K1GBA Now Shipping – and check out their faq

The long wait is now over, and the K1GBA is finally here and ready to ship!

 

How is this device different from, well, something like this?

Obscurehandhelds explains:

“For those unaware of what the K1 solution is all about, here’s a quick run down. If you’re already up to speed you might want to skip this paragraph. Up until now if you wanted to play GBA titles on anything but a GBA, you had to rely on emulation. Emulators are great, but they’ll never be perfect. Some demanding titles don’t run very well or at all, some games have graphical glitches or slow downs and there are many other imperfections which can detract from the gaming experience. The K1 is a real reverse engineered GBA – this means that the hardware can run GBA titles natively and there is no emulation taking place. The result is that all those glitchy or broken GBA games will work just fine on the K1 hardware.”

Here’s the official FAQ:

FAQ On K1 GBA The most of most FAQ: Q:What is K1 GBA SP Console? A: K1 GBA SP Console is the first reverse engineered hardware GBA console with delicated hardware SoC chip. K-card for downloaded games and memory backup. Game Compatibility is 100%. It also supports multi-game cartridge and hot plug. Frame rate reachs 60FPS. Built-in emulators allowing you to play NES,GB,GBC,SGB,SMS,GG,SG,PCE ROMs. Excellent TV-output. MP3 function is better than the original GBA SP. Q: Is the K-team GBA 100% compatible with every GBA game? A: No, but it\'s damn close and can run all the really hard to emulate GBA games such as Tony Hawk\'s Pro Skater 2, Kingdom Hearts and Payback. There are no games that are broken or dont boot. The biggest issues are graphical issues that can be fixed 99.9% of the time. Q: Does their K Card work in a regular GBA?/ Does it play GB/GBC carts by any chance? A: No, K-Card cann\'t be used for the original GBA，it\'s only for K1. Q: Will the K-card work on an official GBA? A: No, the K-card is not made as a flash card that interfaces with the original GBA hardware. A K-card will only work with a K-device Q: Does the K1 support multiplayer/link with other GBAs? A: Yes and it works perfectly. Games can be shared on titles that support it, using either the K machine or an official GBA as host. Q: What about the TV out? A: Yes, it has a very good TV-out. Q: Can you make option on K1 to display without scaling 240x160 on center screen. A: Maybe in the final firmware. The newer firmware does not work on my prototype because of hardware differences. Q: Does the K1 support the RTC (real time clock) for games such as Pokemon? A: K-team originally implemented this in their design but Maxzhou chose not to go with it in the first model. However, in the next model the RTC will be implemented and working. keep checking this thread for more information on that. Q: How\'s the battery life? A: 4-5 hours. Q: Does it support larger capacities? A: TF card has no size requirements(we suggest you 4GB or 8GB), in addition, FAT16 and FAT32 can be used Q: Does K1 accept SDHC cards? A: Yes, We have tested up to 16GB SDHC it works perfectly. Q: How are the buttons compared to the original? Are they the same quality and feel? Can they be swapped with the original, if not (DIY)? A: The buttons look identical from the outside, I would guess they are the same size and shape but cannot guarantee it. Q: Do the buttons have good feedback? or do they require more pressure then a standard SP? A: They feel just like the original SP buttons. They have a better handfeel without requiring more pressure then a standard SP Multiplayer/Link: Q: Does the K1 support multiplayer/link with other GBAs? A: Yes and it works perfectly. Games can be shared on titles that support it, using either the K machine or an official GBA as host. Q: Does the gba to gamecube link work? I really want to play 4 swords adventures. A: We don\'t have GC at hand so we don\'t know exactly.. Maybe somebody will test it and report. We did follow the protocol of GBA link but there\'re always hidden or undiscovered features that were not digged out by any emulators and our HW. Q: does it support GBA-NGC link cable? Using it to play Zelda 4 swords from NGC? A: I don\'t have that cable to test, the K-Team said it should work. VGA TV-out & Screen: Q: What about the TV out? A: Yes, it has a very good TV-out. Q: Would HDMI output perhaps be possible (Or VGA) rather than Composite video and Mono sound? (Perhaps using a mini/micro HDMI port if space is an issue) A: I realise that the GBA resolution is low at 240x160, but if you multiply it by three you get 720x 480 which is DVD resolution, and then you can allow the TV to scale it up to 4:3 or 16:9 depending on user preference (GBA aspect ratio is 3:2 which is in between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios) Maybe you could even offer some scaling/filtering options? Q: Can you make option on K1 to display without scaling 240x160 on center screen. A: Maybe in the final firmware. The newer firmware does not work on my prototype because of hardware differences. Q: The screen was better than the SP. Is it better than the