How Much Fun Have I Had!!


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NeoStuey

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:D Hello I'm a bit excited so bear with me.

Got my GP2X from gbax.com today, thanks to Craigix and co for doing such a good job on getting them out as quickly as they have, and checked! B)

Start of the day, well midday, get a late postal delivery here, insert SD card, 1GB Integral Memory, which is the one you get from gbax.com if you ordered from there. Connected to windows via USB device connects but doesn't list, disconnect, switch off. Take out SD and insert to memory card slot in Laptop, format it to Fat32, reconnect via USB device recognised. :)

Downdise to connect via USB was that windows XP decided to reserve space for the recycle bin and system restore as it mounts the GP2X, so I disabled those features and to get rid of the files reformat the card, it was blank anyway so I haven't lost anytime. :) You could leave those files there but they do show up when selecting files on the GPX so get rid I say.

First, copied over some MP3's recorded at 128kbps, lovely playback using headphones, no issues with the socket before anyone comments. :)

Then I try a small DIVX 5.2 music video I encoded last week. It's 5m47s long, encoded at 640*480 (hey I have other things I wanna play the file on besides this you know (Epson P-2000 ;) )). 128kbps MP3 CBR. Played back FLAWLESSLY, so I play it back again to see if it will crash, no, play it back again and still great. :D

Okay time for some games, got my downloaded files ready.

Install Libs for NK's games. ;) Plenty of posts to read while awaiting my GP2X has helped today go smoother. Thanks to all the informed posters. :)

Okay Hexen is up and running, play it for 30 miuntes or so. I haven't noticed any real problems with control, the stick feels good to me, and I am making an allowance as it is new. After all we all get used to controllers and have our favorites but remember but they all feel different at first.

Next comes Quake, loads sub 5secs, press start get menu enter game, go to enter portal and crash. It's okay I know it was going to happen in fact there's a topic about it, currently you need pak.0 and pak.1. I am on ID's website at the moment and I think I will complete my purchase, problem solved, and I get to play the full game. :)

SNES emulator version 2, lovely tatse of things to come, kept picking different roms and they all loaded. Obviously this is still really an Alpha/Beta so playability isn't really on the cards just yet, for me anyway. But to see the games boot up and hear clear sound with no snap, crackle or pop makes it a good start.

NeoGeo CD, gave me a bit more of a headache setting it up 'cause I tried to create a zip file called NeoCD.zip instead of a file folder called NeoCD.zip with all the files extracted from the Metal Slug.iso. Worth the trial and error, the game looks as good as ever on the GP2X screen. Another W.I.P. but definately playable in it's current state. :)

Frodo, C=64 my favorite computer growing up and already on the GP2X only had a small taste of things to come by playing Boudlerdash for a 30 minute period. I know I shall be spending plenty of time with it so I don't feel guilty about not given it much time today.

Now for another test of the movie player, I just watched the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie from start to finish. All 1h44m20s of it and it played perfectly, no pauses, no freezing up, no drop outs, just audio and video in sync all the way!!!
Encoding details, divx 5.2, 640*272, 128kbps MP3 CBR.

Now I have encoded many times, for many devices, my Epson P-2000, Asus 620BT, Toshiba e800, Sony Clie, Casio Cassiopea. This is the first time I have had a video playback without any faults.

The Pocket PC's, even using Betaplayer would all drop frames or worse freeze and catch up. The Epson does occasionally freeze, which is a pity as it has 3.8inch 640*480 212ppi VGA screen and TV out and 40gb HD, but has no official DIVX support and doesn't recognise XVID at all. It does have an SD card reader so I know where I will keep my movie backups. :D The Sony Clie was crippled so I won't even go there, Kinoma anyone. :p

So what I am trying to say is for such an early release and with so many potential problems to face, this machine has quite literally put a grin on my face that would make the cheshire cat green with envy. :lol:

.......And I haven't even had the chance to try out the fantastic looking hombrew games yet, they day just isn't long enough!

To anyone who has kept up with me throughout my post, thanks, I am sorry to the more technically minded people if I haven't posted enough stats. I just typed this as is, no more no less.

To those that haven't ordered theirs yet......:p

Oh and before I forget, yes I did change the batteries today, can't expect to play all day from 12pm to 11pm on one set. Changed them twice in fact, first set weren't fully charged, and to be safe the second set were pulled out just before I watched Hitchhickers, and they show they are at Midum level, even after the movie. :D

The batteries are Ansmann Photo 2500NIMH if you were wondering. ;)

Thanks and goodnight B)

Lik-Sang, Pah! GBAX.COM ROCKS!!!

Edit for spelling, but it's well late so I might still have missed some. Missed the h in the running time for Hitchhikers.
 
Great to hear good comments like that
Pocket PC with betaplayer drops frames ???? Maybe try using TCMP or whatever the next gen version of betaplayer is called, Works flawlessly for me but i am on a 624mhz Axim so that may be the cure in that particular case ;)
 
Yay. This cheer'd me up also. Im still waiting for mine. (It shipped from GBAX on friday, and my friend got his, but I didn't, and we live in the same town, and same shipment :()
 
Finally! A happy GP2X owner! All these negative posts don't tell about the good stuff! :)
 
Great post NeoStuey ! Youre lucky the C64 emulator works fine, i cant wait to try that but i hope theres a Spectrum emulator soon !

Cheers for the post, i'll be trying a lot of what you have done when i get back home
 
Glad you guys like the report, turns out things aren't as bad as they seemed. :D

Still loving it on day two, bought the retail version of Quake from Idsoftware's websiste yesterday, went to sleep at 3:30am. :) I was tired but satisfied.

Don't now how you do it Craigix, you just seem to keep going, have you had any sleep in the last week? I am beginning to wonder if you are real. :p
 
Last edited by a moderator:
See, it's people like you who keep us going and encourage people!

(and make people who cancelled their orders unhappy)

There should be more threads like this, I know I'll post one when I get mine.

Soon...
 
@NeoStuey

I received my unit yesterday and it seems like my first experiences match yours almost exactly!

MP3's and video's all played perfectly, again it's pretty much the first device I've had that I can just throw any divx avi at and it just works (my Archos GMini400 is close). No sync problems, but I alway use CBR for audio (VBR causes sync problems for many devices). First two video's that I watched were perfect (both about 30 mins). Later it crashed a couple of times but only whin I was randomly pressing buttons while it was playing.

Hexen and Quake both played great, again I had the luxury of having read the forums here over the last few days and knowing to install SDL first etc.

Basically everything works, I see no screen problems, my joystick is fine, my headphone socket seems solid, the software works, boot time doesn't seem too horrible. The joystick feels a little stiff, and I do find I have to push it further than I'd like, but it's just a case of getting used to it.

Hexen and Quake work very well, I'm sure that we'll have some full speed emu's soon, some great game ports. and some original games. I hope that some of them will be mine, I'm setting up my toolchain and writing some hello world type tests right now....

My only issue, and it must be a software problem, is the screen brightness. I find the main menu to be very bright and clear, but both Hexen and video's are very dark. Hexen is nearly unplayably so. The device is obviously capable of very bright and vibrant colour so I'm certainly not worried. Maybe is't a power issue? I'm still using the batteries that were included in the box.

Basically, I really love this thing! It's such a cool toy! Nothing can beat it for homebrew dev. The known bugs are certainly there, but they are minor even now (and we know that the firmware is being worked on), my hardware seems good, and my fiancee is happy because now she can claim my DS and play Yoshi Touch 'n' Go more often :)

Thanks Craigix, and your staff, for a great service. Thanks GPH for a very cool console.
 
Here's some positive talk. Yesterday I had to cancel my GPx2 order, because I can no longer afford it, as every week, I spend too much money on my SONY PSP and Tapwave Zodiac 2. :(
 
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