Getting By For The Time Being

[Shadowsithe]

I've placed my order for a GP2X from Gamersection.ca. This includes an AC Adaptor and the breakout board. As a result, I'm broke. I've got a USB stick kicking around, is it possible I can get away with using that and the board for the time being until I can afford an SD Card? I'd like to see how Genesis emulation pans out at least. I don't think I'll be able to cram a movie on their just yet, since it's only a 128mb stick. Anyone tried it?

 

[Nighty]

I've placed my order for a GP2X from Gamersection.ca. This includes an AC Adaptor and the breakout board. As a result, I'm broke. I've got a USB stick kicking around, is it possible I can get away with using that and the board for the time being until I can afford an SD Card? I'd like to see how Genesis emulation pans out at least. I don't think I'll be able to cram a movie on their just yet, since it's only a 128mb stick. Anyone tried it?

Well, SD cards are pretty cheap nowadays; I think I paid like €20 for mine, which was 1GB...

But if you really can't afford one right now, you might get by by just using the NAND storage, depending on the size of a Genesis rom (don't know how big they are); you got 64MB to store shit on, built right into the player...

 

[Shadowsithe]

I was of the opinion that the SD Card acted as a conduit and was required to pass data onto the NAND. This is great news.

 

[gaterooze]

Only 32mb of the NAND is accessible to the user, but that is plenty for a few Genesis roms

And yeah, SD cards are ultra-cheap from the right places, just the cost of a few pints.

 

[Shadowsithe]

I know what card I want, I just have to wait for a paycheck. Which, given my lousy job will take a bit.

Side note: My PC has a built in Digital Media Manager with card ports out the wazoo. That's fine right?
Side side note: I've got a second blue thingie, score!

 

[Tobriand]

If you're willing to do some re-encoding and watch movies at a much lower bitrate than everyone else, you can certainly cram a movie on there. My average score for GP32 films was about 90mb, running at 120kb/s video and as low audio quality as I could manage (usually a 22khz mono 8kb/s track). Framerate of 15fps (maybe even 20fps - additional framerate rarely increases the size much) and you're watching something perfectly fun

Ok, not exactly that much space left for other stuff, but I'm sure if you cram on tilematch and one or two genesis games (say a sonic game, panorama cotton, and Phantasy Star) you'll still have more than enough to amuse you

Just forget about PSX games, unless you want to see how they play using samba via the USB cable...

 

[Nighty]

I was of the opinion that the SD Card acted as a conduit and was required to pass data onto the NAND. This is great news.

Depends on your firmware; with the old firmware (pre 2.0.0) I wasn't able to use the USB cable to upload stuff to the gp2x; not even with the special USB driver that's linked to somewhere on these boards. Once I upgrade to 2.0.0 though, it connected fine. Downside is you need an SD card to upgrade the firmware; you have to place the files in the root of the SD card. If the manual still states you must upload them by using the USB cable, ignore it; you can just use an SD card reader to put the files there.

But I think it's pretty safe to assume you won't have any problems; you'll probably get one with more recent firmware. I'm not sure, so maybe others on this board can verify this, but aren't all the gp2x'es that are sold these days the new MK2 ones, and loaded with 2.0.0 firmware?

 

[DawnOfTheRent]

I shrink my TV shows to around 75MB (for 45 minutes). I'm not sure what the video bitrate is, but my audio is done with a 16kbps (Mono, 8kHz) MP3. It doesn't look or sound perfect, but I never really care about that.