backlit model (AGS-101) or were you just saying that that\'s the model you have? A: The screen on my prototype was brighter and more colourful than the AGS-101, but I don\'t know which screen the manufacturer chose for the mass production run. Q: Is it possible to utilise the larger screen for a better GB/GBC experience or is it still restricted to the tiny unscaled box with Goomba? A: So far, yes. that\'s the only way by Goomba. GB and GBC were left out intentionaly because of cost and time issue. May we will add it back in future project. One reason is most of the good games in GBC and GB have a remake version in GBA. There\'s no need to do GB and GBC then. I know some of you do like the original GB/GBC games. Sorry about that. Q: Is it K1 using the \"new brighter screen\" found on later model GBA SP? A: Yes, the screen is backlit rather than frontlit. It is bright and crisp and produces excellent colours. FAQ on K-Team: Q: K-team. Is it your team who actually program for your device or is the SDK available to the people that sell your SOC. A lot of chinese devices are programmed differently depending on the vendor selling them. Does this mean certain rebrands of your device could feature different emulators than others? A: We haven\'t been able to release anything like SDK to manufacturers but we wish we could if we have enough resource to prepare the documents and development board. Will that interest you guys if someone sell the boards to you ? Yes, different manufacturers will have different UI and form factors, depending on their major interests on the market. We don\'t produce end products. Q: K team. Is there anyway you can underclock the menu so it runs at the same, processor speed as the gba games. A: Underclocking can cause other problem. We are fixing the LCD display issue in low-battery now. The low-Battery detection is not too good now so as you see in your playing. The other issue is the low quality backlight power supply of the LCM. We know the manufacturers are revising the PCB to add DC2DC for better displaying quality. Q: Does the K1 support the RTC (real time clock) for games such as Pokemon? A: K-team originally implemented this in their design but Maxzhou chose not to go with it in the first model. However, in the next model the RTC will be implemented and working. keep checking this thread for more information on that. Q: Is there any PC interface or compatibility with existing linkers for cart dumping? What are the interface options for development and tinkering with the hardware? Is there any USB, Serial or other connection possibilities or is the hardware as restricted for development projects as a actual gba? A: The development interface is standard JTAG/ICE interface but the PINIS are not connected to the Shell. Q: I assume the emulators are not 1:1 versions from the hb scene and have been tweaked or modified by the k-team. Is this correct? and is there any clock adjustment to improve more demanding emulators like PCE? A: Current emulators in k1 is cokked by maxzhou. We don\'t provide the emulator. The emulators you saw is purely based on original GBA and thanks to the high compatibility K1 achieve, the emulators are almost untouched. Say, that is pocketNES for NES on K1. Battery & Capacity: Q: Can we replace the battery with a bigger one? How much it lasts? A: The battery space is limited/fixed. Unless you can find better Li-On battery, you won\'t find it possible to replace it. You can take off the battery to see if you can make it, though. Q: How\'s the battery life? A: 4-5 hours. Q: Does the battery has the same specs as the original GBA SP one? A: Yes, the battery is interchangeable with that of the original GBA SP. Q: Does it support larger capacities? A: TF card has no size requirements, in addition, FAT16 and FAT32 can be used Q: Does K1 accept SDHC cards? A: Yes, We have tested up to 16GB SDHC it works perfectly. Compatibility with GBA Games: Q: Is the K-team GBA 100% compatible with every GBA game? A: No, but it\'s damn close and can run all the really hard to emulate GBA games such as Tony Hawk\'s Pro Skater 2, Kingdom Hearts and Payback. There are no games that are broken or dont boot. The biggest issues are graphical issues that can be fixed 99.9% of the time. Q: Does their K Card work in a regular GBA?/ Does it play GB/GBC carts by any chance? A: No, K-Card cann\'t be used for the original GBA，it\'s only for K1. Q: Will the K-card work on an official GBA? A: No, the K-card is not made as a flash card that interfaces with the original GBA hardware. A K-card will only work with a K-device Q: Does the K1 support gb mono / color? A: K1 is only a hardware clone for GBA games, the SoC doesn\'t have the GB/GBC hardware inside it, but you can still play NES,GB,GBC,SGB,SMS,GG,SG,PCE ROMs using the built-in emulators for K1. Q: Does this mean the included version of PocketNES supports mapper 163 for the various Nanjing games? Also, how much flexibility is there with the included version of Goomba Paletted in changing palettes/borders? A: PocketNES supports the mapper 163 & 74 for the various Nanjing and WaiXing games Q: Does this system