mgroves

Looks like an exciting little community you have here now, MGROVES.

Hey, I can change the startup and logoff screens using the image viewer.... Can't you do that?

and guess what, GK-II is still a hunk of junk

Giant frozen egg plants that are aliens from a planet somewhere but they are not from earth but from egg plant world. Their world is probably purple I think. But it could be kinda purply blue also.

andy, you sir are a genius

I tested NGF's claim that the GKII has video out and it DOESN'T WORK. So we have these possibilities:
1) Firmware 1.56 doesn't support video out.
2) The hardware which firmware 1.56 runs on doesn't support video out.
3) NGF just made that stuff up for some reason.
Anyway, I suggest you don't go around saying that the GKII supports video out, it might disappoint people that buy the device, just to find out it doesn't work.

In that case, I apologize to NGF for suggesting that his post could have been unfounded.

I just got my GameKing II from Geeks.com today and it came with the kind of cable that has 1/8" mini plug with 3 bands on one end and Red, White, Yellow RCA's. I definitely don't have the same firmware you guys have. I can't even see what version it is, and do not get a menu in games when pressing the B button, and can not turn down the volume ACK! I'll let you know if the RCA cable works on my TV.

The video out definitely works on mine, I think you just need the correct cable. I will post some pictures tomorrow. I really need to figure out how to turn down the volume in games. Seems there are two versions of the OS/firmware floating around out there.

Yeah, on my wiki (http://gameking2.wikispaces.com) you can download the two different versions of the firmware. The first is the complete 1.56 firmware (with all the files), and the second is just the ROM_EXEC file of an unknown (not 1.56, I byte-checked) version. Thanks to the name-less guest that added it!
Anybody brave enough to try swapping?

Btw... David G: What firmware version does your Settings screen show?

Woops, just identified the firmware that "Guest" uploaded. It's SDK-1.57!!!
Now we just need somebody to take the plunge and try updating. :)
I'm broke, I can't afford to get another GKII if mine bricks. :P

Hi TK, I can't find my firmware version anywhere. I will gladly try to flash mine. If I can't turn down the game volume it is going to blow the little speaks! I'll take some pics right now of my video cable and some screen shots.

If you can't find the version, then you're not using SDK-1.56... can you try to upload the firmware you currently have?

Arg, I just tested 1.57 on my 1.56 GKII... all I get is a white screen on boot-up, and it turns itself off after a while.
Either the 1.57 firmware is meant for another device, or 1.57 needs some file that 1.56 doesn't have. :(

The good news is that even with the non-functional firmware I was able to put the old working firmware back in place. :)

I wasn't able to get the firmware out of mine. I will try again. Here are my screen shots. http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/GameKingII/index.html

Do I have to register to download the firmwares from your site?

No need to register... the links point to rapidshare.

I still can't extract the firmware. I have tried Power Off, Plug in USB while Holding down Escape, and it just boots up. Am I doing it right?

Sounds like you are doing it right... maybe your version of the GKII has a different update procedure. Does the manual say anything (I'm hoping that if the GKII itself is different, maybe the manual is too)?

I'm guessing I have 1.57 then. If that is the case, and 1.57 does not work on a 1.56 device, then I wonder if 1.56 will work on a 1.57 device? I downloaded 1.56 but don't know how to flash my device. TK, are you suggesting that I RTFM?! :-)

Sorry, I didn't mean it like that... especially since I didn't read the manual. :P
And 1.57 MIGHT actually work on a 1.56 device, provided you have the entire firmware rather than just the ROM_EXEC file. 1.57 requires extra files that 1.56 doesn't have (see the Firmware section of my wiki).
One suspicion I have is that the "BIOS" software that runs before the actual firmware is different on devices with different firmwares. This means we might have to find some way of flashing the BIOS to be able to upgrade/downgrade.
Since I actually have the 1.57 ROM_EXEC, it doubtlessly means that there is a way to access the firmware... we just need to find out how.

Just a haunch... instead of ESC, what happens if you push X when booting up the gk?

So we don't know who posted the 1.57 or how they extracted it? I just read the manual and there is nothing about how to do it either. Have you checked out my screen shots?

I have a suspicion that the guy that posted 1.57 on my site is alex2pb on this forum: http://www.mympxplayer.org/nexxtech-p2-dead-vp42981.html
All "guest" said was that he got it from a russian site.
And yeah, I saw the photos. They make me feel like opening up my GKII again just to see of the headphone socket has connectors for a 3-ring plug. :P

This thing is one of the coolest little devices I've bought for the price! I went ahead and ordered another from Geeks.com for only $44.50 plus shipping ($8) with a free 512MB SD Card if you enter GAMEDEAL in the coupon saving box. I love it!

