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Dingoo A320 - a fruitful year!


It’s no secret that E3 , the biggest gaming industry event, is in full swing in the US. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft - all show their latest achievements in the field of entertainment. And you will never see only one revolutionary product at this exhibition. This is a portable game console Dingoo A320. More than a year has passed since the appearance on the stage of this very ambiguous gadget. It makes no sense to repeat all the praises in honor of Dingoo, his detailed unbox and review was already on Habré. Better try to understand the reasons for its truly wild popularity among geeks.

So, the dream of mankind about a portable device, where you can indulge in nostalgia for gaming systems with impunity, Nintendo, Sega, NeoGeo and Capcom has been realized by a small and rather poor company of Shenzhen Dingoo Digital Co. Yes, right out of the box, without manipulating the firmware and dancing with a tambourine, you can emulate games from the consoles listed above simply by copying them into the device’s memory.


In fact, the device borrowed the design of the bottom of the Nintendo DS. However, unlike the Japanese congener Dingoo A320 received the following bonuses:
  • CPU Ingenic JZ4732 @ 336MHz Popular Chinese Architecture MIPS (software overclocking to 433MHz)
  • built-in audio player with the ability to play loseless formats
  • video player playing movies without conversion ( analysis of supported formats )
  • the possibility of charging from USB (although rumors are spread that the active use of the console during charging kills the battery)
  • built-in 4Gb flash memory
  • Tv-out
The “monstrous” shortcomings of the Dingoo A320 include, perhaps, the mini-SD slot. Although, this slot was also on the Nokia N810, and nothing, no one complained. A full review of the Dingoo filling is in Wikipedia , and we will proceed to the most interesting.

When the first euphoria of owning the device passed, Mario was traversed 4 times far and wide, Metal Slug caused hallucinations, and Sonic came at night, threatened with a finger and banged with a stick and it would seem it was time for the gadget to settle on the shelf for the gadgets bought on DealExtreme , something happened Even two whole "nothing".

SDK and Dingux


Users suddenly realized that, firstly, the SDK is available for development under the Native OS ( old and newer ), and secondly, the Spanish engineer Ignacio GarcĂ­a successfully sorted the Linux kernel to this miracle of the Chinese electronics industry. The first mention dates back to June 1, 2009. The project was named Dingux .
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The code goes back to RockBox - an alternative firmware for mp3-players. Whether long, short, but SDL was promoted to Dingux, which dragged along a bunch of ports of games and applications written for GP2X, Dreamcast, and other favorite gadgets. Dingoo A320 "overgrown" with such bells and whistles, as the emulator MSX, ZX-Spectrum, Atari, and even Amiga! Well, about the different OpenTyrian and others like them do not have to talk. Yes, by the way, see for yourself. The truth is worth mentioning that the movie is very bearded, in a real system today everything is much more beautiful and stable.



Dingux didn’t have enough support for the TV-out - unfortunately the author has long since “scored” the development judging by the date of the last update. Again, suddenly the author of the PSX emulator port (psx4all) presented to the public quite a working utility for turning on the TV-out from under Dingux. True, overclock does not work (336 MHz only), but the fact of progress is good news - the Dingux case lives and triumphs.



Homebrew


Just list what the dingux-enthusiasts managed to release over the past year:
You should definitely mention the domestic projects for the Dingoo A320, namely:
  • ATARI emulator for Native Firmware from ALSP
  • Vitamin 's ZXTune Chip Music Player for Dingux
  • and finally (yes!) emulator ZX-Spectrum - Unreal Speccy Portable for Native OS! (Russian-Ukrainian project)
The latest product deserves special pride. The emulator works so tightly with the iron that the authors had to release two different assemblies for different LCD-screen controllers. But now there is a pocket Pentagon 128 with support for TR-DOS, AY-8910/12 and multicolor (Speccy fans will understand).



And this is only a small part of what was actually released. Any C64, Amstrad, Atari, emulators Colecoo Vision, MSX, ports Duke Nukem 3D, Doom and Heretic, a free clone of Heroes Of Might And Magic did not get here. In addition, there are also own projects, developer competitions are held regularly, the number of developers is steadily growing.

Modding


Further more. Let's return to the gland. As with any more or less successful project, the prefix was cloned. There were options with "unbreakable" firmware, as well as products that carry only 2Gb flash on board. According to unverified data, these are models designed for the domestic Chinese market. "Apofigey" at the moment is the emergence of the console Dingoo A330 , which has 2 times more RAM (64Mb RAM vs. 32), the ability to connect a wireless joystick and a design of the reduced Sony PSP. This product is not from the original manufacturer , but from a completely different “candle factory”, founded (?) By the Shenzhen Dingoo Digital Co. Today, there is already a Dingux port for the A330 . Some particularly talented users of the original A320 do not wait for favors from Chinese developers and independently increase the memory for their console.

image

Of course, the creators of the console and did not suspect that their child is waiting for SUCH success. But they may not even suspect so far ;-). Now, at a price of $ 80, the Dingoo A320 is the best solution for pocket emulation. Plus, it's a great way to kill time for a real linux-geek: join and compile ! The console has WiZ 's older brother, and in August, Caanoo 's older sister will appear, but about them next time!

How to buy?


Perhaps someone asks himself the question: “Where to get? Give two! ”Unfortunately, in large Russian retail-networks Dingoo A320 is not for sale. And so sorry!

The answer is really simple: DealExtreme and Chinavasion as a direct shopping channel or eBay , Price.ru and Molotok.ru. As a secondary market and intermediaries.

I can strongly recommend buying devices directly ! And on personal experience, I advise it Chinavasion despite the fact that there is a paid delivery. They have a little faster formation of the parcel and sending the goods after payment, and then the Russian Post (well, you understand).

As part of the enhanced popularization of the Dingoo A320 in Russia , a “Write Yourself” competition is currently being held , where the device can simply be WIN !

Where to find out more?

Want to discuss this material outside of Habr (no account)? We follow here ...

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/96416/

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