Franxis said:
There are a lot of people interested in the Jxd301 and other chinese compatible devices
.
Why?
- 2x the GP2X power.
- better screen.
- better authonomy.
- less size and weight.
- cheap.
I have also planned to get one, but i prefer to wait some weeks until some talented programmers (Rlyeh, etc) have taken a look on it and see if they can 'enable' the hombrew...
It should be great to see MAME on this new handheld...
The blood of students and peasants are on that dpad but hey it's your kharma, so what if every time you boot up a newborn baby is crushed under a PLA boot. You saved a whopping $40 so it's cool.
Be sure and get that tested for lead too. Twice as powerful and you'll get 6 hours out of a 1000 mah battery, hah, pull the other one it's got big ben on it.
What is authonomy and how could it possibly be better behind the bamboo curtain?
Oh, please! So, what are we supposed to do, boycott them all back into the extreme poverty that led them to Communism in the first place? The Soviets once claimed that they would overcome us from within. Well, the capitalist drive to satisfy ones own material interests is now "overcoming from within" both the former Soviet Union and China. It's a slow process and there are going to be many setbacks along the way, but the more prosperous and technologically advanced the average citizen becomes within those countries, the more likely it is that they will eventually liberate _themselves_.
As far as hacking Chinese PMPs goes, I think there is some justice in taking their most capable designs (like those based upon Analog Device's Blackfin DSP) and opening them up through reverse engineering. The Chinese steal hardware and firmware designs from each other and everyone else anyway, so they are fair game. In addition, it has become clear that the "borrowed" open-source emulators used without credit within the JXD301 firmware put them in violation of the Gnu GPL so, legally, their firmware should be open source anyway.
The risk in doing this comes from the uncertainty that JXD's JXD301 design will remain significantly unchanged for any period of time. However, I suspect that the vast majority of sales of such a device come from the billions of potential customers in Asia, so I seriously doubt that changes would intentionally be made to counter any western hacking efforts. The other MP4/PMP chipsets appear to be pretty much crap for game emulation, so the Chinese might stick with the Blackfin for a while. If they do, reverse engineering might be worthwhile as it would lilkely be applicable to an entire series of their copycat handhelds.
In a photo of the Ainol V2000 MP4 player's PC board found on an MP4 site, the markings on one of the ICs has been intentionally ground off, so they are apparently trying to avoid easy reverse engineering. The V2000 is basically a JXD301 in a different case with controls not intended for game play.
Edit: The HM-1303, the third (that I know of) Blackfin-based PMP has just been announced:
http://www.pmptoday.com/2007/11/11/gaming-...olide/#comments