I mostly want to play consoles that I know garlic will run, minus the DS. Only DS games I want to run are Pokemon, so the lack of inputs isn’t an issue.
I wanna be able to just put it to sleep mid game, put it in my pocket, then pull it out and resume. I don’t want to do any extra steps outside of tapping the power button. Would like it to be quick, which I’ve heard batocera isn’f the best at.
I want it to be stable, with low risk of the game crashing.
Battery life is whatever as long as I can get a few hours out it.
Also, any manage to get the HDMI to output 240p on this thing for a CRT?
I have a 35XX and use Garlic OS. I’ve not tried anything else, including the stock firmware.
GarlicOS is great and I reckon it does exactly what you want. Tap the power button and it saves the state (assuming the core supports it - most/all consoles do, but arcade cores don’t). You need to hold the power button to turn it back on. It will go right back to where you were. There is also a “Recent” games menu that shows screenshots of recently played games at the point when you last close them. Pressing A will jump right back in, while pressing START will start the selected game up from a cold start.
So far it seems GarlicOS is what I want, outside of DS support. Have the dev(s) mentioned anything regarding unlocking the GPU like Batocera?
A sorry - I totally blanked on your mention of DS. GarlicOS has overclocking if that’s any use. Other than a handful of PS1 games, everything I’ve tried seems to run at full speed, and I don’t think I’ve had any crashes or poor emulation. You might need to fiddle with Retroarch settings to get the best possible scaling. GBA needs non-integer scale unless you want a tiny image, but the interpolation is pretty good. I notice the odd frame pause now and again, which I attribute to the difference between the refresh rate of the core/console vs the screen. Battery life is good to - mine is a more recent version which I think has a bigger battery than the early ones. All in all I’m enjoying it so much I’m considering cancelling my Analogue Pocket preorder.
Edit: also, i’ve not tried HDMI out. I’ve heard that it’s quite limited since (I think) it’s 480p only.
Sorry I cannot help you too much, but I’ll offer what knowledge I have.
I do not own an RG35xx and I’ve never used Batocera. Checking multiple locations (why is it so hard to find this info?), it seems as though Batocera should have some form of sleep function on 5.30 and later, but I cannot find any mention of this in any change logs (nothing about it in the 5.30 change log) and I looked through a lot!
Garlic OS does have a sleep mode built in to the CFW. I cannot say for sure how effective it is.
Please note that Linux retro handhelds (at least, every one that I’ve ever owned and every CFW I’ve ever tried) do not have a true sleep function like Android. Every Linux sleep mode I’ve tried has been a hack of sorts that is just trying to turn off as many things as possible (screen, sound, wifi, bluetooth, control triggers, etc.) in an effort to try and save as much battery as possible. These “sleep modes” will be instant on and off, because they are never really off. On my Miyoo Mini Plus, I can easily lose massive amounts of battery while in “sleep mode” depending on the game. I believe our batteries are close in size, so you might have the same issue.
If you really, really need an instant on and off and a true sleep mode, you should prioritize Android OS for your handheld. (Don’t forget, some Anbernics can dual boot Android and Linux!)
Thanks, I’ve heard the “sleep” mode in Garlic OS saves state, then powers the device off, then loads the state back up, which obviously will take more time than a sleep mode, but as long as it only takes a few seconds, I can live with it. Obviously it’s not a true sleep, but it works well enough for me. Can’t find anything regarding this for Batocera, so I suppose I’ll go with Garlic OS. Maybe one day that GPU will be enabled there and I can play DS on it lol.
Right to the point: don’t use batocera because the one guy doing it stopped and said use his other thing koriki. Unfortunately for all cfw for the rg35xx none of the developers have released the code they are legally obligated to release, but what can you do…
I have the rg35xx and use garlic. The fake sleep mode works well. Instant off and then it takes maybe 10ish seconds to turn back on. It definitely is fast enough that I don’t mind turning it off even when I know I’ll be turning back on in only a few minutes.
I haven’t had a game crash on me but the automatic save states have not loaded a couple times so make sure to make your own.
I haven’t used koriki because garlic does most everything I want. If anyone releases their source I might test that because I want to do some link cable emulation stuff, but none of that exists currently.
Thanks. I’ve set up an SD card with Garlic for when it arrives, and I’ll keep an eye out for news on Koriki. Link Cable emulation is certainly interesting to me, at least in the future, since a device like this would be a neat gift for my nephews once they’re old enough to start playing games like Pokemon.
Batocera is not in active development for the RG35XX.
Koriki is. It’s very early in development, right now. It does play a lot of things, bit you’ll probably want GarlicOS as your daily driver.
