Wikipedia

GP2X

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The GP2X is an open-source, Linux-based handheld game console and media player created and sold by GamePark Holdings of South Korea.

GP2X
File:Gp2xlogo.gif
File:Gp2x wiki.jpg
ManufacturerGamePark Holdings
TypeHandheld game console
GenerationSeventh generation era
LifespanNovember 10, 2005
MediaSecure Digital card
CPUDual-core:

200MHz Host ARM920T

200MHz ARM940T

Overview

Released on November 10, 2005 in South Korea, the GP2X is designed to play video and music, view photos, and play games. It has an open architecture, allowing anybody to develop and run software. Also, there is the possibility for additional features (such as support for new media formats) to be added in the future thanks to the upgradeable firmware.

A popular use of the GP2X is for running emulators, which allow one to use software from another system on the GP2X.

History

Shortly after the release of the GP32 in 2001, its maker GamePark began to design their next handheld. A disagreement within the company about the general direction of this system prompted many of the staff (including the majority of engineers) to leave and create their own company, GamePark Holdings, to produce a 2D-based handheld system which they saw as the sequel to the GP32. In contrast, GamePark developed the XGP, a system with greater emphasis on 3D games.

GamePark Holdings spoke to previous GP32 distributors and developers to determine the specifications for the new machine and how it should be promoted. Meetings were held in Seoul, Korea, where the final design of the new console was agreed upon.

The first name of this console was the GPX2. However, it couldn't be used as a final name due to a possible trademark violation with the name of a Japanese printer, the GPX. Confusion with a potential second generation printer needed to be avoided, so a contest for a new name was announced on August 3, 2005. Around 1500 names were submitted in total, but further trademark issues prevented the registration of the top 15 names. Eventually, during discussions in Seoul with the UK distributor it was decided to simply reverse the last two letters of the original name to give the final GP2X.

The GP2X has seen several minor hardware updates, most notably the changes from the First Edition to Normal Edition and the Normal Edition to the MK2. The differences between editions are detailed on the GP2X wiki.[1]

Hardware

Specifications

  • Chipset: MagicEyes MMSP2 MP2520F System-on-a-Chip
  • Dual-core CPU: 200MHz ARM920T host, 200MHz ARM940T
  • NAND Flash ROM: 64 MB
  • RAM: SDRAM 64 MB
  • Operating System: Linux-based OS
  • Storage: SD Card
  • Connection to PC: USB 2.0 High Speed
  • USB Host: USB 1.1
  • Power: 2 × AA battery or via AC adapter
  • Display: 320×240 3.5 inch, color TFT LCD
  • TV output
  • Physical size: 142mm wide, 82mm high, 27mm deep (excl. joystick) approx.

TV Output

It is possible to redirect the image from the LCD display onto a standard television with S-Video and RCA audio input using an optional 'TV Out' cable which connects to the EXT port on the base of the console. However, not all software is supported in this mode.

Power

The GP2X requires 2 AA sized batteries if not running off mains power. Due to the high current drain, standard alkaline batteries will not function for very long in the GP2X so, NiMH or Lithium batteries are needed. Battery life varies depending on the type of activity being performed on the console at the time and can last anywhere from 10 minutes, using alkaline batteries to over 6 hours using high capacity NiMH batteries.

The GP2X has a socket for an external power source. If a main power supply is used, it must be rated 3.3V DC at 1A with a standard center grounded connector.

Storage

The GP2Xs primary storage device is Secure Digital card, which can be placed into a socket on the top of the unit. The firmware currently supports SD cards up to 4 GB in capacity. SD cards must be formatted as either FAT16 or FAT32 (FAT32 is more reliable). It also has 64 MB of internal flash memory storage, of which 32MB can be used for user data.

Overclocking

The two ARM cores in the GP2X can be overclocked beyond their 200MHz rated speed in software. The maximum speed one can reach through overclocking varies from system to system, with some occasionally reaching over 300MHz, but others barely reaching 240MHz.

Software

Due to the fact that the tools required for development on the GP2X are freely available, there is a wealth of software available for the GP2X, much of which is free. Types of software available includes emulators, games, PDA applications and multimedia players.

  • File Archive] - Provides downloads for most of the software available for the GP2X

GP2X Executables

GP2X executable files have one of two 3 letter file extensions. For games, the .gpe extension is used. These are listed in the Games section of the menu. Utilities have the extension .gpu, and appear in the Utilities section of the menu.

Emulators

There is a large number of emulators available for the GP2X which allow you to run software from other systems on the GP2X as long as you posses a copy of the software you wish to run (generally in the form of a ROM dump). Many emulators will run most software perfectly and at the intended speed, but some others may have various issues (often to do with speed or sound). Popular emulators include GnGeo which emulates the NeoGeo; gnuboy2x, Game Boy Color emulator; MAME, an emulator of various arcade machines and DrMD, that emulates the Master System, Game Gear and Mega Drive.

