesn't have very good compression). DivX 5, four pass encodes look amazing -- near DVD quality, but I guess a ~200mhz arm couldn't handle it. Apparently subtitles are unreadable with kinoma -- this shows how poor quality kinoma is (mqv has readable subtitles in Standard (not HQ) quality mode, but divx can get even better results).


The GBA has buttons down pretty good; the d-pad is pretty well done on it. The GP32 buttons are good, but not perfect. They're certainly not bad, thats for sure. The position of the start/select is genius, since they're beside the normal buttons and thus can be used in game as extra buttons. However, I do find myself getting cramped a bit after playing a fast scrolling shooter.. I've not found a good shooter for the GBA to compare to mind you.

The GP32 joystick isn't as good as a good D-pad I think; its a good control, but is very sensitive.. too sensitive. I never thought I'd love a d-pad, but gotta say.. the GBA d-pad is a little better. I guess you could say the controls on the GP32 feel like a Neogeo Pocket Color, but they're better laid out.

Great handheld if your'e into retro or emus. IF you can read Korean, some really great games.. for we English, its mostly emus and retro, plus a few cool games from GamePArk.. though Id' say half the GP games are Korean right now, they're working on ports. (So theres a dozen games for Enlish, plus a zillion emulators)

jeff

[JackAxe]

Originally posted by iebnn
Hmm, that's odd.. mrspic had said that the subtitles weren't readable with kinoma.

I can understand that statement if the only examples mrspic had seen were from places like Clieflix. The files I've downloaded from there were captured at low settings. At 1000k Kinoma is pretty good.

<]=P

[iebnn]

How large are the files when the subs are readable though?

I hadn't ever viewed any of his movies, since I don't use kinoma. Cinepak can't be better than mpeg4 though.

[JackAxe]

I really haven't tried a all the different options in Kinoma, I'm just happy with the video at 1000k. The Two Towers preview which is about 3 minutes and 30 seconds is just over 20 megs. Huge.. Some of the settings I did try below a 1000k looked like crap. I also tried 24 fps instead of 30 fps to get cleaner video, but it didn't make a difference.

I would take mpeg4 over Cinepak any day. Cinepak is just good enough for my NR70v, if something better were available for my Clie' I would go with it.

<]=)

[iebnn]

20 megs for <4 minutes is pretty unusable...... unless you're just viewing things like trailers or music videos.....

If you need 1000k to have the subtitles readable/look nice, then it doesn't matter because you can't fit an episode on the memory stick with that bitrate :)

Ah, I didn't know you had an NR70v.

[Zork]

iebnn, for getting kinoma quality quality with DivX you need way more MegaHertz. The prob isnt the fram dropping. The prob is that the DivX players needs huge ressources to play back at their best level. You always get ****ty quality with DivX on ARM devices, cause there you cant use the further steps necesarry to clean up the picture.
Thats why Kinoma and the new MPEG player with the ARM Clies is the best quality you get for video playback by far. And I presume you wont just watch cartons on your PDA (which is the only kind of movie which wont matter if you use sh*tty DivX playback or fine enough Kinoma playback).
And BTW The CPU doesnt all the things alone with the Kinoma movies. It would be too slow to do HiRes movies. That task is supported by the GPU located at each Clie. Thats why you get such huge fps on the Clie like on no other PDA.
And subtitles arent showing anything. Cause subtitles usually are stored at their own stream, newbie ;) .

[Zork]

iebnn, DivX 5 reaches DVD quality if you build movies as large as DVD movies. Otherwise you just get an movie full of DivX artifacts which clearyl show if you store them on just 2 CDs. That already were proven at this thread. So dont start that stuff again.
Bout DivX on PDAs : Its pretty useless, cause PDAs arent fast enough to allow detailed playback of DivX streams. It isnt the fault of the player, its simply cause the CPU aint fast enough for doin such stuff. And nope, a GPU wont help you there (cause someone here mentioned, that he is thinkin bout buyin a PPC with GPU. Wont matter for DivX playback. If you want to get movie playback, simply use the Clie. The only working movie playback PDA right now), beside having faster screen updates (which is the magic of Kinoma at the Clie. Otherwise we want see any movies at all :) ).
And bout the GP32. Yep, its useless, cause you wont see anyone out there having a PDA and a handheld at his pockets (and this includes indeed the GB SP), cause life aint a Sierra adventure game. Bout the emulation software : This already changes and things look awesome (just check the OS 4.x Spectrum emulaton software to see whats even possible with the old Dragonball devices, not to mention the new ARM devices). Not to mention the dozens of real games avail for the Clie (offering primarly emulation software is always a sign of a not supported platform, cause emulation is always just second choice compared with real software (or are you playin only the awesome Activision Anthology (I really like that software) on your PS2 ;) ? ). And for the GP32 I dont see any exclusive developments. So the GB SP with its hundreds of cartridges would be a far better choice if you really like to mismatch reality with a Sierra adventure ;) . And there is also (!) emulation software avail for the GBA (I think even a NES emulation software).