support headphones? A: K1 support headphone using a SP headphone adapter. Q: Does it share the SP\'s Ext.2 pinouts? and is it possible based on maxzhou88\'s TV out post to bridge pins 1-6 (headphone detect) and possibly with all pins wired get 5v in with stereo and Tv out (Consolized GBA ). A: Hope I didn\'t get it wrong. The SoC itself supports stereo output and TV out independently. For K1, TV out function is hoocked to the charging connector. You can use official headphone adaptor to output sound from the same connector. Q: Are all original carts supported ie those that use funky hardware like WarioWare Twisted! or the Nintendo eReader? A: We followed the gamepack interface as possible as we can. All information we got is from Internet. We have tried to test as many carts as we can but we don\'t have everyone so it is possible K1 will not take it but, believe me, the chances are still very high. You can try and let us know if it works out. Q: Would you mind trying out Pokemon Emerald? Not even my NDS with Slot2 EZFlash can run it properly, because of missing RTC support. A: YES, it can work. Q: How are roms added to the K-Card? Are they added by dragging and dropping into a file manager, or is there some kind of program that adds the roms to the cart? A: Your firmware and ROMs are dropped onto your Micro SD which clicks inside the cartridge and away you go. Drag and drop. Q: What\'s the loading time like, especially for large games? A: Loads in a couple of seconds, surely no longer than the original GBA. The intro animation plays full speed Q: From selecting the rom to the moment the rom boots, how long does it take a 32MB (256mbit) game to load? A: All 32MB games tested worked fine and loaded in a couple of seconds, maybe less. Q: In Metroid Fusion, do the enemies pixelate when killed as they normally do (something a lot of knockoffs have trouble with)? A: Yes, the enemies pixelate. Weird, I think that\'s the only bug I\'ve found so far. If you hadn\'t have said it were a glitch I\'d have thought that\'s what they were supposed to do when you killed them. The pixelation in Metroid Fusion is correct, not a glitch. It\'s just a minor thing that a lot of emulators don\'t do correctly- they just make the enemy disappear. The sleep mode in Metroid Fusion can be turned on by pressing the L-trigger button while in the map screen. If it works correctly, the system should appear to turn itself off. Q: Do the Famicom Mini/Classic NES GBA releases run properly? A: Tested Xevious, Zelda II and Excitebike. Happy to report all worked fine. Q: Does the sleep function work properly in games which used it? (Metroid Fusion has this, as do the Classic NES games- it would basically put the system into a power-save standby mode. EZIV has trouble with it for some reason.) A: K1 has two sleep mode: GBA game\'s sleep function and K1 system (* + R hotkey and any key to wake up except RL) Q: Regarding GBC compatibility, how well does Shantae run? Does Warlocked seem to have all its sounds (Including the digitized voice saying \"Warlocked!\" at the start screen)? A: Shantae runs but is very slow. I didn\'t hear any voice on the title screen of Warlocked, and it also ran slowly. Playable though, unlike Shantae. Q: Can K1 run a GBA flash cart, since it is essentially a clone of the original hardware? A: Some flashcarts work, others do not. They are not necessary to use anyway, because the K1 supports all ROMs from Micro SDHC card Q: Can K1 work on Golden Sun and Sigma Star Saga? A: Yes, these games work perfectly as does 99% of the GBA library. Q: What\'s the saving like? Do you have to input a button combination like the Supercard? A: Games are saved to the DRAM during game play, to back up the save to the SD card just use * and L at any time. Q: Does it actually have a working cheat function unlike the EZ-4? A: Not sure, will try to test. Q: How do Mother 3 battles play out, other emulators had problems keeping the game within battle rhythm? A: I\'ve not tried this game but others have said it runs fine. Q: Can we use a female usb wired to 2 rca with the existing power rather than butcher the cable / Is the USB power cable fully wired? A: Not tested, will try to find out. Q: dose it support zipped roms? A: No (Not my prototype anyway, the final version might). Q: Can I play Pokemon without any trouble if I got the real card at hand? So does the problem that RTC is not working only apply when the K-Card and ROMs are used? A: Mixed reports on whether RTC works or not, it seemed to work OK on my protoype but others have said that the MaxZhou versions don\'t support it. You should test with a final unit. Q: If there\'s no emulation done, then it should be pretty close, right? Though the LCD is a different one. A: It\'s closer than any other machine has gotten before. Firmware updates from K-Team should fix the remainder of the few bugs. Q: Speaking of KH:CoM, does it choke on the intro video (as most knockoffs and emulators do)? A: No, the intro and game play perfectly.

Now you’ve got all excited, you’ll want to be rushing over here to hand over a mere $69.99 for this little thing of beauty!