LDK Retrogame Handheld (JZ4760B)

[3DSDSXL]

THE END

 

[3DSDSXL]

Here are some videos i made of it today since i got a early dev unit i have released a firmware for it based on RetroFW

 

[3DSDSXL]

 

[3DSDSXL]

LDK Full RetroFW V1.2 (JZ4760B) updated latest releases 13/04/19

 

[Stwert]

I quite like the look of these, I’m a sucker for a gadget Going to get one as soon as spare cash comes along, think a review of it will fit in well with my series of retro reviews I’m doing.

 

[romanaOne]

I got one from retromimi and it is really the first RS-97 / GB(A) knock-off device to impress me. GBA/SNES/NES/GB(C)/Lynx/Atari2600/Colecovision emulation are pretty fast, look good, and have save states using the latest "RetroFW." Contrast most "Retro Game this-and-that" handhelds where emulators just barely work and the battery lasts an hour. Neogeo pocket color (emulator is called race-od) was the only disappointing emulator because it can't save state (or save at all).

There are a lot of strange emulators, but I didn't test every one because I don't see the point in using retro computer emulators (BBC micro, spectrum, c64, atari800) on a handheld with NO KEYBOARD. I also didn't bother with TV-out, because I like handhelds, not TV-game style consoles.
Hopefully people will concentrate on console- and handheld- emulators and not waste too much effort on emulating horrible old 80s computers like TRS-80, TI99/4A, etc.

I wonder how long it will be until 3rd and 4th parties start selling trashy knock-offs of LDK Retrogame....

 

[Stwert]

I got one from retromimi and it is really the first RS-97 / GB(A) knock-off device to impress me. GBA/SNES/NES/GB(C)/Lynx/Atari2600/Colecovision emulation are pretty fast, look good, and have save states using the latest "RetroFW." Contrast most "Retro Game this-and-that" handhelds where emulators just barely work and the battery lasts an hour. Neogeo pocket color (emulator is called race-od) was the only disappointing emulator because it can't save state (or save at all).

There are a lot of strange emulators, but I didn't test every one because I don't see the point in using retro computer emulators (BBC micro, spectrum, c64, atari800) on a handheld with NO KEYBOARD. I also didn't bother with TV-out, because I like handhelds, not TV-game style consoles.
Hopefully people will concentrate on console- and handheld- emulators and not waste too much effort on emulating horrible old 80s computers like TRS-80, TI99/4A, etc.

I wonder how long it will be until 3rd and 4th parties start selling trashy knock-offs of LDK Retrogame....

Hey, I like “horrible” old 80’s computers, I have quite a few of them. MSX, Vic 20, C64, C16 +4, Spectrum, Amstrad CPC 464 and Amstrad Plus 4 (though I mostly use my GX4000 for their games), Atari 800 XL, Atari ST, Amiga 500. Still use them all too.

But I will agree that unless emulation is done well, they’re a pain in the butt. There’s thousands of games across them you can load and play without ever going near a keyboard in emulation. But if it’s not done well, forget about it.

Anyway, how has the battery life been for you?

Tried any arcade stuff, especially CPS2 and CPS3?

 

[romanaOne]

I like horrible old 80s computers, too. I still have too many. Cheap microcontrollers (uIEC/SD) and FPGAs (Chameleon) enabling SD-card floppy disk drive replacements have kept me using C128, C64, TI99/4A, and Tandy Color Computer (similar to Tano? Dragon? in Wales) computers long after floppy drives became musical instruments. The only downside is finding anyting, now that 80s computers can have more storage than I could have possibly imagined back then. Can't ask Siri to LOAD"$",8

I didn't comment on LDK battery life because I just got it yesterday. The battery says 1000mah and it looks like a super-common battery I've seen in a lot of Nokia phones from the 00s. Seems good so far in that I haven't noticed it going down much in an hour or two. (Assuming, of course, the battery indicator icon in RetroFW really works!) There's also a green LED on the back. I'll see if it changes color, dims, or goes out when the battery gets low.

I played a little Digimon World just to test the PS1 emulator and it seems to work well enough. Had to use real PS1 bios as the HLE bios lacks something needed to create save game. Too bad it is literally a shitty game. (Over an hour into it, I still can't find the potty and my digi-whatsit beastie is leaving digiturds all over the town.) Are there any fun games on PS1? What the PS1 could have done with Pokemon....

