Firmware Advice

[philt]

Hello All,

Before I start, apologies for the noob questions -

I've just purchased the Gp2x Value Pack - Everything seems to work fine. I've installed several emulators such as Mame etc. and they all work fantastically. The one thing I can't seem to work out for the life of me is changing skins. Also in the Mame frontend, it doesn't seem to want to open up the image that runs with it.

There also seems to be very little info on FW3.

Should I roll back my FW to 2.1.1? and if so could someone advise me on the safest way of doing this, or recommend a link.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Philt

 

[Miika]

Yeah I think you should downgrade to 2.1.1, faster booting and there is not much difference to 3.0.0 than cosmetical.
And you can easily change skins in 2.1.1. Go to the archive, to the firmware section. First downgrade to 2.0.0 and then to 2.1.1.
In 2.1.1, the skins are .gps files that can be copied to the skin folder in your NAND, and then easily selected in the firmware
settings menu.
As for MAME skins, the firmware doesn't affect that.

 

[Orkie]

I don't think it would be wise to downgrade if 3.0 works for you as doing so can cause NAND problems later on. Please can everybody stop recommending the downgrade to people with no problem?

 

[thefunkygibbon]

I don't think it would be wise to downgrade if 3.0 works for you as doing so can cause NAND problems later on. Please can everybody stop recommending the downgrade to people with no problem?

what sort of NAND problems are you speaking about?

 

[Miika]

I don't think it would be wise to downgrade if 3.0 works for you as doing so can cause NAND problems later on. Please can everybody stop recommending the downgrade to people with no problem?

what sort of NAND problems are you speaking about?

Propably the one when you flash your NAND it will mark bad sectors, and when flashed 99999 times (jk) it have
marked too many bad sectors to have space for the firmware... It is fixable through JTAG and flashing a few times is not dangerous.

 

[Orkie]

Propably the one when you flash your NAND it will mark bad sectors, and when flashed 99999 times (jk) it have
marked too many bad sectors to have space for the firmware... It is fixable through JTAG and flashing a few times is not dangerous.

Correct, flashing once probably won't cause problems but there is no guarantee of this. I had a totally dead GP2X after about 10 flashes (to give an indication of how little it takes sometimes), so flashing a few times probably won't cause trouble it is much better to avoid that wherever possible. It is not a 'quick fix' with JTAG either, it took me weeks to come up with a solution and about 5 hours to pull it off. It is easier now that I've done the initial work with the fixing tool, but this isn't publicly available and even if you did have it, it can be a struggle to get it loading sometimes over JTAG (serial may be more reliable, but if you happen to have destroyed the bootloader too then there is no way of doing that). I assume writing to the NAND normally will also cause these problems, but I've never tested.

This is a matter that needs to be taken seriously. Most people don't have the equipment or time/knowledge to repair it. That said, if something doesn't work for you or there are new features in a newer firmware, this shouldn't put you off upgrading as it is repairable. It's just too much bother for a downgrade with no real benefit.

 

[Yorper]

Correct, flashing once probably won't cause problems but there is no guarantee of this. I had a totally dead GP2X after about 10 flashes (to give an indication of how little it takes sometimes), so flashing a few times probably won't cause trouble it is much better to avoid that wherever possible. It is not a 'quick fix' with JTAG either, it took me weeks to come up with a solution and about 5 hours to pull it off. It is easier now that I've done the initial work with the fixing tool, but this isn't publicly available and even if you did have it, it can be a struggle to get it loading sometimes over JTAG (serial may be more reliable, but if you happen to have destroyed the bootloader too then there is no way of doing that). I assume writing to the NAND normally will also cause these problems, but I've never tested.

This is a matter that needs to be taken seriously. Most people don't have the equipment or time/knowledge to repair it. That said, if something doesn't work for you or there are new features in a newer firmware, this shouldn't put you off upgrading as it is repairable. It's just too much bother for a downgrade with no real benefit.

This is interesting. Is this actually a hardware related issue or is it a software issue? Also if this is software related is there going to be some sort of rewrite/fix for this implemented into Open2x. As i and im sure many others are waiting to switch over to Open2x as soon as possible.

Thanks

 

[Orkie]

It's a software problem. I think DJWillis mentioned a slight possible improvement, but I don't know anything about this, so can't say there will be for certain a fix. It would be a huge job to rewrite the drivers from scratch and that's what needs doing for a lot of them really. The problem doesn't seem as prevalent when accessing the NAND through Linux though, it's mostly when you flash large things via u-boot (i.e. firmwares).

 

[Yorper]

Well fingers crossed that he manages to come up with a fix untill theres time for a rewrite, should anyone feel upto such a task.

You never know, GPH may even do it themselves and you could take their fix. I doubt they will, they still havent fixed video playback after all this time so something this big is in the "never gonna happen" pile. But there's always hope

 

[Alex.]

Be sure that GPH will likely never release a new firmware update once Open2x will take off. Chances are they wouldn't have had either way, of course.

 

[Yorper]

Be sure that GPH will likely never release a new firmware update once Open2x will take off. Chances are they wouldn't have had either way, of course.

Most likely right. I'd laugh if they even started shipping new units with Open2X. :lol:

 

[Miika]

Be sure that GPH will likely never release a new firmware update once Open2x will take off. Chances are they wouldn't have had either way, of course.

Most likely right. I'd laugh if they even started shipping new units with Open2X. :lol:

That wouldn't surprise me

 

[freddykreuger666]

with all this bricking and shit
i havent even bothered to upgrade from v2.0
do i miss anything major?
neo geo doesnt seem to be working at all
this maybe the cause?

 

[goob]

'Upgrading' to FW3 is pointless IMO.

 

[Cruel]

As FW3-user i would like to roll back too for lessened boot time.
But everything works fine here, and there is always chance to get the brick.. so..