New User, Getting A Little Intimidated

[victomorga]

I recently purchased a caanoo after doing some research into similar handhelds, and while I haven't actually gotten my hands on it yet, I am getting a little intimidated looking around the boards.

I know the rules regarding posting any copyrighted material or links to any sites that provide such material, but I am not really sure where to start looking. I have been poking around on a site I will not name that caters to open handhelds, but I can't tell what exactly I am looking at (ie are these files games themselves or just emulators?)

my questions are as follows:

1) I see a lot of help posts telling people they need to create new files to make game roms run. is this common? is it rare for a rom to work on its own?

2) regarding the question above: how tech savvy does one need to be to find games and make them work on a caanoo? (I am decently tech savvy having worked with computers in a CAD context for years, but have no programming experience)

3) does anyone know where a new user could find a "for dummies" guide to getting started with the caanoo that doesn't involve cautiously talking around potential copyright issues?

thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Orion4874]

If you're going to be using your Caanoo mostly for emulation it's very easy. Not sure which roms for which emus need additional files to run but it's almost always just a matter of dropping the roms in the proper directory. From there just run the emulator and pick the game you want. Be aware that not every game will run properly, just trial and error i'm afraid.

There's also plenty of homebrew and ported games which can be found here, http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/caanoo.cgi
Again, just a matter of putting the files in the right directory, usually APPS and/or GAMES. The only games you really need additional files for are games like Doom, Quake, Warcraft etc. For those you need the retail data files that cannot be provided with the game engines.

Just ask any questions you have in the "I Need Help" section. You'll usually get an answer within a day if not sooner, we're all nice here!

 

[fishybawb]

Welcome

BAFelton has made a starter kit that can be extracted to your SD card, you can get it here:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/57727-caanoo-starter-kit/

This will set up the folders and provide the emulator program files, then you need to provide the ROM files (these are "dumps" of the original code/data from the game cartridges), and sometimes BIOS files too. These are the things that you'll have to source yourself - Google is your friend Read the instructions provided with the emulators to find out where to put these.

Just ask if you have any problems.