I also forgot to mention Picodrive (Genesis/MegaDrive) because I didn't like that system. Sonic and whack-whack-whack fighting games were never my thing. The emulator runs Fatal Labyrinth (Sega's version of Nethack) well, but I don't know what-if anything-constitutes a good Genesis game.

 

[Stwert]

I like horrible old 80s computers, too. I still have too many. Cheap microcontrollers (uIEC/SD) and FPGAs (Chameleon) enabling SD-card floppy disk drive replacements have kept me using C128, C64, TI99/4A, and Tandy Color Computer (similar to Tano? Dragon? in Wales) computers long after floppy drives became musical instruments. The only downside is finding anyting, now that 80s computers can have more storage than I could have possibly imagined back then. Can't ask Siri to LOAD"$",8

I didn't comment on LDK battery life because I just got it yesterday. The battery says 1000mah and it looks like a super-common battery I've seen in a lot of Nokia phones from the 00s. Seems good so far in that I haven't noticed it going down much in an hour or two. (Assuming, of course, the battery indicator icon in RetroFW really works!) There's also a green LED on the back. I'll see if it changes color, dims, or goes out when the battery gets low.

I played a little Digimon World just to test the PS1 emulator and it seems to work well enough. Had to use real PS1 bios as the HLE bios lacks something needed to create save game. Too bad it is literally a shitty game. (Over an hour into it, I still can't find the potty and my digi-whatsit beastie is leaving digiturds all over the town.) Are there any fun games on PS1? What the PS1 could have done with Pokemon....

I also forgot to mention Picodrive (Genesis/MegaDrive) because I didn't like that system. Sonic and whack-whack-whack fighting games were never my thing. The emulator runs Fatal Labyrinth (Sega's version of Nethack) well, but I don't know what-if anything-constitutes a good Genesis game.

I’ve got various tape/disk emulation devices for all of my old computers too, well, I like to use those and flash carts whenever possible, so I have dozens.

I don’t like using my originals, not when some of them are worth hundreds of pounds on their own. Too damn expensive to replace if something goes wrong.


But I always organise into nice neat folders, so I can find things nice and easily.

I think flash carts/tape emulators/disk emulators are an essential these days anyway. Even without using them to protect your original games. There’s so much good homebrew around for practically every system, they pay for themselves as far as I’m concerned.

I always prefer the original devices, but a good handheld emulation device is an absolute necessity for me. It’s the only way I can take most of my systems with me when the wife drags me kicking and screaming on holiday

No worries about the battery, didn’t realise you’d only just got it. Still, at least using those batteries it’s easy to have a few backups, you could even charge the spares in the car if you want to.

 

[warmo161]

Ive been looking into one of these, (Been talking on other threads)

How is SNES emulation on this thing? and any homebrew availble?

 

[romanaOne]

Ive been looking into one of these, (Been talking on other threads)

How is SNES emulation on this thing? and any homebrew availble?

Err, I think pretty much all the software is homebrew?

I have not extensively tested SNES games. I tried out super mario and zelda and they looked ok. You can load/save state or SRAM save.

I cloned the (or do I mean a?) RetroFW buildroot on my Arch Linux system and compiled a few games not (yet?) included: digger (A mediocre DOS-era? version of Mr. Do) and supertux.

I hoped it was just a matter of pointing CC to the crosscompiler, but lots of Makefiles are messed up. You can find the source to lots of games and emulators here: https://github.com/pingflood/rs97_emulator

It looks like many of these games/emulators are in varying states of disrepair, thanks to the shambolic mess that is RS-97 RetroGame; don't expect to just type make and have them compile.

Hell, I don't even know if this is the source from which the emulators included in "RetroFW" are built. But I got digger working, so I'm mostly satisfied.

Most of the emulators are already included in RetroFW, but few of the games are.

Probably of no interest to anyone else, but the dingoo TI99/4A emulator will work, no porting needed. Just copy it to your uSD card and you can play MunchMan!

 

[3DSDSXL]

Fontes exclusive LDK theme has been released along with LDK updated firmwares today (clear and yellow) they have their own firmware downloads choose the appropriate one that matched your devices color.

 

[romanaOne]

I found a statically linked binary of vice that works with LDK RetroFW. (I think it came from the Retro Arcade Mini FW, but I forgot.)