OK, I've tried everything to get to the firmware folder (ESC, X, Hopping up and down on one foot, etc) and can't get to it. So I'm going to open it up and see if there are any jumpers. I know that is unlikely, but it does give me an excuse to take it apart. I also want to look at the possibility of mounting a hard wired volume control in there. More pics to follow....

I just scanned my manual into a PDF available here: http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/GameKingII/Manual.PDF and downloaded the movie converter software from the link at the top of this page. Mine came with a totally different "Multimedia Transcoding Tool", over a 90MB install with the Storm Codec. Screen Shots here:
http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/GameKingII/Transcoder.jpg
http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/GameKingII/TranscoderSettings.jpg

It's funny how different the two versions are.

Any chance you can upload your video converter software? Just got this and I didnt come with the disc!
It looks great though.

Hi Joe, the install that came with mine is over 90MB and I don't have anywhere to upload it to. I will try to get my FTP server up and running soon and you could download it from me then. Did you try the one from the top of this page?

My FTP server is up ftp://dbg4870.dyndns.org/ and the CD directory is what came on the little CD.

I also sprang for the PMP Slide Panel MP4 player from Geeks, because it had video output. The menus from David G's player are exactly the same as those from the Slide Panel. I suspect that there was a hardware revision made to the Game King II, and that David G's GK2 sports newer guts.

I'm torn, because the Slide Panel has a nice display, and the video output works well, but the software isn't nearly as good as that on the SDK-1.56 GK2. There is no "Save as Label/Goto Label" capability with movies, nor is there a "Goto timecode". The Music player on the Slide Panel demands that all music files be kept in a single directory (ugh). The other difference between the Slide Panel and the SDK-1.56 GK2 is that the Slide's camera does digital video as well as stills. I wish the software on the Slide were better, because the hardware is great.

Here are pics of the guts in my GK:
http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/InsideTheGameKingII/index.html

It uses a SUNPLUS SPMP3052A-HL171 CPU.

i just got another gk2 from geeks, the first thing i noticed was the box. on the box it says "gk3" but the unit is marked gk2 there were also minor cosmetic differences, like some of the print on the face and most notibly the lens of the camera was different. come to find out the camera is actually a cam-corder and this unit comes a/v out ready with 3 segment 1/8 jack cable. reports of the volume control on this thing are true, i have not found a way to adjust the volume on nes games, nor is there an apparrent way to "save state" i'll post more as i get used to the new GUI. i also came up with a nifty mod for the control-pad to aid in control, i will post l8r.

Shouldn't be too hard to find, they are usually for camcorders. Here are a few sources:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130192795275
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2404389
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-20FR-VMC20FR-AV-Cable/dp/B00008ZGSD

Shawn, can't wait to see your control pad mod! Did you rotate it 45 degrees so the raised parts are where you press. I thought about doing that while I had it apart.

You are right Shawn, my box says Game King III too! Are you still going to post your control pad mod? I finally found a small volume control that I am going to try to mount inside this weekend.

I just got mine from Geeks and it too came in a GKIII box like Shawn. It also came with a CD-R packed with 20 32-bit BIN games and over 1200 NES games. It kills me that you can't adjust the volume in games, otherwise this thing is sweet. Here's info on the Sunplus SPMP3050 series chips http://www.sunplusmm.com/products/dsc/spmp.asp

Yep, I got my second one today and it came with the same CD-R with the games (the first one I got didn't). I'm so happy because it came with a bin game called DeepKiller that is a Raiden knock-off! I'm going to attempt a volume control mod tomorrow. I wish Shawn would come back with his control pad mod!

Geeks.com appears to be sold out of these (http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PMP-GAMEKING-II); does anyone here know of anywhere else that they can be had for a similar price?

This one looks very similar, but does not look like it comes with an A/V cable so it is unknown if it would support video out like mine do.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190195077978
Subscribe for the Geeks Inventory alert too. They ran out, then got more, then ran out again...

GAME KING FIRMWARE UPDATE:
Apparently posting the pics of the guts of my newer Game King paid off! I was contacted by "ZeNiTRaM" who gave me the following excellent instructions on how to extract/upload the firmware on the Game Kings that are based on the SunPlus 3052A CPU. I was able to get my firmware extracted, but now I don't know not sure what to do with it...TKF15H you still around? Feel free to contact me at dbg4870-at-yahoo-dot-com!

