I Just Got My Gp2x!!!

[lintsniffer]

My dad just called saying he got an email saying my MKII was delivered. Our neighborhood has a community mailbox like an apartment has and I don't have the key. He's on his way home and will get it now. My 4GB card isn't in yet so i'm going to at least put duke nukem 3d on it. Any other good games I should fit that together could fit on the embedded mem? (unless my parents let me use their empty 512 laying around)

 

[Feeg]

It'll have the Payback demo and Vektar loaded into the NAND, check 'em out and then delete 'em if you're desperate for some space.

Should be able to fit DrMD and a bunch of roms on there if you're so inclined.

Duke3D on my 2gig card takes up 27.3 meg, DrMD 1.6meg, and I've got four roms on there, individually zipped, taking up 4 megs.. so you should be able to fit an emulator and some games onto the NAND.

I'd just go borrow that 512 if I was you though.

 

[Nova]

Oh god, I need one of these babies.

 

[lintsniffer]

yeah I got the 512.

 

[yanman]

OMG it arrived!!!1111

i left my SD card at home tho so I can't do much

i'm still puzzled about the screen though! I wasn't sure whether to get a screen protector or not as apparently they were shipped with them already fitted. mine doesn't look like there's anything fitted but there is a plastic film over the screen like you get with most LCD products except it has many bubbles on it. I don't want to take it off until I'm sure that the screen is protected.

any other MK2 users comment on this?

can't wait to get home to try out some MAME action

oh I need to get an Asian power plug -> Australian adapter too so I can use the A/C power

 

[Ubersnug]

OMG it arrived!!!1111

i left my SD card at home tho so I can't do much

i'm still puzzled about the screen though! I wasn't sure whether to get a screen protector or not as apparently they were shipped with them already fitted. mine doesn't look like there's anything fitted but there is a plastic film over the screen like you get with most LCD products except it has many bubbles on it. I don't want to take it off until I'm sure that the screen is protected.

any other MK2 users comment on this?

can't wait to get home to try out some MAME action

oh I need to get an Asian power plug -> Australian adapter too so I can use the A/C power

Last time I was on the phone to them they told me that they come shipped with screen protectors now.

 

[yanman]

how can i tell?

 

[Ubersnug]

how can i tell?

I would assume that there would be a very thin plastic layer on top of the screen, probably below the screen cover that its shipped with.

If you brush your nail agasint the edge of the screen I would assume thatyou would feel the edge of the protector, the same way as it does on my PSP and DS.

Ill know when I get home today after work.

 

[arcadeaction]

Hello,

Greetings to everybody. This is one of my first posts on this forum

I've ordered my GP2x about 1,5 weeks ago from gp2x.co.uk. I am still waiting for my confirmation email, I've heard nothing from them since the last promise that it will be shipped at monday 22/05, but I guess after reading this topic, that they are extremely busy. I'll give them a few more days before I will send them an e-mail, don't want to annoy them.

Of course I hope they will process my order soon, though
Nice to hear they are shipping a lot of GP2x consoles, that's a good thing!

I have a question: Did anyone receieve the GP2x from gp2x.co.uk without getting a confirmation e-mail lately?

 

[degziebob]

I got mine this morning... very good.

I don't like gp2x joystick replacement ...it just feels weird.... using the original one for now. I got 2 CD's also, one full of emulator stuff & the other will firmware. It boots up in around 10-12 seconds. Plays eveything I've tried. Most things look good on it. Quake/Duke are difficult to see... the snes/mame emus all look great

 

[Ubersnug]

Well my GP2X just arrived today (ordered from GP2X), arrived at 9am sharp but I need to wait till I get up the road after work to try it though - GAH!

 

[craig1234564]

would it be possible to play kick off 2 on the gp2x ?

(best game ever)

 

[lintsniffer]

what system? I'm not familiar with it.

 

[Godmil]

YAY Mine came today - while I was just out of the shower, so I may have scared the delivery guy a little
Anyway, until today I was trailing these forums for as much info as I could get my hands on, so it's only fair I share tons now...
ok, I got the unit with a carry case (which is really cool) and a powersupply unit. I'm really wishing I bought the rechargable batteries instead.. the PSU plugs in about where your right hand will be, so it's kinda in the way, and I'm sure it was a little loose and kept reseting the machine. On the plus side the psu was cheap and has variable voltage/polarity/heads so it could come in very handy in the future.
There aren't any batteries with the unit, I bought some cheap ones to tide me over, and they lasted like 2 hours.