This emulator is not super easy to use unless you are familiar with a real C64. I have played Giana Sisters and DJ Puff to test. Seems about fullspeed and sounds good. I keep PRG files of a bunch of games in a single folder which is mounted as drive 8. Select them in the Autostart Image menu. Another option is to use EasyFlash cartridge .crt files which have a nice menu.

Start the C64 emulator with the x86.dge script because it wil log stdout to a vice_log.txt, which is helpful if x64 crashes.

You may find that x64 doesn't start and it says in vice_log.txt that it can't find kernal, chargen, etc. ROMs. The ROMs must be located in a directory called C64 (NOT c64) in the same directory as x64. Use commander to rename the c64 folder to temp. Then rename temp to C64. It will still say "c64" in the file browser, but don't worry. (You can't directly rename "c64" to "C64" because commander and/or the filesystem are not fully case-sensitive.)

As an added bonus, it also works on the Retogame plus.

Anybody got a STATIC binary of DOSbox that will work on the Retrogame plus? All the dingoo A320 DOSbox binaries on openhandhelds.org are linked to uClibc and won't work on RG plus.
(Compiling it looks complicated, as the Makefile was made by configure and then edited to point to dingoo gcc,strip, sdl-config etc. I tried updating it to RetroFW buildroot but make complains about not finding /.deps. I don't know what that is. Some piece of automake horkage? It seems the last person to mess with this source deleted configure and other things that are the inputs to generating a Makefile.)

btw, you can easily tell whether a MIPS (or any arch) binary is statically or dynamically linked using the file command:

>file x64
x64: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, MIPS, MIPS32 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped

 

[PanicPete]

Could anyone help me out with instructions on how to update the firmware using a Mac - if possible?

 

[romanaOne]

It would be a very good idea to backup the LDK's internal microSD card to a file before over writing the card:

sudo dd if=/dev/diskN of=/home/you/BACKUPofOFW.img

To write the RetroFW cfw to the SD card, use dd in Terminal. Make sure /dev/diskN is not mounted before proceeding. diskutil unmount /dev/diskN. (This is not the same as ejecting; if you eject the USB card reader, /dev/diskN will disappear and dd will not work.)

sudo dd if=/path/to/retroFW.img of=/dev/diskN

Be very careful with dd, and make sure you have the right path for the output. (Choosing the wrong one can overwrite the drive you booted from!)

diskutil list

will show you what disks are in your computer. Run it after plugging in the card reader with the LDK's internal microSD, the one located beneath the battery.

It will probably show up as something like:

/dev/disk5 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *63.9 GB    disk5
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 GM9SD                   63.9 GB    disk5s1

Make sure you have the right disk before doing anything with dd.

You also may want to disable spotlight indexing for the uSD card, located in the Spotlight Pravacy preferences pane. Use + to add it to "Prevent Spotlight from searching these locations:"

 

[CoolRuler]

Hey all,

Glad I found this post, I have purchased one of the consoles & I have no clue what to do with it lol. I heard you can flash new firmware and it’s called Retro or something? which will make it run faster, and it will change icons etc.

What do you recommend, as right now, the menu is just basic and very difficult to navigate. Also I have no clue what games it can play or how to add them. No instructions in the box lol.

Any help is appreciated
Thanks


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[romanaOne]

It would help if you specify which RS-97 "Retro Game" device you have.

The pictures here should help you narrow it down:

https://jutleys.wixsite.com/retrogamers97-90

Assuming you have LDK, you have two choices: you can copy "Useless 1.6" (older, no package management, loads preinstalled) or "RetroFW 1.2" (less mature, but things run faster and most of the good stuff has been ported) to your uSD card.

Also of interest is the "Ingenix JZ47xx Devices" forum on dingoonity.org.

 

[CoolRuler]

Hi,

Yeah I have the LDK Opendingux device. That’s what I was trying to think of, the RetroFW, but is their full instructions of how to do it and where to get it from? Cheers


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[3DSDSXL]

New LDK image updated enjoy

 

[Dzung]

Dear

Fontes exclusive LDK theme has been released along with LDK updated firmwares today (clear and yellow) they have their own firmware downloads choose the appropriate one that matched your devices color.

Dear 3DSDSXL, i flash RetroFW Revision 2.1 JZ4760B Full, but i cant install any ipk game, the error show in screenshot below. Btw, how to delete those icon/games: Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife ?