About To Start, What Should I Watch Out For?

[Sephnroth]

Hey - i've been programming for many many years and done all sorts from games (2d/3d) to applications and databases. I naturally want to dev for my own gp2x and thats half the reason I got it, however this is will be my first time developing for anything non-windows.

Now I only intend to use SDL for the moment (though i'm writing my own layer ontop of SDL to give myself a set of commands more familier to what im used to with other sdks) and i'm expecting all that to be pretty safe - but I have to admit im a bit paranoid as if I ever manage to permantly brick this gp2x im shafted, I wont be able to afford another one. So this post is to ask if there is anything, that I as a windows programmer, may take for granted when programming for win32 that could be potentially dangerous on the gp2x? Are there any nasty "gotcha!"'s out there that i should really know about before I start? I presume I can mess with memory using the good old malloc/realloc/free and memcpy, just keeping myself to a 64mb limit?

Sorry if this is stupidly basic stuff, please indulge me
Thanks in advance.

 

[gfoot]

You're unlikely to brick it through your developing efforts unless you try quite hard. The main cause of bricking is failed firmware flashes, which are usually triggered intentionally by trying to upgrade - nothing to do with writing your own programs.

You can easily break things if you mess about with the filesystem, but again you're unlikely to do that by accident - just stick to using files in the current directory, and you'll be fine.

 

[donny662]

I might be wrong, and I am in no way an experienced programmer, but I believe there is a 32MB limit for the RAM by virtue of the Embedded Linux OS. There are ways to access the other 32MB directly. On this board, there are some discussions about accessing all of the RAM and the second CPU.

 

[racoon]

Thats ture, the upper 32MB are reserved for the video co-CPU, but for example Squidge already talked about simply putting "video" into a module so it might be possible to get full 64MB for future development soon...

I count the days until Dignsys/GPH releases the new 1.3 Firmware and hopefully accept community patches !

 

[torpor]

well, i'm in the same boat; for me, the gp2x is a masterful linux platform, ripe for great coding fun, and thats exactly what its become for me .. so i got a second one.

with two, i can hack happily knowing that i can play a little crazy climber while the soldering iron warms up to make that JTAG hit ..

imagine shoe-horning gobolinux or OE into gp2x. then forget all that nonsense and just roll-your-own live-CD ..