From ZeNiTRaM:

I tried to reply you on the Mgroves comments but I couldn't (The comment just doesn't appear) so I decided I'd email you. I have this MP4 player: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.9504. It's the same slide-panel one as from Geeks - and it has the same firmware as yours. And I managed to dump the firmware from it, and it doesn't require the same procedure as the Gameking one. You have to, with the device switched off, press a button (on mine it was UP, it's possibly another one on yours) and, without releasing that key, plug the USB. Then the device gets detected as. surprise! a Webcam. Then you have to install the drivers that probably came on your CD (also available here http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/SPCA3050 ISP driver.zip), and then use the program FRM Pro to extract or manage the firmware, which is located (hidden) on the flash. It contains 3 files, mainly: the Firmware .bin, AIMG and BIMG. [You have to go on Advanced mode, right-click RSV and choose Set Working Folder, and then select an existing folder to dump the files to. Then right-click A, Get A image, B, Get B image, and Firmware, Get.] Those two are images of a FAT file system, you can mount them using VDK: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html and modify them as you want, and then reupload to the MP4. Don't worry about bricking it, that firmware upload method doesn't depend on the firmware itself so if you have backed up your firmware you can always restore it. And I managed to extract it, read this thread: http://www.mympxplayer.org/sunplus-spmp3050a-general-vt8674.html. You can download it from there. FRM pro is also on that site. Feel free to post the instructions, as I can't post any comment on Mgroves (they just don't show up at the comments). That tool can be used also to replace individual files on the firmware without burning the whole AIMG/BIMG, and to reinstall the firmware (it's a bit tricky at first but after playing with the tool for a while it's easy).

GAME KING FIRMWARE UPDATE
Apparently posting the pics of the guts of my Game King paid off because I was contacted by

From "ZeNiTRaM":

You have to, with the device switched off, press a button (on mine it was UP, it's possibly another one on yours) and, without releasing that key, plug the USB. Then the device gets detected as. surprise! a Webcam. Then you have to install the drivers that probably came on your CD (also available here http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/SPCA3050 ISP driver.zip), and then use the program FRM Pro to extract or manage the firmware, which is located (hidden) on the flash. It contains 3 files, mainly: the Firmware .bin, AIMG and BIMG. [You have to go on Advanced mode, right-click RSV and choose Set Working Folder, and then select an existing folder to dump the files to. Then right-click A, Get A image, B, Get B image, and Firmware, Get.] Those two are images of a FAT file system, you can mount them using VDK: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html and modify them as you want, and then reupload to the MP4. Don't worry about bricking it, that firmware upload method doesn't depend on the firmware itself so if you have backed up your firmware you can always restore it. And I managed to extract it, read this thread: http://www.mympxplayer.org/sunplus-spmp3050a-general-vt8674.html. You can download it from there. FRM pro is also on that site. Feel free to post the instructions, as I can't post any comment on Mgroves (they just don't show up at the comments). That tool can be used also to replace individual files on the firmware without burning the whole AIMG/BIMG, and to reinstall the firmware (it's a bit tricky at first but after playing with the tool for a while it's easy).

From "ZeNiTRaM":

You have to, with the device switched off, press a button (on mine it was UP, it's possibly another one on yours) and, without releasing that key, plug the USB. Then the device gets detected as. surprise! a Webcam. Then you have to install the drivers that probably came on your CD (also available here http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/SPCA3050 ISP driver.zip), and then use the program FRM Pro to extract or manage the firmware, which is located (hidden) on the flash. It contains 3 files, mainly: the Firmware .bin, AIMG and BIMG. [You have to go on Advanced mode, right-click RSV and choose Set Working Folder, and then select an existing folder to dump the files to. Then right-click A, Get A image, B, Get B image, and Firmware, Get.] Those two are images of a FAT file system, you can mount them using VDK: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html and modify them as you want, and then reupload to the MP4. Don't worry about bricking it, that firmware upload method doesn't depend on the firmware itself so if you have backed up your firmware you can always restore it.

From

From

David G -- are you going to leave us in suspense, or are you going to publish ZeNiTRaM's directions here?

I've tried several times (and so did he apparently), but for some reason they won't post. Is there a max length for an entry here?

From

Here they are: http://mysite.verizon.net/dbg4870/FirmwareInstructs.htm

Huh - I think my posts didn't show up here because of being too long. That's why I emailed David G. So.. i'll better try to make my comments shorter.

Once you extract your firmware you can mount the AIMG file (the BIMG too, but it only has a TEMP file) using this: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

It can be used from the command line. So, open it, go to the folder, and do:
vdk start
vdk open 0 C:\[whatever]\AIMG /RW
vdk link 0 0 Z

Replace the AIMG folder with yours, and the Z on the last command with any free drive letter you have. The image will be mounted and you can modify it directly.

To unmount:
vdk stop

All the images are stored on .jpgs so you can skin very easily, and also edit the position of controls on skin .bin files using a text editor.

Huh - I think my posts didn't show up here because of being too long. That's why I emailed David G. So.. i'll better try to make my comments shorter.

Once you extract your firmware you can mount the AIMG file (the BIMG too, but it only has a TEMP file) using this: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

It can be used from the command line. So, open it, go to the folder, and do:
vdk start
vdk open 0 C:\[whatever]\AIMG /RW
vdk link 0 0 Z

Huh - I think my posts didn't show up here because of being too long. That's why I emailed David G. So.. i'll better try to make my comments shorter.
Once you extract your firmware you can mount the AIMG file (the BIMG too, but it only has a TEMP file) using this: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

You can use this to modify the images: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vdk.html

My posts don't show on here.. why?

