Whats Up With The Caanoo?

[yourebuying]

There seems to be a lot of great downloads for the Wiz, which I own, however after recently getting a Caanoo, and having wanted one around the time I bought my Wiz, I'm starting to wonder if this poor device was nearly stillborn.

Now before anyone gets snarky with me about the uncompensated efforts people make to ensure these devices are supported, I'm NOT ragging on these people. I'm simply commenting on the lack of support for various programs versus its predecessor.

One of the reasons why I got the Caanoo is for the larger screen and control interface. The only problem is there's very few ports of anything available for it.

I'm very happy with everything that my Wiz is capable of, but I can't help but think some things would be a little more enjoyable on the Caanoo.

 

[coldfish]

Yeh, it aint no GP32 or GP2X that's for sure as far as Dev attention goes. Which is a bit of a shame as Caanoo is probably the peak of GPh's hardware efforts.

 

[Orion4874]

Have you tried Ginge? Alot of GP2X and Wiz games work through that.

 

[holyfuck77]

It is a somewhat complicated situation since you buy a Caanoo after being attracted by the hardware and emulation abilities.Then you see the potential it has but you have to realise that it relies only on non-professional developers who decide to work on it on their spare time. Add Android and iOS to the equation, platforms where the same developers *may* get to sell similar software for a buck to a far larger audience, and you get enough important attention displaced from the Caanoo. It appeals more to gamers than developers nowdays, while this was kind of a 50-50 situation with the GP32 and the GP2X. If you compare it to the Wiz then the Caanoo it's like a Wiz 1.5, it came out shortly after as an "improvement" while fixing some build mistakes. Some later GP2X developers got a Wiz and didn't bother to get a Caanoo. GPH messed it up not making the Caanoo binary compatible with the Wiz, even though they seem to have pretty similar hardware. This was a really bad move because it fragmented the community on which most of their software relies. Also, it looks like the incompatibility was motivated by GPH's intention to set up their own app store, something that didn't really take off (properly). Anyway you always have the chance to write software for the Caanoo (or port it from the Wiz for example) straight away, you don't have to mess with hacking the device like propietary hardware homebrew developers have to.

Nothing of this is news anyway. I've got a question that the more technically enlightened users may be able to answer: would it be possible/not too hard to create an OS/firmware that makes the two devices compatible (by means of altering/hacking/merging existing ones)?

 

[Orkie]

It probably wouldn't be hard at all to make the Caanoo firmware run a lot of Wiz binaries directly. I'm guessing it'd just be a case of enabling OABI compatibility in the kernel and providing a set of OABI libraries (which you could just pull out of the Wiz firmware).

I started making a custom firmware for the Wiz a few weeks ago, and it is very easy to get stuff going, but I only have a prototype Wiz (which does have a few hardware differences from the final ones), don't have a Caanoo, and I can't see myself having £90 spare to get one anytime soon so I got stopped .

 

[iprice]

I've just recently ported two of my old Wiz games to the Caanoo - Drench and Guru Logic Champs.

I don't have a Caanoo, so haven't tested these myself, but BAFelton on Open Consoles stated that they work well on the Caanoo (Guru Logic Champs needs a tweak to the Left/Right shoulder buttons, but that can be done via the Options screen).

Drench - http://www.iprice.re...anoo_Drench.zip

Guru Logic Champs - http://www.iprice.re...Caanoo_Guru.zip

Hope these add to your Caanoo enjoyment

 

[Kokos]

It probably wouldn't be hard at all to make the Caanoo firmware run a lot of Wiz binaries directly. I'm guessing it'd just be a case of enabling OABI compatibility in the kernel and providing a set of OABI libraries (which you could just pull out of the Wiz firmware).

I started making a custom firmware for the Wiz a few weeks ago, and it is very easy to get stuff going, but I only have a prototype Wiz (which does have a few hardware differences from the final ones), don't have a Caanoo, and I can't see myself having £90 spare to get one anytime soon so I got stopped .

It's very interesting! What's the progress? Good luck!