Some Gp2x Questions

[peanutman]

I do not have a gp2x, but I plan on buying one as soon as it is officialy released.
I do have a few questions though. Please don't shoot me if I'm asking stuff that can be found via google, because I'm reading contradicting info everywhere. I would like to know how it all is in reality. That's why I thought asking here was a good idea, cause you propably all own a GP2X

1) How long do the batteries really last? Let's say I buy some recharcheable 2500 batteries, how long will they last while playing a movie, while playing music, while gaming?

2) How good are the SNES emulators for the gp2x. I saw this movie once, and it was awfull. The emulator was very slow and laggy.

3) how customizeable is the onboard Linux os? can one mess around with the settings, or even put another OS on it?

4) Is it worth the money? are you people happy you bought it?

5) what size of SD card would you recomend? 256? 512mb? 1GB? 2GB


Sorry for bothering, but I would like to know these things. The GP2X really does look cool.
Reinout,

 

[bmilleker]

1) How long do the batteries really last? Let's say I buy some recharcheable 2500 batteries, how long will they last while playing a movie, while playing music, while gaming?

Im not sure of the exact time I get when watching movies. But what I do to preserve as much juice as i can is downclock the processor to 100mhz. I also do this with music, and I turn off the screen.

2) How good are the SNES emulators for the gp2x. I saw this movie once, and it was awfull. The emulator was very slow and laggy.

I cant stand the snes emulator yet. Its to hard for me to enjoy playing something choppy. Is anyone working on it anymore?

The sega emu is pure magic. Its the greatest sega emu i have seen in my life.

3) how customizeable is the onboard Linux os? can one mess around with the settings, or even put another OS on it?

Would you really want to put a different OS on it?

I imagine you could mess around with the settings, but again, why unless you really need to. I wouldn't think its worth bricking a unit just to play around with settings.

4) Is it worth the money? are you people happy you bought it?

All i use my 2x for at the moment is drmdx (woo!), video player, and listening to music. I haven't dove into any other apps yet.

5) what size of SD card would you recomend? 256? 512mb? 1GB? 2GB

This is really a question you need to answer. If you just want snes (and below) emulation a 256mb would be fine. But if you want more, that 256 is gonna fill up quickly.

 

[Tobriand]

1) Batteries' lengths vary depending on the battery to a frightful extent. If you're using the ideal 2500 Ansman (sp?) ones, you'll get probably just over 4 hours, possibly verging on 5 - more if you clock down the unit to watch vids or what have you, which could well be worthwhile as I'm told it plays pretty much anything at 133MHz too . If you're using less good batteries - e.g. high capacity ones not made for high-drain appliances, or sub-2000mAh ones, expect a lot less. Still, I get about 2 hours from my old 1200mAh batteries despite their being old and crap, so you can get decent lengths of life from lesser-batteries.

2) Not as good as GP32 ones, but nothing like as bad as the video. Snes isn't full speed, but it's very much into playable (at least on the ASM core without sound). It'll get better, but not soon, I reckon... could be wrong though - here's to hoping.

3) Not sure. Putting your own OS on at present ain't going to work though because the hardware isn't really understood enough to have GPL drivers for several crucial bits of hardware, if I understand right from the people messing about with this sort of thing. This *will* get better, I imagine.

4) Yes

5) I've currently got a 128mb, a 256mb (in Edinburgh) and a 512mb. I'm planning on picking up a 1gb card too, but not until I can justify the cost. I shouldn't really need more than a 512mb card, but I want to be able to use PSX emulation when it arrives and ctually take more than one film with me on my travels, though . Oh, and of course, play Narcissu

 

[taras]

Edinburgh Uni Tobriand? Cos that's where I am.

 

[cbox]

1) I have rechargeable 2300 mha batteries and they last 3-4 hours per charge for me for gaming/videos.

2) I haven't tried the SNES emu yet because it sounds buggy, but I use the Genesis emulator a lot and it's near perfect, also have the MAMEGP2X emulator and it runs really well. Other emulators I've not messed with much except to see if they actually work.

3) not really meant to be customizable but you can certainly put scripts and such in there and mess with the terminal emulator

4) Well worth what I've spent on it so far, just for the portable game library I have now

5) 2 gb definitely. I have one 2gb, two 1gb and a 512 meg and all of them are somewhat full. I needed to use the 2gb for MAME, and it is half full with a complete rom set. One of the 1gb has all of genesis and NES roms on it, and another 1gb has turbografx and atari800 stuff on it.

