How Gamepark Screwed Up On The Gp2x

[sephiroth111]

If it's not too expensive and too hard to implement, i would like to add an internal cell battery,
like the Neo Geo Pocket Color has ( but smaller...).

It would give the gp2x the possibility of clock , timer and calendar functions.

i thought about adding an internal RTC to the gp2x, but i couldn't find the I2C lines (since linux has the drivers for it, i thought it'd be easy to mount a battery, the RTC chip, and the crystal on a low mount PCB)

if you wanted to try it, you can get free samples at http://www.maxim-ic.com/

i also suffer from barbarian hands, which are horrible for doing any small work like that, (the RTC itself was REALLY small).

 

[n8archer_XI]

Well, it didn't have wifi, making multiplayer a no-no...

 

[StarG]

*the DS/GBASP battery is 3.7v @ 600mAh and lasts for around 10 hours on the gba, and I've had around 15 hours on the DS. Where the GP2X has 3v @ 2850mAh and it lasts for around 5 hours.

The GP2X runs on AA with 1.2v ... and yes some of its components really drain energy (especially the netchip =o). The GBA runs with normal 2x AA alot longer.. i guess maybe 6-8h.

If I could get the same performance out of the AAs that i could out of the Li-ions (and if you google up batteries for the DS/SP they are ~$10 not that bad for a "special" battery.) then i wouldn't care about what we used, provided it fit into my pocket, and i was able to play games on it.

If you also check the usual perfomance of the batteries offered like 1800 mAh PSP batteries you can savely say that they do not give you a real advantage over 2x AA but are a bit larger. There are stronger versions offered but i'm doubting they are more than a paper tiger unless proven wrong. Accu power costs weight + space. 2x AA was a bit too weak for the GP2X: 3 or 4x would have been right retroperseptively.

Well, that's not a problem with the battery, but with the system.
The NDS has two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz.

If you run gp2x homebrew set to 67MHz, you can easily get MUCH higher battery usage. It's the 200MHz that drains the batteries...

The DS tighly integrates CPU, video engine & sound system. This saves alot of raw processing power the GP2X has to spend, because there is no sprite drawing system which does transparency for example. (I disregard the OSD layer feature of the video system the gp2x has as all those parts are not documented well). The comparision is a bit unfair. The DS simply used custom designed parts where the GP2X uses stock components which work together but are not as energy effient because they waste more.

 

[DaveC]

The GP2X runs on AA with 1.2v ... and yes some of its components really drain energy (especially the netchip =o). The GBA runs with normal 2x AA alot longer.. i guess maybe 6-8h.

Can this netchip be disconnected? I never use USB on this thing anyway.

 

[Exophase]

*the DS/GBASP battery is 3.7v @ 600mAh and lasts for around 10 hours on the gba, and I've had around 15 hours on the DS. Where the GP2X has 3v @ 2850mAh and it lasts for around 5 hours. If I could get the same performance out of the AAs that i could out of the Li-ions (and if you google up batteries for the DS/SP they are ~$10 not that bad for a "special" battery.) then i wouldn't care about what we used, provided it fit into my pocket, and i was able to play games on it.

Well, that's not a problem with the battery, but with the system.
The NDS has two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI co-processor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz.

If you run gp2x homebrew set to 67MHz, you can easily get MUCH higher battery usage. It's the 200MHz that drains the batteries...


Thats true, but i was taking into effect that there is also 2 backlights, a much better sound system, lower screen touchpad, and the upper screen. this also doesn't take into effect the Z80 GBA sound core subsystem (in DS mode), the wifi system (only rarely active), the DS sound core (which, AFAIK is seperated from the gba). This added up would probably be a bigger drain than you think. yet maybe due to smart power saving methods built into the hardware itself, it reaches an impressive time. even my first-gen psp on its 1600mAh battery gets 8 hours on a full charge still (and i'm not talking about the hi-cap battery or the dualcap battery). Though admittedly AAs are easier to come by, who honestly goes without power (aside from camping or situations where the system cant be used anyway) for more than the 8 hour charge presented by either system?


Nintendo DS has an 850 mAh battery, DS Lite has a 1200 mAh battery, and PSP has an 1800 mAh battery. I'd like to know exactly what you were doing to get an 8 hour charge out of it, that's pretty much unheard of. 15 hours on the DS also sounds unlikely unless you're playing GBA games, in which case it's not really a fair comparison since less than half the system is being powered. Also, there's no Gameboy CPU in a Nintendo DS (it uses the wavetable hardware to emulate the Gameboy sound chip)

 

[Dunny]

I regularly work night shifts on the ward, and when all the patients are asleep (about midnight), I can play my DS right through the night until about 9:30am when the shift ends, which is 9.5 hours on a single charge. And it's nowhere near drained by the time I get home.

Obviously, this is with the screen on its 2nd brightness level, not full.

D.

 

[StarG]

The GP2X runs on AA with 1.2v ... and yes some of its components really drain energy (especially the netchip =o). The GBA runs with normal 2x AA alot longer.. i guess maybe 6-8h.

Can this netchip be disconnected? I never use USB on this thing anyway.


I meant: when the USB slave is activated the battery runtime decreases extremely. If not active i guess the chip is in a idle state in which he does not draw considerable amounts. Can't tell for the usb host though - i hope its far less (as a USB1 device its energy hunger should be)