All right, everytime I try to post a long post or include a link the post doesn't appear :S You can edit the firmware image using the VDK tool to mount it, google "Virtual Disk Driver (VDK)" to get it.

So can we replace the game emulators with ones that allow you to control the volume?

Well, my emulators can't control the volume either, so that would be really difficult unless we get to dissasemble the firmware - thing that is not really easy.
I'm thinking on setting a wiki for Sunplus devices - as they're not the same as the other Gameking II devices (that chip is also used in others).. Anyone wants to join?

Yes, I'm sure Mr. Groves has had quite enough of us using his blog. Also, TKF15H already has one set up here http://gameking2.wikispaces.com/ but I don't think it is for the Sunplus devices. So if you can set one up that would be great!

dont kid yourself, groves loves the traffic

David G: Yup, I'm still around. I've just been a bit busy.
I updated the wiki with the new GK3 information, btw.

I created a wiki for Sunplus devices: http://sunplus.itram.es/wiki

Feel free to join, and add information on there.

those this device hold a 2 gb slot card

Somebody said they used a 4gb card with it, so a 2gb card should work.

I just got mine from Geeks (it's a Gameking III), and while it's pretty awsome, the whole "Not being able to adjust the sound during emulation" thing is driving me batty. Plus, none of the headphones I've tried (besides the earbuds that came with the unit) seem to trigger the "headphone out" function of the Gameking--they look exactly the same as the plug to the included earbuds, but don't seem to have any affect on the unit's output volume. Is there anyway to turn the sound from the emulator off completely?
Also, can you do save states on a GameKing III? I want to play some of the Gameboy games I've downloaded, but I don't want to have to play through the entire game in one sitting. Any help would be much appreciated.

about the video out ... well i don't know what firmware i got ,, but when you connect your GK2 to tv you should choise the output mode of the device .. to do that just go to you video player press (Y) --> (TV Output) --> (PAL or NTSC you choose ... but LCD stand for internal lcd display) ... after all that just plug it in your tv .. it works for games , images and video ..
now let's talk about the RCA cable ... well color may vary .. but if it dont work try inplugging the jack from the GK2 few millimeters it should work ...
have trouble doing this ?? mail me i send you the pics N_NGF@yahoo.com

I got one of these after reading about it here. I got the "Gameking 3" model with the TV out., Its cool for playing games and stuff on, but is there any way to do saves? I want to play rpgs but I don't want to have to play all of Final fantasy in one sitting. Is it posible to do save states on the new Gameking model?
Any help plz?

Nobody seems to have posted a very comprehensive review of what the GameKing III can do. So I will. Here are some of the key differences between it and the GameKing II, as best as I can tell from Mgroves' review.

* MAC COMPATABILITY
Apparently the Gameking II doesn't work with Macs. The GameKing III does, or at least it works with MY mac, which is running 10.4.10. It shows up on the desktop just like any external harddrive, and you can drag and drop files like you would with any other mass storage device.

* NO GAME SAVES
As far as I can tell, the GameKing III doesn't do game saves. This kind of sucks. However, it DOES do battery backup saves, at least as far as I can tell. IF YOU KNOW HOW TO SAVE ON THIS MACHINE, PLEASE RESPOND!!!

* GAME SUPPORT
My unit has played everything that I've put on it, NES, Gameboy, or GBC. The only things that it hasn't been able to play are the game Atlantis no Nazo and pirate multicarts. Everything else plays fine; I have both Kid Icarus and Boxxle on my unit and they work great.

* NO VOLUME CONTROL IN EMULATOR
Pretty much exactly what everyone else has said.

* MORE VIDEO FORMATS
In addition to supporting AVI, my GameKing III also plays MP4 and 3GP files. The MP4 support means that you can play anything that you can download off of google video on it.

* DIGITAL VIDEO CAMERA
You can record video with this thing. It's 324*240 and is about the same quality as the video from first generation cell-phone cameras--no surprise, since the camera probably IS a first generation cell phone camera. All the options available for changing the picture mode on the digital camera (sepia, negative, etc) are available on the video camera.

* NO EBOOK READER
The GKII apparently had the option for having it's txt files be read aloud. The GKIII lacks this option; pressing B while in an eBook just gives you the option to search for a word in the document. This disappoints me, as I was looking forward to having my text files read aloud in "a variety of hillarious voices".

* MORE FUNCTIONS
The most notable new function, aside from the video camera and the TV-out, is a built in chinese/english dictionary that manages to be almost completely useless unless you know both english and chinese. About 1/3 of the entries have a "talking dictionary" option, which might be a leftover from the "text to speech" eBook reading software in the GKII. There's also a calendar, a calculator, and a note taking function (which takes so long to use as to be useless).

