Update from Booboo on Dingux for A330

By -
Update on dingux for the GA330

It's been way too long since the last entry. First I delayed it a bit just to have something actually substantial to write, and then then stretched it a bit longer, and well, here we are.
After coming back from China I had a list of tasks I had agreed with the ChinaChip management and engineers to get dingux up and running on the A330 in the near term. There was also the possibility of they sponsoring the development. To make a long story short, I was willing to anything between working on my spare time for free and being hired full time, and I was expecting something in between: I'm way too expensive for full time dedication (plus it's probably too soon for that) and while I'd be happy to work in my spare time, that would of course come with no commitment to any schedule or even to completion.
Since then, there's been some kind of priority rearrangement in ChinaChip and the "dingux on the A330" project as been put on hold. That means that the engineers that would do their part (mostly adapting their firmware to allow comfortable dingux installation in the internal flash) aren't available at the moment to work on it. And delivery of the required information to get a kernel port to the CC1800 running has been... well... slow. I got the most important part a couple of weeks ago. And no sponsoring. So I'll do my best but again, don't hold your breath, since as of now my job and my family allow only for a very limited amount of spare time.
The partial CC1800 programmer's manual I've got is 38 pages long. And consists of a couple of paragraphs describing each peripheral and tables of registers. Only the names of the registers and the bit fields. All in Chinese. The Texas Instruments OMAP3503 programmer's manual is +3000 pages. Go figure.
Not that I'm really complaining, since I truly believe that's what they have from the people that actually designed the CC1800. The cheese is in the BSP, which is code, which means if something is not properly done or downright broken you can't fix it, since you don't have a reference programmer's manual.
I wanted to end this post with some tech details about the A330 boot process and memory map, but I have to leave now, so it'll go in the next post.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dingoo A380 Review

By -
Image
The nice folk at isharegifts gracefully sent me a sample Dingoo A380 for review. Having declared my pecuniary interest, in truth though, after playing with this new Dingoo, bribery and graft is strictly unnecessary for its promotion.  IMHO, the product does stand on its own merits.  It remains a testament to the original A320, and its rabid, passionate community (hey, that’s us dudes) that even in 2011, some 3 years after the word “Dingoo” became somewhat a part of the English language,  that it still remains the best Dingoo-type device.  This is because it is still the best supported, thanks to Booboo’s original Dingux, and now OpenDingux.  Dingux means access to emulators and software other than those that came with the original A320’s native uCos firmware.  Dingux allows for ports of games like Doom and Duke Nukem.  Dingux is what turned the A320 from a glorified media player into the device we know and love. It’s still necessary to put Dingu...
Read more

Mancala for Dingux released (Mandingoo was released in 1975)

By -
Image
A somewhat new game for Dingux from ZX-81: Dingux-Mancala: A Mancala Game v1.1.0 for Dingoo/Dingux Hi All, Mancala is a board game familly, originated in East Africa. The word "Mancala" came from arabic word "naqalah" that means literaly "To move". Dingux-Mancala is the "Awari" variant, and even if the rule of this game is simple, the complexity can be compared to chess Game. The AI is based on the source code of H. Huseby & G.T. Lines, for their implementation of the classical Minimax algorithm. How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file. Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license, read COPYING.txt file for more information about it. How to play ? Here is the rules available from awari.cs.vu.nl : Awari is played on a board where each pla...
Read more

Idiot’s Guide to installing Dingux using Windows released

By -
Image
With the release of FAT Dingux, it is now possible to install Dingux using only Windows!  As promised, here is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Installing Dingux – Using Windoze Edition.  Grab the guide here in PDF , zipped here , or here for HTML . 18 October 2009 Update:   The above links will always contain the latest version of this guide . While the guide was written in July 2009, the technique shown in it remains the same as at the update date shown in green.  However, the guide refers to toddler’s or warped flash’s “local.zip” files, and contains links to these files, which are outdated. The links used to point to the A320 freeforums, until the dastardly Dan deleted them ! Grab the latest version of the critical local.zip file, referred to in the guide here: http://boards.dingoonity.org/index.php/topic,32.msg80.html#msg80
Read more