The machine itself is very funky. I dont have anything to compare it to, but I like the screen.
The box was preopenned when I got it, so I'm guessing each unit (from gp2x.co.uk at least) will have been checked and probably firmware updated before delivery.
Mine came with the gp2x joystick attached, which I dont have a problem with, also there is a spare one with a little flat spike in the middle. There wasn't any seperate screen protectors, but the machine did come with a printed page which said there are 3 screen protectors on the unit. The first one I'm guessing is the large plastic cover (with lots of air bubbles), this one came off quickly, cause it looked awful, leaving a lovely clean surface... I'm going to pressume there are still two covers on it (even though I cant see them).
I've been looking for joystick responsiveness, and I haven't come across any problems at all.
Also included in the box was the USB cable, which I've not openned, and 2 CD's... one from GPH with the instuctions on it, and another which as far as I can tell is completely blank :/
Well it looks like there is something on it, but my CD-ROM isn't detecting it and there is no writing on it.

Games wise, I've been kinda having a hit and miss affair. Mame is playing only about half the games I've got (and all need to be overclocked to about 250 - but I am going for early 90's games - Final Fight, Strider, etc). Also half the homebrew games I've dled dont work... They kinda freeze up, requiring a restart, or just jump back to the main menu. Also I'm sad I cant get scummvm to run properly, it eather doesn't detect the game or doesn't display a cursor when playing it (Only tested Monkey Island 1 though).
I'm pressuming a lot of games were written before Firmware 2.0, and so that's what's stopping them working. I was really looking forward to playing Beats of Rage, but that just gives me a black screen (I tried installing the SDL files, but that didn't make a difference).
Em, what else is there. I've been trying out as many games as I could get my hands on, and so far the best one I've come across is LadyKiller - very professional presentation and good game mechanics (responsive controls and intuitive to play). Haven't tried any of the 3d games... looking forward to Duke3D - cause I dont have the files yet. Also I haven't tried any console emulators... the one NES emulator I have wont load up, but I'll try some others.

The only thing that's puzzling me about the unit, is the best way to get back to the main menu. For MAME as far as I can tell there isn't a way, so you have to turn the machine off then on again... is this normal. I'm finding myself having to turn everything off and on very regularly... I'd kill for a soft reset button.

OK that must have been boring for most of you if you read it all, so I'll sum up with... Overall: Pretty impressive machine, I'm just needing to spend a bit more time bringing together all the software that works before I can really enjoy it.

 

[yanman]

Ok Godmil you've motivated me to post my own report

Got mine on Friday. I ordered from play-asia and got the unit, carry case, tv-out cable and power pack. I can't use the power pack yet tho as I need an adapter for Australian outlets.. or I could just cut the end off and wire an Aus one on. Either way, I just raided the stationary cupboard at work for some AA's I'd already ordered rechargables, a charger, a 2GB SD card and a card reader so I was set!

Okay.. first up I tried the included games. I was a bit surprised to find the Playback rolling demo would lag. The first sound my GP2X made was when that rolling demo started and it stuttered! Looks like an interesting game tho. Vectar was cool and I had a nice bash with that.

Once I got home I tried out my SD card, put an epside of Futurama and Lost on there. Lost played perfectly but Futurama was no good.. the video showed a frame every few seconds or so. Both Futurama and Lost were xvid video but whereas Lost had 128kbit mp3 the Futurama used 80kbit ogg/vorbis. But audio on futurama was fine! Maybe the xvid on futurama was a different and more incompatible version. lost would certainly be newer.

Vectar later became a problem. I ran out of batteries during a session and ever since I can't get it to load properly Have I corrupted the copy on the NAND? It gets to the initial screen then freezes.

Next up MAME. I grabbed the copy linked from Craigs review, looked in the gamelist.txt for supported games and matched them with the ones I had (off an Xbox emu dvd). Only about half worked. Galaxian, Wonderboy in Monsterland, Pacman didn't work. Galaga, 1943, Defender, Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, Q*Bert and SIlkwork worked fine

I tried to get NeoGeo working (using one off Craig's review) however I think I'm missing some rom files. I got some off a neogeo.zip off that same Xbox emu dvd.. this one from the Kawa folder. I was missing some file apparently. ALso the games weren't in the list. Maybe it's a different format.. not really familiar with neogeo stuff anyway

After these initial tests I thought it'd be time to try the one closest to my heart, but probably less likely to work well - Amiga They all seeemd to need some overclocking and most of the few I tried didn't work (I didn't check on the wiki cmopatibility page yet). Turbo Lotus Espirit worked but was a bit laggy. Turrican worked but my character was invisible! Xenon 2 megablast worked but bombed out early on. ALso had no music noewwwwww!!!

Anyway that was a lot of excitment for a first day and I could see it was gonig to be an interesting toy Definatly an item for a geek connoisseur!

Godmil if you are in the MAME game selection menu press L+R simulatenously and it'll soft boot you back to main GP2X menu. And if you hadn't found it already, L+R+Stick while in-game for MAME will return you to game selection.