* "32-Bit Games"
Apparently, a lot of the GKIIIs came with a disk with .bin games and a bunch of NES roms. Mine didn't, unless they were on the little disk with all the drivers (I can't play it, since I have a laptop w/o a DVD tray). PEOPLE WHO HAVE A GKIII: Did the games/roms come on the same disc with the drivers, or another disk?

FINAL THOUGHTS
It's a pretty decent unit. The loss of the ability to save games and adjust the volume in emulators kind of sucks, but the video camera and TV out are good. THe most annoying part about the problem features is that they're the sort of thing that could be fixed with a firmware update, if the makers cared enough to do that. Still, it was worth $55.

I bought two of them from geeks at separate times. The first one did not come with the bin games, but the second one did. They were on another disc that was just an unlabeled CD-R, not the little blue mini disc. I uploaded all the bin games here a while ago: http://rapidshare.com/files/90955157/BIN_GAMES.zip.html

That's a pretty good write up, you might want to consider adding it to the wikis
http://gameking2.wikispaces.com/
or
http://sunplus.itram.es/wiki/spmp305x/start

I was thinking of adding it to the wiki, but I couldn't figure out which section to put it in...there really isn't any place on the wiki for "features" or "comparisons," and nothing that I wrote about was really a bug, except for the volume not being able to be adjusted (and that already got written about).

There are some things about the unit that I didn't mention that DO seem to be bugs. One is the headphone. So far, I've only found three pairs of headphones that work with it: the included earbuds, the earbuds that come with an Ipod, and my fancy pair of noise canceling headphones. My other three pairs don't seem to trigger the "headphone out" inside the unit. Nor do any of the accessories that I own that have TRS connectors, like splitters and such.

The TV out function has it's own odd problem: since I wanted to sit more than 3 feet from the TV (or however long the included cable is), I tried using the camcorder cable I use with my Ipod, but was only able to get an extremely distorted b/w picture (and sound), no matter which RCA jack I plugged into the video-in on my TV set. However, I discovered that if I pulled the TRS connector out one "bar", the picture (and sound) displayed perfectly through their proper RCA jacks. As far as I can tell, the TRS connectors are exactly the same, so I'm stymed as to what's going on.

Another problem with the TV-out is with games. NES games display great, but Gameboy and GBC games...don't. For whatever reason, the TV out doesn't display all the levels of grey in Gameboy games, which creates such fun effects as completely invisible puzzle pieces in Tetris and invisible enemies in Super Mario Land. The GBC, meanwhile, has severe problems with afterimages. R-Type DX was almost completely unplayable, since everything (your ship, enemy ships, bullets, etc) left trailing after-images that stayed around until they were covered by the trailing after-images of the next ships, and so on, until the entire screen looked like somebody had vomited a box of crayons on it. I'm not sure why this happens through the TV-out, since the games all look great on the screen of my GKIII.

Another problem I found is menus for files. Nothing that you upload into the GKIII's internal memory is displayed in any particular order. The files aren't ordered by name, size, format, time uploaded, or date created...when you add new files, they just sort of show up randomly in the list of files. The one exception is the image files created by the digital camera, which are ordered by number. The files from the video camera, however, just show up randomly in you video playlist, as do the audio files from the voice recorder (in the music playlist). This makes it frusturating to find any particular file, as you have to look at the titles of everything to find it. Again, if there's a way to fix this problem, I'd love to know, since it's really starting to bug me now that I have a lot of stuff on it.

Also, my FM radio doesn't appear to work, but that might just be my unit. GKIII owners: Do you FM radios work? If so, how did you get it to work?

I guess there were a lot of bugs. Maybe I should contribute to that wiki page...

Just an update: work on the firmware code analyzer has been progressing slowly. I've been working on the front-end mostly, but fear not! It shall be done by... erm... whenever its done. :P

Yongary - i found my FM radio working on the slidepanel model,but only with earbuds plugged in.

TKF15H is there any way you could send me the pre-compiled rgb converter? i cant seem to get to compile. I really want to see how skining this would go!
my email is xboxgamenut@yahoo.com
thanks

Sorry mate, I can only make Linux binaries, so unless you have Linux they're not of use to you. Besides, I want to re-write all that code so it will work with all images (currently it only works with the 320x240 ones). It will take me a while though, I have a really tough Calculus exam coming up. >_

theman-hey i got the same model and i was wondering what king of sd slot card do i haveto buy. It doesn't say how much gb's i can put on it.

bob - micro SD card size 2,9 x 3,7 cm fit the slide thing.It accepts 2 GB - perhaps also 4 GB.

A little progress report:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i4/Ritsuko_2006/BRES.jpg
BRES (Binary Reverse-Engineering Studio) partially disassembles ARM code. Once I have finished the disassembler I will make it analyze the code, telling us what data/memory is accessed and other things. This is the first step towards home-brew and a custom firmware on the GKII.