 

[Radek]

I do not have a gp2x, but I plan on buying one as soon as it is officialy released.
I do have a few questions though. Please don't shoot me if I'm asking stuff that can be found via google, because I'm reading contradicting info everywhere. I would like to know how it all is in reality. That's why I thought asking here was a good idea, cause you propably all own a GP2X

1) How long do the batteries really last? Let's say I buy some recharcheable 2500 batteries, how long will they last while playing a movie, while playing music, while gaming?

That's depending on the firmware updates. For now it's using too high clock when it's not needed. Imho with good batteries 4 hours should be achievable at average. I got 2+ hours on the 2100mAh on the 1.0.1 firmware, 200MHz clock and those batteries weren't prepared as NiMH will get full efficiency after few cycles.

2) How good are the SNES emulators for the gp2x. I saw this movie once, and it was awfull. The emulator was very slow and laggy.

Not tested yet.

3) how customizeable is the onboard Linux os? can one mess around with the settings, or even put another OS on it?

Well... Linux itself is fully configurable just not in the gp2x firmware. There no really any global options to set but this might improve in the future (or 3rd party programs will show - there is already the cpulcdtweaker for an example).

4) Is it worth the money? are you people happy you bought it?

Yes but it isn't as reliable as it should. That is due the firmware's bugs.

5) what size of SD card would you recomend? 256? 512mb? 1GB? 2GB

For what?

I would recomend the one the gp2x can boot from (for trouble free firmware upgrading). This is for 1.0.1 version of firmware as the newer (1.1.0+) supposedly fixed most incompatibilities.

Sorry for bothering, but I would like to know these things. The GP2X really does look cool.
Reinout,

​

Yes it does and it's running great too. And there is lots things to look forward as really we are at just beginning.

 

[LIZARDKING]

"Im not sure of the exact time I get when watching movies. But what I do to preserve as much juice as i can is downclock the processor to 100mhz. I also do this with music, and I turn off the screen."

How do you do both of these things!?!

 

[LIZARDKING]

"Im not sure of the exact time I get when watching movies. But what I do to preserve as much juice as i can is downclock the processor to 100mhz. I also do this with music, and I turn off the screen."

How do you do both of these things!?!

EDIT: Sorry for posting twice!! Cannot seem to delete it...

 

[bmilleker]

"Im not sure of the exact time I get when watching movies. But what I do to preserve as much juice as i can is downclock the processor to 100mhz. I also do this with music, and I turn off the screen."

How do you do both of these things!?!

Downclock the proc with the lcd-cpu tweaker util, and then hit select when ur listening to music. Turns the screen off, and it locks the controls, except select .

 

[LIZARDKING]

Kewl!
Thnx!!

 

[green1152]

I do not have a gp2x, but I plan on buying one as soon as it is officialy released.
I do have a few questions though. Please don't shoot me if I'm asking stuff that can be found via google, because I'm reading contradicting info everywhere. I would like to know how it all is in reality. That's why I thought asking here was a good idea, cause you propably all own a GP2X

1) How long do the batteries really last? Let's say I buy some recharcheable 2500 batteries, how long will they last while playing a movie, while playing music, while gaming?

2) How good are the SNES emulators for the gp2x. I saw this movie once, and it was awfull. The emulator was very slow and laggy.

3) how customizeable is the onboard Linux os? can one mess around with the settings, or even put another OS on it?

4) Is it worth the money? are you people happy you bought it?

5) what size of SD card would you recomend? 256? 512mb? 1GB? 2GB


Sorry for bothering, but I would like to know these things. The GP2X really does look cool.
Reinout,

​

1. They're right. It does depend heavily on the battery. I started out using some crappy no-name rechargeable 2500 NiMh batteries and they only lasted me about an hour at best. I went out and got some Energizer 2500 NiMH batteries and they're lasting me well over 3-4 hours of general use.

2. There's so much talent these days that just about anything on the gp2x that runs slow will be fixed.

3. The operating system on the gp2x is a very stripped down OS and isn't very customizable right out of the box. There are utilities out for tweaking, and more will come. I wouldn't be surprised to see some operating systems come out for this in the next couple years.

4. Right now, it's worth the money. It's an awesome little gadget to have for just about anything. I just hooked it up in my car so I can listen to music and stuff with it. And all the stuff that will be coming out for it, such as bluetooth, will make it ten times more useful for certain tasks.

5. The bigger the better.

 

[peanutman]

Cool, thanks for all the great replies
Certainly going to buy one soon... in about a month maybe, got exams first, and if I understand correctly it isn't even officialy released yet.

Thx
Reinout,