Games

PDA Applications

Multimedia Plyers

Open source development

A software development kit is available and users are free to develop their own programs. The main component of the SDK is its implementation of the SDL library, allowing for cross-compatibility with a variety of platforms including X86 PCs, PowerPC and X86-based Macintosh computers, the Sega Dreamcast, etc.) and easy access to the GP2X's blitter for 2D graphics acceleration. Also, because of the system's Linux base, it can be easier to port programs to the GP2X than it was to the original GP32 — for example, on September 1, 2005, Gamepark Holdings was able to port a Game Boy Color emulator to the GP2X in less than 30 minutes.[citation needed]

Additionally, a second development kit with a less steep learning curve than SDL is available, called Allegro. Allegro allows for rapid development of games for beginners. The port can be downloaded from GFoot.[2]

Firmware & hardware updates

Firmware v2.0 was released on April 26 2006 and is developed by a different company than the authors of Firmwares v1.4 and lower. It fixes numerous issues (as well as adding new features). Among these the most notable are as follows:

  • Decreasing average boot time from approximately 30 seconds to 14 (from sliding the power switch to appearance of the main menu, at which point the machine is fully usable).
  • Fixing a problem with mounting the GP2X as a Mass Storage Device via USB, and allowing the NAND memory to be mounted as a writable disk in a similar fashion.
  • Changing the Flash filesystem to 2 partitions, the integrated software (e.g. menu and video/audio/photo/ebook software) on a filesystem that cannot be modified from the default file browser, the remainder of the empty space on a fully accessible partition.
  • Adding USB Host support for use of USB devices attached to the machine via breakout box or custom cable, such as mice, keyboards, gamepads and external hard drives / USB Flash sticks.
  • Support for mounting external hard disks and other USB storage devices and reading/writing data from them on the GP2X itself in the same manner as an SD card or the system's NAND memory.
  • Correction of a glitch that could cause accidental flashing of the firmware with an empty SD card.
  • Power-saving measures including altered clockrates for the main CPU in the menu and video player application.
  • An integrated LCD tweaker feature in the main menu allowing adjustment of the screen to remove 'scanline' effects; user selections saved after system shutdown unlike third-party programs for the same function.
  • USB Networking support allowing internet access via wired or wireless network interface adapters (e.g. USB 802.11x Wireless sticks and USB Wired Ethernet adapters).
  • Samba, Web Server, Telnet and FTP Server Support to allow the GP2X to be read from and written to over a USB network connection as a Microsoft Windows Networking shared resource, FTP server and/or Web Server, or connected to via Telnet for terminal access.

As of June 2006, the latest firmware (v2.0) upgrades has fixed most issues with the device, such as USB not working on 1.1 connections. A second release of the GP2X hardware has fixed the joypad and screen (both of which have been altered from the original design). When purchasing a GP2X, be sure to get the GP2X MK2 (7th Edition) — these have the altered screen and joypad and the most recent firmware. In the MK2, the joystick assembly is rotated 45 degrees to turn the diagonal bias into an ordinal bias for better control of emulated games, menus and suchlike. The screen has been switched to a new supplier - the new screen is brighter and there are no longer scanlines, but, according to the UK distributor, the viewing angle has decreased.[3]

Early GP2X models ("First Edition" machines) have an inconsistent build quality record- some people have had to swap their faulty GP2X for a new one, as their machine has proven to be somehow dead on arrival, others had loose headphone jacks or jacks that fell off into the unit, flickering LCDs, or slightly misaligned PCBs causing slight issues with operation of the stick or attachment of a TV-Out cable. Non-First Edition units, and all machines now produced, are built at a different factory and are free from these issues.

GPL

The GP2x utilises significant pieces of GPL code, including MPlayer for its media functions and GNU/Linux as its OS. On February 18, 2006, the kernel source for Firmware 1.4.0 was released to the public. The Mplayer source code was released on July 6, 2006. The kernel source to firmware 2.0 has also been released in the same SVN repository, however the i2c code has been pulled, so a GPL violation is still present.

DRM

There has been discussion [1] of the inclusion of DRM in the GP2X. There's no information on how this DRM restricts the rights of users. Independtly, Gamepark Holdings has confirmed [2] that DRM will be used to restrict what users can do with commercial games made for the system, and will not be used to restrict user-loaded content (video, music, or software development), since most if not all GP2X built-in software is open-source. Two available protection schemes are locking software to operate only on the Secure Digital (SD) card that it is shipped on, or locking it to the unique hardware ID# of the GP2X unit of the user who purchased the software. The only commercial game released so far for GP2X is Vektar.

Media support

Video

Info given for the official Video Player by GPH:

  • Video file: DivX 3/4/5, XviD (MPEG4) (GPH promises the eventual support of the MPEG codec series. The GP2X contains MPEG4 decoding helper hardware.)
  • Audio file: MP3 and OGG
  • Container file: AVI and OGM (renamed to AVI)
  • Resolution: Max 1920x1024 (hardware scaling for TFT screen)
  • Frame Rate: Max 124 frames per second
  • Max. Bit Rate: Video: 2500 kbit/s, Audio: 512 kbit/s
  • Captions: SMI, SRT (some special characters not supported).
  • Battery Life: ~2 hours[4]

Audio

Info given for the official Audio Player by GPH:

  • Audio Formats: MP3, Ogg Vorbis (GPH has promised eventual WMA support as well)
  • Channels: Stereo (Mono only in early firmwares)
  • Frequency Range: 20 Hz-20 kHz
  • Power output: 100mA
  • Sample Resolution/Rate: 16bit/8-48 kHz
  • Equalizer: includes "Normal", "Classic", "Rock", "Jazz", "Pop" presets
  • Battery Life: ~10 hours (info given by manufacturer: 2 x 2850mAh AA battery)

Please note that there are also many other (free) media players by Homebrew Developers.

See also

References

  1. ^ "FirstEditionChanges". GP2X Wiki. Retrieved 2006-05-23.
  2. ^ "GP2X Allegro". George Foot. Retrieved 2006-05-23.
  3. ^ "Craig's GP2X Review". Craig. Retrieved 2006-08-16.
  4. ^ "GP2X Update: First Edition Out Now in Korea & UK - Second Edition Hopefully Coming to Lik-Sang in 2006". lik-sang. Retrieved 2006-07-06.

Community and news websites

  • GP32X - English community news and forums for all Gamepark handhelds
  • Emuholic - Covers homebrew community news for major handhelds, including the GP2X (English)
  • www.GP2Xdev.org - GP2X developer's portal
  • gp2x.info - English and Dutch community news and forums.
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