Gp2x With Breakout Board

[Milk]

Hi all,

I noticed on the gp2x site that it mentions the breakout board can turn the gp2x into a workstation, so before i go ahead and buy one i have a few questions.

1. Basically as well as a handheld emulator which the gp2x seems great for id also like a hand held linux box. As i have never had a gp2x or know someone who has one i dont know how easy and if it is possible for me to install 3rd party software on it, like lynx or emacs. Is this possible?

2. With the breakout board i understand you can attach a usb keyboard but have also read that most of the software doesnt support this, is this true? I mainly want it to code with and use a shell.

3. What kind of shell would i have access to? Bash? And if so can i use the keyboard with it? If the shell being used was created for the gp2x then how powerful is it? Can i rename files, launch apps etc using the standard command line commands?

4.With the usb ports can i attach a usb wireless card and connect to networks (hence the lynx question eariler )

Now i know these questions makes me sound like id rather have a hand held linux box then a hand held emulaor, but thats not true. I want everything that i know the gp2x can do, but I want to find out more about its limitations.

Thanks for any help

 

[Squidge]

1. Yes, basically just make sure you use ARM9 binaries with a compatible libc (The GP2X uses GCC2.95 by default) and copy them to your SD card. There are plenty of toolkits around if you are comfortable compiling stuff by yourself if you can't find an appropriate binary.

2. It's true - most of the emulators don't support a keyboard. However, the OS does and you can use it to type commands into the built in shell/etc.

3. You can install bash if you wish, but the default shell is the standard busybox multi call binary. You can do everything you've stated above.

4. If you have appropriate drivers for the wifi card, yes.

The main problem you are going to have is that compiling on the 2x itself is going to be very slow. GCC can be run on the 2x, but it's a hungry beast with regards to memory and processor power.

Don't forget the 2X only has 64MB of RAM, of which only 32MB is usable by Linux; the other 32MB can be used by Linux applications, but not allocatable using the standard memory allocation functions. Therefore unmodified ported applications will be limited to 32MB of RAM.

 

[Milk]

Thankyou for your reply.

I have a further question. With the shell it comes with is there a form of virtual keyboard i could use to enter the shell commands?

Thanks again

 

[Parkydr]

Sterm is what you're looking for.

It provides a terminal session on the GP2X - no extra hardware required

 

[Milk]

Sterm is what you're looking for.

It provides a terminal session on the GP2X - no extra hardware required



Thanks for the reply. I had a look at sterm and cant see that it has a virtual keyboard. When you said "this is what you're looking for", was you implying it does have a virtual keyboard?

Thanks

 

[linoleum13]

The wiki talks about a virtual keyboard:
http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/STerm

I have never used the program but it looks like "this is what you're looking for"

 

[Milk]

Thanks all, this is "just what im looking for"