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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.

Overview

Released on November 10, 2005 in South Korea, the GP2X is designed to support video, music, photos, and games in an open architecture, allowing any user to develop software for the device. Room for expansion with future upgrades (new media formats, features, operating system, etc) has been made possible by upgradable flash memory firmware.

The GP2X is able to emulate many different game systems, such as the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis, Game Boy, PC Engine, Neo-Geo, and Neo Geo CD consoles, as well as various arcade systems via MAME. The very finite processing power of the machine will naturally cap the complexity of emulable machines. There are even PlayStation and Game Boy Advance emulators on the system, though the GP2X has fewer buttons than a standard Playstation controller. However, emulation of 3D systems operates slowly due to lack of a hardware 3D rendering device, and GBA emulation will likely not run at full speed until GBA games' ARM7 code is made to run natively on the GP2x's ARM9 processor (a project that as of 2006 is underway in some capacity.)

The GP2X natively supports codecs and formats such as DivX, XviD, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis, but because the player is open-source there is also already support for various other formats, such as SPC, NSF, GBS, GYM, and VGM. The GP2X also supports a variety of picture formats, such as PNG, JPG, GIF, etc.

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 (GPH, GamePark Holdings) to create, produce and market a 2D handheld system that they saw as the evolution of the GP32. In contrast, GamePark developed the XGP, a 3D system similar to the PlayStation Portable.

The name of the 2D console was conceived GPX2. Eventually, GPH would run into difficulty with it due to a possible trademark violation with the name of a Japanese printer, the GPX, being considered too similar. Potential confusion with a "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 by the deadline of the 15th day, but trademark issues hindered the registration of the fifteen selected names. Eventually, GamePark Holdings simply decided to swap some letters and name their handheld GP2X, finding it an available trademark.

The GP2X has seen several fixes and changes within its life, most notably the changes from the First to Normal Edition and the Normal Edition to the MK2. The differences between editions can be found on the GP2X wiki.

Software

The GP2X unit's primary storage is the Secure Digital card slot, which can currently take SDs up to 4 GB. It also has a 64 MB flash memory storage, where files and software can be stored. It is planned that future units will ship with larger capacity NAND storage memory due to decreasing cost-effectiveness of purchasing smaller NAND chips to larger ones. This NAND memory is recommended to be used for storing programs and files added by the user ONLY in Firmware 2.0.0 at this point in time, as it has a separate partition that is user-writable separate from the NAND area used by the Linux operating system. (Older firmwares, e.g. v1.4.0 and down share one common NAND area for user and OS use, so storing files there is not recommended.)

Games

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.

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.

Emulators the GP2X runs

The GP2X is able to emulate many different game systems, computers and operating systems, such as:

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 read-only YafFS filesystem, the remainder of the empty space on a user-writable 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).

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 it is, according to the UK distributor, worse to look at.

Early GP2X models ("First Edition" machines) have a 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 the February 18, 2006, the kernel source for Firmware 1.4.0 was released to the public. The Mplayer source code has been released on July 6, 2006. The kernel source to firmware 2.0 has also been released in the same SVN repository.

DRM

There has been discussion of the inclusion of DRM in the GP2X. Gamepark Holdings has confirmed [http://www.gpx2.com/support/support_sugest_view.asp?indexNo=1722&page=1&bunho=17&part=00 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.

Specifications

  • CPUs: Dual-core: 240 MHz host [http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM920T.html ARM920T + 240 MHz ARM940T integrated into SoC - Overclockable by software (CPU cores rated at 200 MHz, but seem to operate at 240 MHz+ in all systems. Most machines' ARM920T can operate stably at 266 MHz, some at over 300 MHz.)
  • Chipset: MagicEyes MMSP2 SoC (System-on-a-Chip)
  • NAND Flash ROM: 64 MB (expected to increase to 512 MB+ in future revisions)
  • RAM: SDRAM 64 MB
  • Operating System: Linux-based OS
  • Storage: SD Card (SDIO support probable in future)
  • Connection: USB 2.0 High Speed
  • Power: 2 × AA battery (NiMH or Lithium batteries strongly advised, Alkalines perform very poorly)
  • Display: 3.5 inch, color TFT LCD with 320×240 resolution
  • TV out: Supported (with optional cable (which supports S-video only, not to mention RCA audio relay). System supports Composite and Component video outputs, among others internally.
  • AC power: 3.3V (supplied as DC current by AC Brick)
  • Physical size: 142mm wide, 82mm high, 27mm deep (excl. joystick) approx

Media support

Video

Info given for the official Video Player by GPH:

  • Video file: DivX 3/4/5, XviD (GPH promises the eventual support of the MPEG and MPEG4 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

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

External links

References

Community and news websites

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

Hybrid handheld game consoles | Seventh-generation video game consoles | Products and services with dedicated Wiki communities

GP2X | GP2X | GP2X | GP2X | GP2X | GamePark 2X

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "GP2X".

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