GP2X Gp2x Dev Station

[earx]

since i got a cradle with my GP2X i hooked it up to a keyboard and used Sterm a little. i noticed it worked quite okay. i did the other usual stuff like reading some PDF's and trying some other programs with mouse and keyboard support. i almost got the good old home computer vibe back..

..almost..

what i would really love to see is something like a native devkit on the platform. yeah, call me crazy. but i'd like to shove aside the laptop and do everything from behind this little machine

my question: has any one ported an SDK to native ARM+Linux?

 

[Vimacs]

well it "shouldn't be to hard" to get gcc going on it.
but seriously, do you really want to wait 10 minutes for your hello world to compile?

 

[earx]

you maybe have a point there. is gcc really this slow? i think it still comfy on a 500 MHz Celeron (okay, this is at least 3 times as fast as a gp2x).

guess i could try to compile gcc for it.. but maybe this whole thing is a project in itself.

 

[Orkie]

Lack of RAM is a greater problem I think the GPH firmware only has about 20MB free.

 

[Sphinxter]

Obviously some kind of masochist so you'll probably want to be wearing a hair shirt while you wait. Can't think of many things more painful than developing in such a tiny space.

 

[frutbunn]

Lack of RAM is a greater problem I think the GPH firmware only has about 20MB free.

20mb should be enough for anyone - I may role with this one. h34r:

 

[senquack]

I ported Koules2X on a PII-300mhz laptop. Gotta tell ya, it wasn't that bad! Wouldn't want to program on the GP2X, though. It's not the speed of compilation that would kill you, as Make would minimize troubles most of the time, but the lack of DMA for SD writes is going to slow down big compiles greatly.. And you can't use nmake to speed up compiles cause linux only sees the one CPU, of course.

I'd think it'd be the tiny screen that'd get you. Woof. Maybe if you used TV-out or something, but keeping such a tiny amount of code on-screen at once would be kinda like trying to play chess blindfolded. I guess you could use a custom font and squeeze a bit more on the screen. I had enough trouble keeping enough code on the 800x600 laptop screen I was using.

Here's your answer regarding GP2X toolchains:
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Tiny_C

Tiny C! I think I remember installing this on my crappy palm pilot. Kinda neat, and hey that Palm Pilot ran at less than a tenth of the speed of the GP2X, with only 8MB of RAM (if that) and 8MB of flash storage.

 

[Orkie]

20mb should be enough for anyone - I may role with this one. h34r:

On my HP 200LX, I have to close the editor and the menu (which required a bit of a hack) otherwise I go over the 640K limit and it stops .

 

[Vilmos]

I programmed C on a 1meg PalmOS PDA in college, I can't see the GP2X being a huge problem in getting a small compiler and editor to run.

I would think the complete lack of input would be the killer, although a text editor with a touchscreen overlay might solve that problem as well without getting into peripherals.

 

[frutbunn]

20mb should be enough for anyone - I may role with this one. h34r:

On my HP 200LX, I have to close the editor and the menu (which required a bit of a hack) otherwise I go over the 640K limit and it stops .

You're the man Orkie! Kids today don't know they're born!

Here's your answer regarding GP2X toolchains:
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/Tiny_C

Now that looks ideal! B)

 

[earx]

thanks for the replies all. yea, it's a slightly mad concept. and the RAM argument is a strong one. using TV out is pretty ok imho. tiny C + ramdisk is probably is the way to go.. if i still want to proceed with this =)

 

[xhyldazhk]

I've actually used STerm plus TCC to make half of a triangle rasterizer during a trip. It was painful, but bearable. VI was originally thought to be used across dumb terminals, so it was designed to do lots of things with very few keystrokes. That helped a lot, as the firmware comes with a tiny VI clone.