What will this mean for the Pandora? Official port of RetroArch coming for OpenDingux

[DrasticNerd]

I have just read this article and my first thought (naturally) was "What will this mean for the Pandora?"

Could this upcoming port be modified over to Pandora?

Now that is probably a dumb question but please keep in mind that I'm not what you would call a "real" programmer (I know SQL and I learnt a few script-type languages but that's about it. I can't compile anything and Object Oriented Programming does my head in! ) (Trying to learn OOP literally makes my head hurt! )

The RG350M has better specs than the Pandora 1 GHz which places us at a disadvantage. (But then again, RA has been ported to mini-consoles which are inferior to the Pandora)

Another problem is the screen size difference. The RGs 640 x 480 to our 800 x 480. Unless it would be possible to port this as "letter boxed" so the video would output as 640 x 480 with black borders on our 800 x 480 screen? (IDK if this is doable or not. I'm not a real programmer!)

I'm guessing the biggest issue would be the different chipset?

Can somebody break the bad news to me gently?!

 

[TrashyMG]

I'm not sure it's a big deal, This is just going to be branch of already opensource code. It's not like the OpenDingux can compete in the sea of Raspberry Pi based devices, nor does it need to.

 

[levi]

The Pandora already runs retroarch 1.7.3, thanks to ptitseb (and cancsco who did the original port I think). Probably aided by the fact retroarch already support armel as a target. For the Pyra, it's already published by debian in armhf form, although a hand compiled and optimised version might still have benefits.

 

[DrasticNerd]

The Pandora already runs retroarch 1.7.3, thanks to ptitseb (and cancsco who did the original port I think).

Yes, RetroArch has already been ported to Pandora. Not wanting to take away from this accomplishment in any way, I found that the RA port didn't perform well on my 1 GHz so I ended up going back to stand-alone emulators.

Since the upcoming port will be optimised for Dingux, I'm interested in whether it would be possible to port the Dingux port to Pandora. Assuming that this is even possible, would the Dingux optimisations be likely to result in performance gains over the RA port we currently have?

 

[levi]

Yeah, same here I think.

In terms of the ARM ports benefitting from the Dingux ports, it seems unlikely to me. Dingux ports are MIPS code, so there's no direct translation possible (until box86 also supports MIPS I guess). There might be some improvements in the source code targetting battery powered devices, which could easily be included in the next Pandora release, but I don't know about that. Any assembler level optimisation they might have made won't translate, so won't be of any use.