The Dingoo-Scene JXD S7800B (Rockchip 3188 SoC) Android Gaming Console Review

By -
Image
1. Introduction      Since the introduction of the somewhat venerable Yinlips YDPG18, Android handheld gaming devices have been released pretty much continuously, by any number of Chinese manufacturers.      They’re not released with retrogaming in mind however.  Dedicated Android handhelds with physical controls for the consumption of nostalgic childhood memories are simply not in great demand in China, and accordingly, these devices have never been well supported by their makers, as far as the multitude of little tweaks and twerks that the Western retrogamer demands in the quest for ultimate emulation fidelity are concerned.  The view of China based manufacturers seems to be that the physical controls are an adjunct to the primary function of the device – hey, it’s an Android tablet, what else do you want?  Foremost among such frustrations has been OASS: “ornamental analog stick syndrome”, which sadly afflicts many of the de...
Read more

Dingoo representative at a320.freeforums.org !

By -
Sofia, a representative of Dingoo, is now available at http://a320.freeforums.org/ ! This is her post: Hello every one, Good day there! This is Sofia from Shenzhen Dingoo Digital Product Company. Thank you all of you have so much interesting on our Dingoo A320 firstly! And , I'd like to be your friend helping you to know this item well. Our company is really a leading manufacturer of 3D game consolers in China. I guess all of you already knew this ,right? ^_^ Thus, I hope I can do as much as possible to lead you feel easy on A320. Also, I expect to discuss and share with all of you in order to improve my professionality. If , any of you need to buy this for try or wholesale, it will be my greatest honor to service for you ! P.S:My email address is : sofia@dingoo888.com " Have fun ! This is an excellent development! Any other questions for Dingoo? Join the discussion at this thread: http://a320.freeforums.org/hi-let-me-introduce-myself-t15-10.html#p63
Read more

Tauon PC-1 review

By -
Image
You should give this a chance. It deserves one. Welcome to the Tauon PC-1. A Tauon is an incredibly  geeky sciency thing , as it happens, and has nothing to do with the  Great Eastern Philosopher . You won't find it for sale anywhere other than on Tauon's website , and on ebay so far as I can see,  and then only if you're a regular visitor of the ebay "vintage computer hardware" category.  It won't even turn up on ebay if you search for the product name: "Tauon PC1"  - you'll just stumble upon it one day, when you're looking for a replacement floppy drive, or a C64.  So, what is it? It's a computer in a dinky little case! Hardware wise, it has: Allwinner H3 Quad Core SOC [1ghz to 1.2ghz/1gb RAM/8GB internal NAND storage] SD slot USB slot,  HDMI and composite out Ethernet Wifi UART (send/receive signals through terminal commands) I2C (drivers aren't ready yet, but promised).   Inside the case - y...
Read more

An interview with the creator of the Tauon PC-1, Volodymyr Mishin

By -
I'll bet you don't roll out of bed and think about making your own PC before breakfast.  Even you do, I bet you haven't actually  shipped . Here's someone who has.   I reached out to the creator of the  Tauon PC-1 , Volodymyr Mishyn who kindly took more than a little time to answer some detailed questions about the PC-1, how it came to be, the challenges of a project like this, his future plans for Tauon OS and what is clearly a very personal labour of love.   Many thanks Volodymyr.   Your  news blog  suggests 30 days to prototype, and 6 months to ship! If that is right, it is very impressive, given the technical and logistical activities that had to occur.  Is there more to this story? I was looking for available options before I started the project. I got myself a couple PI (3B, Zero) OrangePi, C-SKY. And tried to build some kind of educational PC for my kid. Unfortunately, the performance was awful, using...
Read more

How to show all your 17,083 c64 games from the c64 romset (archive.org) on the C64 Mini or C64 Maxi loader

By -
Image
Update 4 January 2020: ================================================================== New, much friendlier GUI version released - see this post: https://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/2020/01/gui-version-of-gadgetmisers-c64-romset.html ================================================================== Hello, friends, it's been awhile.  A happy 2020 to you all. If Santa was kind this year, he may have brought you one of these:   If Santa did, you'll have worked out by now that 64 built-in games, classics though some of them are, is simply  not enough .   Your travels may have led you to this c64 romset:  https://archive.org/details/C64Romset , which contains 17,068 games. If you pop them on a USB stick and slip it into your c64 Maxi/Mini, only the first 256 games will appear.  This is because there is a limit of 256 items per folder that can be displayed on the c64 mini/maxi loader. So you need to split the games into individual ...
Read more