[simple_thinker]

Seems like the GP32 does not have backlight at all...

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by Zork
iebnn, DivX 5 reaches DVD quality if you build movies as large as DVD movies. Otherwise you just get an movie full of DivX artifacts which clearyl show if you store them on just 2 CDs. That already were proven at this thread. So dont start that stuff again.
Bout DivX on PDAs : Its pretty useless, cause PDAs arent fast enough to allow detailed playback of DivX streams. It isnt the fault of the player, its simply cause the CPU aint fast enough for doin such stuff. And nope, a GPU wont help you there (cause someone here mentioned, that he is thinkin bout buyin a PPC with GPU. Wont matter for DivX playback. If you want to get movie playback, simply use the Clie. The only working movie playback PDA right now), beside having faster screen updates (which is the magic of Kinoma at the Clie. Otherwise we want see any movies at all :) ).
And bout the GP32. Yep, its useless, cause you wont see anyone out there having a PDA and a handheld at his pockets (and this includes indeed the GB SP), cause life aint a Sierra adventure game. Bout the emulation software : This already changes and things look awesome (just check the OS 4.x Spectrum emulaton software to see whats even possible with the old Dragonball devices, not to mention the new ARM devices). Not to mention the dozens of real games avail for the Clie (offering primarly emulation software is always a sign of a not supported platform, cause emulation is always just second choice compared with real software (or are you playin only the awesome Activision Anthology (I really like that software) on your PS2 ;) ? ). And for the GP32 I dont see any exclusive developments. So the GB SP with its hundreds of cartridges would be a far better choice if you really like to mismatch reality with a Sierra adventure ;) . And there is also (!) emulation software avail for the GBA (I think even a NES emulation software).

Why can't you carry one little device that is half the size of an NX? Why can't that fit in your backpack or some other kind of bag?

Saying that divx 5 reaches dvd quality if you make them as large as dvd movies is stupid.. I know that you can not reach true DVD quality, but you can have it fit on a CD and look almost exactly like the DVD (you would only be able to notice a difference if you looked very closely, and you shouldn't be doing that anyway when watching a movie). You don't need a 3gig divx file to get near-dvd quality.

And, the GPU in the latest toshiba greatly improves divx playback.

I don't care about spectrum games.

Yes there are dozens of games for the clie but its library of games no where near compares to that of the gba.

There are a lot of "exclusive developments" for the GP32. You obviously did not look for this information, as there are over 10 or 20 games either out or in development right now (some are out, some are in development).

I don't find it difficult to have a Clie and another device half the size of my clie with me. At all. And yes there is nes emulation for GBA, but you need a ~$70 cartridge.

You can't store subtitles in their own stream with kinoma.

Your arguments just aren't making sen... never mind. Your'e being stupid. I'm going to end this argument right here (at least my part of it).

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by simple_thinker
Seems like the GP32 does not have backlight at all...

It does.

[iebnn]

That was me above. You're now going on ignore zork for being such an idiot.

[simple_thinker]

sorry for asking, but if there is backlite, how come a lot of people is talking abt getting tired of finding a light source in order to play it?

[iebnn]

That's the GBA.....

[simple_thinker]

Originally posted by iebnn
That's the GBA.....

thanx for the info man. this is the deciding factor whether to get one or not... if the gp32 has backlite, itz gonna be great!

[iebnn]

Have fun. I have heard the buttons are pretty bad though.... but someone here said they're fine (the other guy sold it after a month because of the buttons though, so I dunno)

[simple_thinker]

Sorry man, saw this on some forum

http://pub179.ezboard.com/fgp32frm7.showMessage?topicID=32.topic

it says that there is no backlight for the GP32... now i am really confused...

[iebnn]

oh.... well the review of it I saw said it does have one. Oh well. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong. Sorry :P

You can get backlight attachments

[skeezix]

Originally posted by simple_thinker
sorry for asking, but if there is backlite, how come a lot of people is talking abt getting tired of finding a light source in order to play it?

Just like the GBA, the GP32 has no backlight. You can buy a backlight, just like you can buy the Afterburner backlight for the GBA.

The next version of the GP32 will have an option to have a backlight so you can buy a GP32 or GP32-with-backlight. Not sure when that ones coming out though.

jeff

[simple_thinker]

thanx for the info.

[Leb]

Originally posted by aaronchow


I'm too lazy to login

I bought one when I was in Korea, and the batteries does last for 10hours+. I took a direct flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco, which is about 12 hours flight, and I was playing with it for the whole time (except eating).

For legitimacy, it's another issue. Most of my games are converted from my previously owned games, but I do searches for illegal ones on the web and occasionally download them to play. It's illegal, but considering the vast variety of games this machine can play, it's a dream.

I just discovered this thread and I am interested but I will read every message and reply with every observation.

#1- Too lazy to login? Maybe he is just the thread starter trying to promote his thing, or someone from the company? We could have the admin investigate and check his ip.

[Leb]

Originally posted by iebnn


ANyway, I talked to someone who owned the device. Its buttons SUCK. It feels like you're breaking them every time you press them. Nothign like the feel of GBA buttons. He sold it after a month.

I trust this guy more than the last one.

[Leb]

Originally posted by Unregistered


You know, they're a small company.. why not help them, rather than help kill them? :) Choice is good. I've got a GBA collecting dust, but my GP32 I use every night :)

I love my GP32; the buttons are fine.

jeff

I don't like the sick strategy that you are using it really is pissing me off.

[Leb]

Originally posted by Unregistered
a little of topic but did you see all the accesories avalable for this thing? my nx is so jealous

What's the matter? You can't brag about the quality of your product, and all it does it emulation so you take down the nx, this is lame product promotion.

[Leb]

I wouldn't take a chance on buying this. Iebnn made it seem cheap and the guy who started this thread is using false advertising by posting under unregistered ids. He had nothing to say about the quality of his product, just the features.

If someone does buy this, how about a review? Or maybe ClieSource can get their hands on one with a review?

[Leb]

Ok after I read this thread I thought that this product was cheap and it would be like buying a Korean car. WELL WHAT DO YOU KNOW IT IS MADE IN KOREA LOL!!!!

Here's a small review-

http://www.retro-games.co.uk/gp32/gp32.htm

I like this one better-

http://www.gamershell.com/reviews/GP32GameparkHandheldRevi.shtml

So far nothing bad about it.

Here's some more stuff-

http://members.cox.net/kamranjabbari/gp32.htm

[skeezix]

Originally posted by Leb


I don't like the sick strategy that you are using it really is pissing me off.

Excuse me?

What strategy?

I'm a GP32 owner, and a highly respected Palm OS developer. I've done piles of software and hardware reviews.

If you don't beleive me.. too bad for you :)

jeff

[skeezix]

Originally posted by Leb
I wouldn't take a chance on buying this. Iebnn made it seem cheap and the guy who started this thread is using false advertising by posting under unregistered ids. He had nothing to say about the quality of his product, just the features.

If someone does buy this, how about a review? Or maybe ClieSource can get their hands on one with a review?

Dude, you're an idiot. You think everyone who is Unregistered is one guy?

I am registered.. but silly forum software doesn't log you in when you hit reply and enter your username and pass above.. it puts your name in, but doesn't log you in.

I answer 400+ support emails a day, so I don't have time to go logging into 20 forums when I forget to.. so sue me :)

Believe me or not. Assuming the worst is pretty lame.

Anyway, dont' buy one. I couldnt' care less. I love my GP32.

I wouldnt' expect Cliesource to get a review copy.. they're not a handheld gaming site.

jeff

[skeezix]

Originally posted by Leb
Ok after I read this thread I thought that this product was cheap and it would be like buying a Korean car. WELL WHAT DO YOU KNOW IT IS MADE IN KOREA LOL!!!!

http://members.cox.net/kamranjabbari/gp32.htm

You call me lame, and you're the one making racist comments?

It was lame inthe 50s, but understandable since humans were idiots then. I woudl have expected by now you'd have clued into the fact that racism hurts us all :/

Ah well, I'll ignore you now :)

jeff

[Leb]

Originally posted by skeezix


Excuse me?

What strategy?

I'm a GP32 owner, and a highly respected Palm OS developer. I've done piles of software and hardware reviews.

If you don't beleive me.. too bad for you :)

jeff

Shut up you big deuce. EVERYONE- LOOK AT ALL OF THE UNREGISTERED COMING TO POST POSITIVES ABOUT THIS PRODUCT. IT'S SO OBVIOUS THAT THE THREAD STARTER IS JUST COMING UNDER UNREGISTERED IDS TO PROMOTE HIS PRODUCT.

JUST look at all of the unregistereds, it's the same person everytime, unless a there are a big flock of people who just came here to promote his product LIKE ANYONE WOULD DO THAT ROFL.

[Leb]

Originally posted by skeezix


You call me lame, and you're the one making racist comments?

It was lame inthe 50s, but understandable since humans were idiots then. I woudl have expected by now you'd have clued into the fact that racism hurts us all :/

Ah well, I'll ignore you now :)

jeff

Just because I don't like Korean cars doesn't mean that I am a racist, they are terrible quality. I wouldn't buy an American car either, does that make me a communist, no. According to you it does. Koreans make bad quality cars, that's why I don't buy them.

And ignore me, go ahead you are unregistered YOU CAN'T. You know I am right so run to the ignore button you little girl.

[skeezix]

Leb, dude, take it easy :)

I'm logged in this round, so you can see my post count etc.

I can take a photo of my GP32 if you'd like proof of ownership; I'm working on a review for the 6 games I purchased for it and the unit itself.. I can post a link to it when I've got it done if you'd like.

But really.. we're all friends here.. you need to learn to take it easy. People are allowed to disagree with you, and especially when they have the unit and you don't ;) So I didn't log in every time.. so what? I'm very busy, and when you enter your name into a forum posting, it doesn't auto-log-you-in (no idea why). No biggy, right?

For the record, since you've never asked.. The GP32 is a pretty good unit. The commercial games experience for non-Koreans (I'm Canadian speaking English) I've found mixed.. not really great. The games .. some are good, some are okay. Most are "okay", with nice artwork, but not the refinement of gameplay since they're smaller company. (They need more input I think.. more response or tuning to the player, etc) The emulators and such are wicked, which make it a great unit for me.. but overall.. a GBA is a better choice for most people, due to wide availability, large library, used carts cheap, your friends got them so you can swap, etc.

But you cannot fault a small company for *trying*. You seem to have full charged ahead with "they suck", which is bad for innovation. Do you *want* Nintendo to be the only handheld in the house? That leads to stagnation. WonderSwan.. not great, but not bad. Ever tried one? NeoGeo Pocket Color.. again, not bad.. I really liked it.. but too bad they didn't have the clout of Nintendo (though I liked its d-pad joystick thingy), and not enough good game licenses. But still some great games. And GP32.. pretty good for emulation, okay for commercial games. Small library.. only 2 dozen games, and half shoudlnt' be touched by english folks like me :/

Have you tried supporting *any* of these other attempts at creating a non-monopoly? OKay, you've not said you hated the unit, but you've gone pretty hard against me for trying to show support for it.

Its important to help the little guy, if its worth doing. So I'm not waving any flags for Gamepark.. but I will shoot down when people are plainly wrong or have no idea ("in my opinion"). I like Gp.. for trying. They've got a cool product, and are really trying to say "hey, we're small, but we can do something cool".

So take it easy.. don't get all flamey.. I'm just expressing a good honest opinion from my experiences with a unit that I own and use.

If you like, I'll even tell you why Palm OS doesn't have the emulation clout that other platforms (GP32, PoPC, PC, etc) have. (You'll note that the GP32 has a 135MHz processor, and Palm tungsten T and Sony NX/NZ are beefier in processing.. so why does the GP32 have a dozen emulators, and the Palm OS has only XCade and Liberty and Phoinix? I'll answer if you start listening :) Since I am the author of XCade and a dozen PC side emulators, I've got a good idea about it ;)

Its a forum; we're all friends, lets stay friends, okay? Man :)

jeff

[skeezix]

Here is my review of the GP32 handheld. I have not included reviews of the games, as it is already a lengthy piece.. I'll review the software later.

http://www.codejedi.com/reviews/gp32.txt

I hope its fair.