Oi, how come comments are taking so long to show up?

Let's see if the spam blocker stops complaining this way.

Anyway, I found out where the framebuffer is: 0xE59F09A0. It's a strange address and I haven't tested it yet, but in the process I found a bunch of useful functions: fopen (0x08063B08), fread (0x08063A68), fclose (0x08063C34), and strcpy (0x08148C30).

I expect to see homebrew soon. I am thinking about writing a bootloader that will run the firmware from the SD card so we don't have to keep writing to our NAND every time we want to test something.

Just checking to see if a different name/e-mail pass the filter.

TKF15H: is that code from the GKII or the GKIII?

Ok, that framebuffer address is wrong. Very wrong. I don't know what made me think that was an address at all.
I am beginning to think that the framebuffer address is set by the bootloader and is nowhere to be found within the actual firmware. If that's the case then we don't actually have to know what the address is.

Yongary: That is for the GKII. I'll look into the GKIII after I'm happy with all the info I've got on the GKII.

Hi Fishman,
I've been looking for BRES (the disassembler you use)... but I didn't find it. Is it a free/open source tool ?
On the snapshot you sent, I saw that you were working on the file rom_exec. Is it the DefaultFW.bin that we get when extracting data ?

Cheers,
Herv

That's because I made BRES. I'll be releasing it on Sourceforge I think.
ROM_EXEC is the name of the firmware on GameKingIIs. That DefaultFW.bin is probably a GameKingIII thing, I'll look into disassembling it later. Could you tell me how big it is? I can't actually remember what things were like on the GKIII, and if I remember correctly, it's an image of a FAT partition. Could somebody verify this?

Here's what BRES looks like now:
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i4/Ritsuko_2006/Screenie.png
Instead of showing the output on-screen it disassembles the whole firmware into a text file.
It is still far from perfect but yields more information than disarm (someone else's disassembler). The two should be used together for now, as BRES doesn't correctly disassemble all instructions and its output should be double-checked.

Hi Fishman,

OK, I'll look around for an open source disassembler under windows before to borow you.

I don't have a game king III but the following device:
http://www.fujiyama.cn/product.asp?lei=45&id=518

On which .bin games provided by David on his post

hey, those anyone know a good converter for mp4

I just disassembled a DefaultFW.bin. Doing so I found out that the code is position-independent... so the bootloader can throw it anywhere and it should run normally. I just had a quick browse through it in a hex-editor as well and I couldn't find any file names. On the GKII, I used the name of the splash screen to find the code that loads it (I managed to altere it so no image shows up while booting). Since I couldn't find file names on the GKIII firmware, I don't know how I'd find the loading code... on the other hand, since the GKIII already has support for external binaries, there isn't much of a need to reverse-engineer the firmware itself, but the game files instead (which may prove to be tricky). I'll upload bres' and disarm's disassemblies of the firmware on Monday so others can have a look.

Hi guys,

Just got a PMP (slider model) myself a few days ago. I am familiar with everything you guys talked about these pmp's and i wanna help to make them work better. The thing I've seen: Sunplus versions do no and probably never will have SNES emulators. I extracted the strings form different firmwares from sunplus players and they don't have snes capability, not the chinese websites state that there is a sunplus capable of playing nes. The core is ARM so probably we can port linux over. I've seen that in the sisis gk snes9x port was used. However i am relative new to programming and i don't have experience. If anyone with more brains (and balls) could hack the code so we can understand what the hell is going on there it would be really cool. My email is "alex2pb(|@|)yahoo.com" (erase the | and () characters) if you wanna talk about this.

For the ones that have sunplus players, i'll make a nice skin this week. Thanks for creating this little "community". We'd need a nice forum for talking about hacking these players :).

Cheers to ya all!

Take a look at the file SPMP3050A.BIN inside the AIMG - that one has quite a lot of readable strings, so I suppose that one is the firmware itself and DefaultFW is the bootloader or something similar.

Mistake in the post :
"not the chinese websites state that there is a sunplus capable of playing nes"

I meant snes :).

I think you're right. However I don't think we stand a chance as long as we don't have the source code for the Sunplus SDK or the code for one of the firmware files. We need some sort of drivers for the I/O. Also, a very cool thing is that the firmware seems to support "real" windows, it has a kind of a window manager, like on Win32 and Linux.

Oh and that 1.57 ROM_EXEC file was posted by me ;). As I said there was no obvious information about how they extracted it. All i understood is that it came from the original manufacturer via the company that shipped them.

"...I don't think we stand a chance as long as we don't have the source code for the Sunplus SDK or the code for one of the firmware files."
Well, if things go as well on the Sunplus side as they did for me on SISIS, we do stand a chance. I was able to find the fopen/fread/fclose functions which are the most important for IO. The only thing I haven't managed to find is that dang framebuffer, and I suspect that it's passed to the firmware from the bootloader (so we don't actually have to find out what it is).