 

[lintsniffer]

For me L+R alternates the viewing mode from horizontal,vertical, horiz. stretch, and vert. stretch.

L+R+stick exits also.

 

[Godmil]

Yep, thanks for that, I didn't realise the stick was also a button
I still cant get any Nintendo emulators working But the Megadrive/Genesis emulator is amazing Worth it just for that.

 

[Feeg]

I figure I might as well post my first impressions, since with uni work and stuff I wont get time to write up an in depth review for some time.

I bought mine from Play-Asia along with a carry case and power supply. SD Card, batteries and charger I bought from a couple of E-Bay stores.

The machine is really light, it was the first thing I noticed, and also the first thing my girlfriend commented on. It's almost disconcerting to have such a powerful toy which feels like an incredibly lightweight piece of plastic. That isn't a complaint though, obviously, lightweight handheld is good. I pulled the film off the screen, and that's all there is. Just one plastic film over the screen "protector". I've had a bit of a pick at the corners with a fingernail and there's definitely nothing else there. The protector is really reflective, but the LCD is bright enough that I don't notice unless I'm in dodgy light conditions - like sunlight.

I had to buy a converter for my battery charger, so I'd charged my 2600mHa AAs in a quick charger, and hopefully that explains the short battery life I was getting. Somewhere between a half hour to an hour per set. Yay. Further tests are needed.. I may need new batteries. :unsure:

There is a weird rubber plug/cap for the headphone socket which kind of gets in the way of my headphone plug, and I might remove it, since it doesn't really 'fit' the socket anyway and feels cheap.

I've played a few games on there- DrMD with Shinobi 3, Streets of Rage 3, Lost Vikings, all playable, look and sound fine. Nethack runs quite nicely for a WIP. Duke3D plays well, though it took me a while to adapt to not looking up and down. The unfortunately named Ladykiller feels weird to play in public, but it's a fricking addictive game style, runs well.

Beats of Rage / OpenBOR don't work for me, I haven't investigated this to any great degree, so it might be my fault, or it might be a problem with v2 firmware. It hangs while loading a .pak file. The Scorched Earth clone doesnt work either.

The GP2x menu is crap, it isn't particularly easy to navigate, the choice of a gradient background is dumb because it emphasises the limits of the LCD. You see crisp banding on the gradient.

Qtopia runs, but it's slow and feels kind of bloated. I think we're going to need to develop something more intuitive for the GP2x if we want some PDA type applications, Sterm is seriously awesome. I had a moment of "Holy crap! this really is a little Linux machine!" when I ran it at uni, browsed the directory structure of the GP2x and then proceeded to hack the init scripts in vi to run Sterm instead of the GP2x menu at bootup. I didn't keep that change because Sterm wants to keep drawing its virtual keyboard over the top of programs you run from it, and applications tend to run the GP2x menu program when they exit, so it isn't a good way of launching programs at this point. I do intend to move the menu.gpe and put a script in its place, and see whether I can make the machine behave a little more like a traditional linux box, but that's just pointless geekiness.

I don't like the official carry case and wish I'd waited to get something better. It's a semi-hard padded case with room for the GP2x and not much else. There's a mesh enclosure for putting stuff in, but with my headphones and a spare set of batteries I have to be careful about how I arrange it in order not to have them push the joystick in when the case is closed- I don't want that cuz I'm sure it'll wear the stick over time. If the mesh part was on the other side of the case it wouldn't be anywhere near as tight a fit. I'd rather have some kind of case with elastic to hold the GP2x in so it's easier to use while IN the case. It's a fairly minimal case, basically, and not all that well designed.

All in all I'm very happy with mine. Battery life for me has been an issue, and the software situation feels like it's still in its infancy, but I'm looking forward to developing for it when I get some time. I guess I wouldn't recommend one to anyone who hasn't spent some time lurking on these or other forums, because there are a few shortcomings with the machine and it's more of a hackers toy than a mass market device, in my opinion.

 

[yanman]

Feeg, one quick comment re: batteries.. when I was looking into what batteries to buy I came across a lot of reports that the market is flooded with mislabelled chinese batteries claiming to be 2500, 2600, 2700 etc mAH when in fact they're pretty standard level type. I'd say that was part of your problem. The other is that you're using a fast charger instead of a "smart" charger. The latter are a bit more expensive, take a lot longer, but give you much better battery life. Have a google around, you'll find all sorts of info. The brand that gp2x.co.uk sell - Annsman which is a German brand if i remember correctly, have released 2700mah ones There's a good charger for AA's going around by Maha... I'd already got mine befoer I found out about it, but apparently that';s the #1 to get at the moment. Can't remember the model. If you google you'll find some forums about batteries (wtf! who writes forums on batteries!)

 

[gaterooze]

Feeg, since you're in Oz I'd recommend grabbing some Energizer 2400mAh AAs.