Let me know what you think..

jeff

[iebnn]

Please, tell us why Palm OS has so few emulators... :)

[skeezix]

Originally posted by iebnn
Please, tell us why Palm OS has so few emulators... :)

*g*

First off; I love Palm OS; its brought back the fun in coding. Its a lightweight OS that is good at being pragmatic and practical.. you get to address the problem at hand and not screw around with an OS getitng in the way, like most desktop OSes these days :)

But Palm OS does get in the way for emulation and gaming. Its great at everything else, but Palmsource just doesn't have the time to make Palm OS a great platform for big fancy game development. (Witness the amount of games for Pocket PC, which has a fraction of the market.. if it was easy for Palm OS, there'd be a huge gaming software volume :/)

So the following rant is with respect to emulation only; other Palm OS development is damned fun :)

First, the easy answer.. most of the Palm OS "market" is 16-33MHz speed processors, which pretty much makes emulation infeasible for anything serious. (Even some simple vector emulations are brutal framerates on 33MHz :/)

It is quite doable at 66MHz though, for simple games, and if those units are clocked up to 100MHz, should be pretty good, too.

But with 140MHz and up becoming the norm ever so slowly, we'll see more and more emulation attempts.

The real impediment is Palm OS itself, sadly, as it discourages "easy fast ports". One must wonder why there is no Doom or Wolfenstein port.. Wolfenstein ran on slow old PCs, and its ports run nicely on the GP32, Pocket PC machines, and the Linux based Sharp machines... so why not Palm OS?

The main enemy is the memory situation, which is slowly changing. Timing is rough too since there is no standard way to do good timing at high resolution, but we can live without that.. we'd just like to play the games. Throttling or not.. who cares, right? :)

ScummVM should've been a simple port. I imagine his greatest problem was the fact that Palm OS uses entirely nonstandard function calls (out of necessity in the earlier units), and the RAM situation. See, Palm OS traditionally made it bloody impossible to get larger than 64k chunks, though there were always undocumented tricks. Still, hotsync itself made >64k chunks impossible in the transfer. When VFS came around (memsticks, SD cards, etc), life was better, since you could always write large files there and just not keep the datafiles/roms/etc in RAM itself.. so you could work arond hotsync manager. Timers? Well, work around that, too. Controls? OKay, so you can't do much with the keyboards on the new units.. but you can always use the main 6 buttons and/or the 5-way.. you can test those nicely and using standard API calls. Sound? OKay, so Sony screwed everyone with sound.. fine.. we can even live without that until you get the basics going.

So whats left? Memory :/

MemPtrNew and MemHandleNew won't give you >64k. Since the new highres devices, with screens that in 16bpp mode are >64k, theres obviously a way to do it.. so people like me started using BmpCreate to create large memory buffers.. the OS doesn't know if they're for screens or data. Theres the under-documented Chunk handlers which let you now allocate >64k too, which is very handy. You can even turn off semaphores on some units and then just use the whole memory in the unit as flat memory, which is nice.. but totally unsafe and begs for data corruptions.

So its tough :/

Consider. NetHack. We'd all like NetHack for Palm OS. A great classic text orgraphical dungeon romp from wayback. Wicked game. But it includes some static tables that are too large to fit into 64k. Doing it as Feature memory was impratical.. doing memory caching and buffering woudl work fine.. but it means the port would be a lot of rewrite. No easy port, lots of hacks to make it work, splitting the main NetHack source tree .. Palm on one side, everyone else on the other. Same for Doom, etc :/

And thats the crux. Memory is there, and as above, there are tricks to get it. But its a lot of rewrite, and its not easy. (Not hard either, but most people who do emu ports just want to go for the glory and do a quck weekend port. Maximum fun.. pop out an emu and play lots of games, w00t! You're not going to get Snes9x to build on Palm OS in a weekend, thats for sure. Poor Cr with ScummVM has been working his bones off to get it all worked out, and its still having issues :/) He shoudl do a posting with his adventures.. I bet he had the same issues with it as I did with XCade, for example :)

XCade suffered a lot at first, with memory. So I built rommer to split up roms into chunks the OS could manage. Step one out of the way.