"...the firmware seems to support "real" windows, it has a kind of a window manager, like on Win32 and Linux."
Dunno about Sunplus, but I don't think that's the case with SISIS. It's simple bitmaps all over the place. :P

My GamekingII died today (or yesterday, I'm not exactly sure when). I woke up, then turned it on to listen to some music. I was greeted with a cracked LCD screen. I have no idea how/what happened, all I know is I get a blank white screen with a black corner and lots of crack lines. T_T

It'll be a good while before I get a replacement and it will most likely be a Sunplus. Or an Eee. Or a nice big pie. Or something.
This is totally frustrating: First my Wizard Z80's battery leaks and kills the motherboard, then my flimsy MP3 player dies, my GP2X fries itself, and now my GKII suddenly shows up with broken insides and no markings on the outside to suggest what may have happened to it. Bah.

Space aliens!

Cracked screen?? :(. Now that sucks... About the replacement. Sucnplus freking sucks. Sucks bad... I had an Actions S1mp3 before, a glacier, like those dumb IPOD clones and it didn't have speed not processing power. But the software on it was 10 times smarter than sunplus. And that one wasn't even ARM based, it had 24 mhz. Sunplus fw is just a port of the Sisis code IMHO. Almost 200 Mhz, lots of RAM, big screen, but the fw is awful. I am not very happy with my new SP. player, even if I had it for a few days. At first I wanned a Sisis but the damned shop didn't have it in stock and I couldn't wait a month... Too bad for all those specifications, the Sunplus players could have been really cool... Instead they chose to not even finish the code on them.

In conclusion: Don't get a sunplus unless you want this: bad camera, the pictures need a lot of light, stupid software, slow movie conversion, ackward menus inside.

Sry for the typos (bad keyboard LOL).

The screen could have cracked because:
1. Too much pressure (the screws were pressing too much)
2. Remember the CPU gets hot and it is under the screen on GK's. That is a stupid thing from the designer, because the LCD should be protected against heat, afterall it's glass.

Well, we have a small chance to make the software on the Sunplus ones better :)

About the conversion.. you can use MediaCoder to convert video to MP4/AAC, it's quite faster than the one that came with the player and gives better results.

"Don't get a sunplus unless you want this: bad camera, the pictures need a lot of light, stupid software, slow movie conversion, ackward menus inside."
Meh, I didn't know it was that bad. I'll be on the look out then... Geeks doesn't have the SISIS players anymore. :(

"Too much pressure"
I only opened my GKII once and that was quite a long time ago. If I had tightened the screws too much it would've been long gone. :/

"Remember the CPU gets hot and it is under the screen on GK's."
While the CPU is right under the screen, it isn't an Intel CPU. ARM cpus tend to run much cooler. The only time I've heard of an ARM over-heating was on the GP2X. Anyway, the screen was cracked before I turned it on, so it's definitely not the processor's fault.

I think Jonny got it right, it must have been space aliens.

Hi! zenitraM, I have some problems getting good output MP4 files when converting with the free MediaCoder. Could you please briefly mention your output file settings ( what container, bitrate etc. ) you use?.
And sorry to hear about the appearently stranded project,fishman ;-(

To convert you have to choose Extensions -> Digital Media Players -> MP3/MP4 Players. Then set the Picture Size to 320x240 (any framerate), format MP4/MPEG-4/AAC and the quality you want. All the settings are automatically set then.

I think I'll do this window mod on my monitor some time.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i4/Ritsuko_2006/DSCF0006.jpg
It still plays MP3's. :P

I just bought a PMP, Sansui-619E, and I was wondering if someone that knows about Sunplus could tell me what chip is in it. Some screencaps of the user interface (amongst other pictures) can be found here: http://publish.it168.com/2007/0823/20070823046904.shtml
Also, whichever it is (either 3050 or 3052), are there firmware upgrade available?

@Picotrain:
You can look here for other firmware upgrades:
http://gameking2.wikispaces.com/Firmware3
Dunno if the GK3 firmware is compatible with it though... I don't think it hurts to give it a try, but remember to backup your old firmware before you do anything.
Another thing worth noting is that your firmware is stored on NAND... which has finite writing. So try not to flash your firmware a few thousand times. :P

@Picotrain:
I'd say it's a 3050, all the 3052 firmwares I've seen have a blue, not changeable background. You can always extract your firmware using this guide: http://mp4.itram.es/wiki/spmp305x/modding and then upload it here.

If it's a 3052, get the bin games pack from mympxplayer.org and try to play them. 3050 doesn't have native games playing enabled :). My player has the same iterface and it's a 3052.

@alex2pb If you've got a 3052 slider, could you upload the firmware somewhere? I also have it and mine has that old interface..

Since there are conflicting opinions about which firmware my PMP has, I will extract the firmware as suggest it and upload it here. I assume you would know for sure by looking at the firmware package, right? Thanks for your help.