Then I wrote a memory manager so that 200k chunks of RAM could be dealt with efficiently. Big pain in the butt, and all custom code of course. So now XCade can work with about 500k ofmain ram easily since I know how to get it, and I can cache memory as needed pretty quickly. A pain.

Armlets sure aren't the easiest thing to do well.. "elegantly", due to the OS being the way it is, and we sure do need Armlets for good emulation :)

Consider.. in OS3.5 you get about 150k+ for your heap. Consider a 320x320 screen at 16bpp.. thats 200k. Say you want to do double buffering.. thats two screens. 400k. Woops!

We've even been known to do triple buffering for some games.. *g*

Looks at those Lucas games.. the .000 and .001 files.. some of those are multimegabyte. It was easy on the PC to load the whole file into RAM :) At least ScummVM has some cool stuff to make it easier to do memory caching now or it'd have been hell to port to Palm OS :)

I've been working on a Magnetic Scrolls emulation for Palm OS; first thing? Convert all the C stdio code to somethign Palm OS can do.. no more fprintf and fread, gotta convert to data manager calls. Thats fine and cool, but it impees the work a lot. Second is the memory.. Magnetic games can use 80k to 200k, depending on a lot of things... and it has to be read/write so feature memory is out. Is it doable on the older units? Sure, but at a pile of work.. so my Magnetic emu might end up beign OS5 only, since I just don't have the time to wrestle.

MAME? MAME certainly assumes a lot about RAM.. so you won't see MAME ported anytime soon :)

But take the GP32.. 135MHz.. Palm Tungsten T 140MHz. The GP32 has a dozen emulators ported to it, and Doom and Wolfenstein were ported *fast* over a few days to get first cuts working. Why? They have a crappy OS and the tools are more painful to develop for.

Yet.. the ports were done fast, on lesser hardware.

Standard C calls for the basics, a standard filesystem, and 8MB flat memory.. no messing around required.

So Palm OS can certainly do emulation; its just that it takes a little bit of work,and thus since its not "easy glory", not many want to go near it.

Oh yeah, theres no money in emulation either, which turns off the peopel who'd be willing to do the tedious work for a few bucks :)

Mainly its memory and some pain.

Palm OS is *great* fun. I *really* enjoy Palm OS, and I've done a lot of it. Shadow Plan is past 70,000 lines of code (Palm OS, Windows, Unix, Mac), all done out of passion for Palm OS and doing a good job. XCade is made since I'm an old arcade machine collector and love Palm OS and arcade machines.. gotta pop out an updated XCade for Palm OS. But XCade wasn't easy :) Shadow was fun though, since the OS is great fort interactive applications like that.

Get this.. XCade initial port to GP32.. *1 day*. :/

jeff

[JackAxe]

Originally posted by iebnn
Please, tell us why Palm OS has so few emulators... :)

These were some reasons why, but there is no longer an exscuse.

Most PALM devices were limited b;

their screen rez: 160x160.

a slow CPU.

a lack of memory.

a lack of storage.

a lack of sound.

Until SONY came along their really wasn't much in favor of PALM being a good multimedia game machine.

Even after SONY released their 320x320 devices, most people still assumed that all PALMs were 160x160.

<]=P

[iebnn]

JackAxe, I had some ideas of why (I already know that the older palms had slow cpus and a small resolution etc), but wanted to hear jeff's explanation. Please read his post, you seem to be misinformed :)

btw, thanks jeff. Maybe OS6 will help with this situation?

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by skeezix


*g*



ARDIDI?

[Leb]

That was me and I did log in so I don't know lol.

Ok skeez, maybe you are not him but who do you think those unregistereds are?

[JackAxe]

Originally posted by iebnn
JackAxe, I had some ideas of why (I already know that the older palms had slow cpus and a small resolution etc), but wanted to hear jeff's explanation. Please read his post, you seem to be misinformed :)

btw, thanks jeff. Maybe OS6 will help with this situation?

Thanks, I think. =P

When I clicked quote, Jeff's "Postzilla" wasn't up yet. They are only 4 minutes apart. I wouldn't have posted if I saw his.

But to be fair, my comments are just general, with some ignorance weaved in.

<]=)

[iebnn]

Yeah, I noticed that. You had said that there's really no excuse for not making an emulator for palm os, but jeff pointed out that there is a serious memory bottleneck. Well... time to wait for OS6 I guess.

[JackAxe]

That's where my ignorance kicked in. I have lots of it and I'm willing to share.

<]=)

[Zork]

skeezix, the same were true for EGA.
All graphx had to be paged in parts through a small memory window to get it to the card. But they still made dozens of action games.
The mem prob as you stated is already solved. So it would surely help most devs out there to release middleware like your mem libs.
But even beside that probs, as you could easily see at PalmGear, the Palm OS got the best game supprt of all PDAs out there. So what you claiming is simply PC developer claims. Console developers have to fight with such situations on a daily base and they arent whining as much around as POS developers ;) .

[iebnn]

Geez.. This is surprising. You, who has not made and is not making any emulator for palm os, are telling skeezix, who explained how difficult emulation under palm os is and who made the most powerful emulator for it, that emulation is easy (or at least not very difficult) with palm os? And you call his posts "whining"?

[skeezix]

Originally posted by Zork
skeezix, the same were true for EGA.
All graphx had to be paged in parts through a small memory window to get it to the card. But they still made dozens of action games.
The mem prob as you stated is already solved. So it would surely help most devs out there to release middleware like your mem libs.
But even beside that probs, as you could easily see at PalmGear, the Palm OS got the best game supprt of all PDAs out there. So what you claiming is simply PC developer claims. Console developers have to fight with such situations on a daily base and they arent whining as much around as POS developers ;) .

I'm not whining; I was asked, I explained. But you're clearly missing something ;) Go to a PoPC download site and check the games they've got.. some pretty *** kicking stuff. Then check what we've gto.. well, we got Stonage+ now, and its still rough. Show me the 3d rendered realtime ;) And then count why there is only XCade and Liberty for Palm OS, and dozens of emus for every other platform ;)

(And yes, I wrote games and demos on EGA too ;)

jeff

[Zork]

Emulation software is kewl, but as mentioned just some addition to real software. And there are tons of "real" games for the POS devices. Just check the releases of the last few weeks (Rifle Slugs II, Desailly Soccer, Toy Races, GTS Racing, Elite, Civilization (the last two with license probs :( ), ZX-Pilot (so much for there arent any full fledged emulation tools avail for the Palm beside XCade and Liberty ;) , Stoneage +, and many puzzle games i forgot about)
And bout 3D rendering : Check the awesome Elite port, Serious Sam und MasterThief.
BTW Recalculated your figures and you are right. One Clie HiRes screen need 200k. But I cant imagine that Sony releases such devices w/o according SDK lib calls. Cause how were the HiRes action games possible then, cause not even 3 swapped 64 k pages would be enough to fill the complete screen ? But then again wouldnt it be enough to set the pointer sequentially to 3 different 64 k chunks (like they do it with XBox development (they didnt have their one single bit of VRAM at all and have to do everything in main RAM, which slow down things cause of the slow main RAM bandwidth, but on the other side allows simple and fast texture changes)).

But even if there is no lib call to transfer one screen in one step doin such strange things like swapping are the probs which are the real interesting ones. Where developers could show their experience and cleverness. Using just SDK lib calls could be done by trained monkeys at least half as good ;) .

Did once develop some 32 bit integer functions when Turbo Pascal 3.0 were recent and with the first version of OS/2 I did some floating point round by myself (by bit checking the IEEE figure structure) cause round couldnt be used for OS/2 applications then, cause it werent reentrant.
But this is the stuff which you never forgot, so thats why im thinking developing for the POS is the real challenge. Using just buggy SDK libs like with PPC is nothing which needs a lot knowledge or brainwork.

Thats why I suggest doing middleware for fast HiRes screen routines, the different Clie and Palm sound custom chips and some virtual memory architecture which could then be used by every other developer. So that the wheel doesnt have to be reinvented a few thousand times ;) .

Middleware like it were offered at the beginning of PS2 development, cause compared with our small probs the probs with developing for consoles are way larger. But as you could easily see .... they bypassed it after a few month cause of the introduction usage of middleware.

Like to join a project which is doin middleware for the virtual memory prob. That sounds IMHO like the one which is the most challenging one and needed the least POS SDK knowledge.

[Zork]

iebnn, i presume that skeezix recognized the smiley at the end of the "whining" statement ;) .
And i didnt mentioned easy. I mentioned doable. With some kewl challenges as it seems.

[iebnn]

Masterthief and Serious Sam are not 3D.

[iebnn]

As for fast "middleware" for graphics stuff, check out the Razor! framework.