@alex2pb
Is this your PMP?:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=IIe9RS25xRI&feature=related

@alex2pb nevermind, found your firmware at MyMPXPlayer :)

Yup, that's my player :). If you need anything let me know. Sliding panel kinda sux... I wonder what will happen after the ribbon flex cable from the display panel will break (it happens a lot on mobile phones). So if anyone wants one player, the candy-bar ones are much better and have the same specs.

I am working on a cool theme now, but there's a problem. In the record voice app, the text is drawn using the yellow color. I can't seem to find a way to change it so the app looks good. Any idea?

Thanks again for the help. The one I'm getting (should arrive in a week) does not slide, so I will not have that problem. When I get my player I'll see if I can help you out. Have you had any problems with the interface so far? I gather they're the same on both players, so any UI problems will carryover. The hardware is different, though. Also, when playing MP3s, what is the purpose of the box below the battery indicator? Can it be modified somehow?

:D. The box is for lyrics (if you want for example to make karaoke). I had an MP3 with lyrics on the player when I bought it and there's the place where it's shown. It's easy to mod it. The new skin will be much better, provided that we find a way to make that text look black.

No, not that one, the one directly below the battery indicator. It's beside the filename and above where the lyrics appear.

Oh... That one just holds the current song number. For example "5/10". It doesn't seem to hold any other labels.

alex2pb- i have the same mp4 and i was wondering what kind of sd slot card do i need.

alex2pb- i have the same mp4 and i was wondering what kind of sd slot card do i need.

Thanks Alex, that box was empty in the video and in pictures, so I wasn't sure exactly what it did. I'll let you know how my PMP is when I get it.

@Picotrain,
No problem :).

@willy11,
I think that's a normal SD card slot. Just SD. I have a mini SD here and it's too small. This one we have is bigger.

Damnit, my player lags after 30-40 mins of video. Tried all encoders, all fps and quality, i'm going nuts. What to do? Sunplus is a pile of ****.

Just found out you can use this to sort the files (music, videos..) on the Sunplus devices: http://www.oliver-frietsch.de/reorganize

Choose "Use FAT order"

Wow nice find! This is really cool :). I was really missing a program like this.

Oh, and could I ask you a favor please? Can you confirm me that after the minute 30, the player starts lagging the videos? I need to know if it's just mine so I can return it back and ask for a replacement... If 10 days pass I'll have to keep it...

About the TV-out, the cable must be plugged in the earphones to work (even if the player has an aux connector it doesn't work, i guess they modified the diagram in a hurry...). I tested this today, and it works pretty well (Samsung TV).

I'll re-iterate little warning: NAND-based memory shouldn't be written to often, as IT WILL DIE. That program probably works by copying all the files in the order you pick. If you abuse it, your device's lifetime will be shortened.

fishman: This one doesn't copy the files again but changes their order on the FAT table directly.

alex2pb: I'm sorry, I can't check it right now :S Anyway mine is different than yours, firmware is different (I've checked, doesn't work). And on mine the TV-OUT is on the Aux port..

zenitraM,
I just got my PMP (Sansui-619e) and it uses the same chip as the GameKing (Sunplus). When I copied music files to the player, it listed them in a random-looking order. Changing the file names did nothing. Will this program fix this?

"fishman: This one doesn't copy the files again but changes their order on the FAT table directly. "
Ah, that's nice, now only the FAT table will get fried. :P

I tried using it, and it made the files appear in the intended order in the program, but not on the player itself. Any suggestions?

Also, any idea if the firmware update changes anything? I'm hesitant to do it unless it makes a worthwhile change.

I don't think so... Most likely the button mapping won't work well and the buttons will point to the wrong action. I tried updating too, and from more than 10 firmwares only one worked on mine, and the commands were scrambled. I guess updating isn't a good idea.

OK, I'll take your advice. Sad, though, since only about 1/2 of the games I tried worked on my unit.

I have similar device with board ID:
MP4-603S
PLD24-3050-YD503-V3.1
just like herve's has.
It's a normal player but ican't bring it to firmware mode by such pressing buttons and pluging usb,
would you please tell me how to bring me this device to firmware state?
I want to back up this firmware, and would you please give me the link to the firmware for this device?
Thank you very much :)

I haven't done any gameking-related work, but I've uploaded BRES, as per Anon's request. Check out the wiki for a link if interested.

just a bump. i have the game king III, works great on mac os x 10.3.9, you can use iSquint to convert any flix to play on the unit(25 fps, 320x240, mp4), mine does have the tv out, but doesnt play any SNES games that i have tried, but most nes and gb-gbc work fine. my main problem now is figuring out how to reorganize the directory on a mac? with over 600 games in my folder i have hard time finding the one i want....

BTW- thanx me groves, great resource on a product that doesnt have much info available