BeebEm for RG350 (Retro Handheld)

[j6wbs]

Hiya,
I have put up an initial release of BeebEm (Acorn BBC Micro emulator) for the RG350 (Retro Handheld), and will appreciate feedback.

https://github.com/jeremyrayner/beebem- ... beebem.opk



A big thanks to Bob Fossil for the RS97 version upon which this is based, and for his direct help in getting started with this little project.


To install, put beebem.opk into your APPS folder on the RG350, it should then appear in your Emulators section.

Running BeebEm at least once will create the ~/.beebem/roms/ folder if not already present
You will then need to locate and put System ROMs (aka BIOS) with exactly these names into ~/.beebem/roms
'acorn_dnfs' - Acorn DNFS 1.2 (chip ID# 201666)
'os12' - Base operating system for BBC Model B (v1.2)
'basic' - BBC Basic Programming Language (v2)

Sources: https://github.com/jeremyrayner/beebem-rg350/

Note:
I've made it save per-game keyboard mappings and settings to ~/.beebem/kbd/ folder,
and you can save state of emulator to the ~/.beebem/saves/ folder too

[chrisn]

Wow, that's excellent If only I had one of those consoles...

[j6wbs]

There is a bit more detail About BeebEm for the RG350 over on the RG350 forum here https://boards.dingoonity.org/retro-gam ... for-rg350/

I’ll be keen to hear from any stardot members, if you get this running, I think the RG350 can be had for about £60-£80 on Amazon (ymmv) and it is great fun to have the old BBC games with you as you travel.

Cheers

Jez

[JudgeBeeb]

Fans of Chinglish should check out the pictures in this listing on Amazon.

Smooth without fever, stronger operation.

And the obvious fake reviews.

There is no hot problem.

This is probably not the Amazon Marketplace vendor to buy it from

[j6wbs]

absolutely, buyer beware and all that, unfortunately Acorn don’t make these so you have to be cautious these days.
For those that are interested, I purchased mine from amazon.co.uk from Anbernic Seller Inc for £83.99, I have no affiliation or interest in them, I just think it is a nice device and the particular unit I received has worked well so far. I have replaced the SD cards and flashed the firmware to the latest stable (1.5.1), however the out of box experience was pretty good. Steve Benway has a nice video about the device here... https://youtu.be/9Kp-kf7pCLQ which is what tempted me in the first place.

Cheers

Jez

[sbadger]

Nice work there, I just received a RG350M and was pleased to see your port.

It works really well, I had a good bash at Life of Repton last night!

Are there any config options to push this into a BBC Master Mode? Prince of Persia calls!

[Tannhauser1]

I'm having real problems getting this to work, can anyone help?

1. I've got the 3 ROMs and renamed them as basic, os12 and acorn_dnfs but when I try to run a game I keep getting the error message "Read ROM Error - Cannot open ROM image File 'basic'! - Ive tried the basic ROM from different places but I keep getting the same error.

2. Game ROM format - when I download any game ROMs they are zipped. Should they go in the ROM directory zipped or unzipped? When unzipped i get a mixture of TextEdit files, Notepad files and plain text files. Which do I use?

3. What file extension should the game ROMs be?

Any help would be much appreciated

[sbadger]

I'm having real problems getting this to work, can anyone help?

1. I've got the 3 ROMs and renamed them as basic, os12 and acorn_dnfs but when I try to run a game I keep getting the error message "Read ROM Error - Cannot open ROM image File 'basic'! - Ive tried the basic ROM from different places but I keep getting the same error.

2. Game ROM format - when I download any game ROMs they are zipped. Should they go in the ROM directory zipped or unzipped? When unzipped i get a mixture of TextEdit files, Notepad files and plain text files. Which do I use?

3. What file extension should the game ROMs be?

Any help would be much appreciated

Attached are the ROMS I used, Linux is case sensitive, so that may have caught you out?
You also need to copy them to the TF1 card /usr/local/home/.beebem/roms using the DinguxCmdr

On point 2, they should be unzipped SSD/DSD/or UEF (tape) format

[Stainy]

Would this work on a RS97 ?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3301880 ... 4c4dMg4KG7

[sbadger]

doubtful, but the RG350 version is a port of the RS97 version.

https://github.com/thefossilrecord/beebem-rs97

[phil8715]

Hi, my first post here so please be gentle with me!!

I've got an RG-350, Pocket Go 2 and an LDK Game all with the BeebEm emulator installed. Pretty much all the games I've got work fine with the exception of one. Which is Tempest, I just can't map the dpad or analogue stick to get it to work. When I select Joysick it just goes round the edges super fast.

Has anyone managed to get Tempest to run on the RG-350? If so how did you map the keys?

Thank you in advance.

Phil

[SuperBadger99]

Hi - loving the RG350M running Beebem. So many games from my youth to play again. Do you know if anyone has already created the key to joypad mappings for any of the games? That can be shared?

[SuperBadger99]

Hi,

Love the work and the app - it is my favourite emulator on RG350M, and now my favourite handheld because of Beebem running on it

Quick query, I can't see a way to raise requests on your github page: https://github.com/jeremyrayner/beebem-rg350

I haven't seen anyone release a bunch of key settings for various games (has anyone done this already they can share?), so mapping my own. Is it possible to map one joy pad movement or key to multiple keys? Trying to play Pharaoh's Tomb, and it has a load of buttons: http://bbcmicro.co.uk/game.php?id=803 and the controls are here: http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/info/ele ... -Tomb.html

A - Use bow and arrows I - Inventory
B - Go backwards L - Use Lance
C - Use cross S - Use Sword
F - Go forwards T - Take Mask
G - Buy items (GET)

CURSOR KEYS - Use these to collect gold or silver.
L/R - These keys may be used at the 'Goods for Sale' location to enter the pyramid.

Would it be possible to map joypad up to both "Go Forwards" and the up arrow for when trying to collect gold? Bit of an odd request I know. Similar with Exile this has more key controls than available buttons.

Keep up the great work!

[strawberrytau]

I bought an RG350 (now only available second hand) on the recommendation of this thread. I love it! Thank you for the emulator @j6wbs!

Certain games work better with its screen size and number of keys. What games have you had success with?

I’ve been enjoying Xor. It is perfect for this device (and savestate is perfect for actually having a chance to beat the game!). One of the best puzzle games I’ve played in years. Didn’t get much further than level 2 back in the day…

Has anyone on this thread a favourite game on the RG350?

[gavinlew]

I wonder if this could make a good starting point for compatibility with the Miyoo Mini Plus running OnionOS?

[Stainy]

I just an Ambernic RG353M... any way of getting this on that?? been trying with everything I know of to get a good Beeb emulator on the Linux and the Android side of things ( with working controls )

[Stainy]

Well I returned that 353.. got a 35xx-H... still not happy..
Looks like I need a RG350..
I see there`s three models
350
350P
350M
The M and P have dual SDCARDs and the M has 640x480 screen... whereas the 350 has 320x240.
I`m hoping beebem will run on the P ( double res ) as I can get a good deal on that one,. They are hard to come by now as they are four years old.

I don`t care.. Just want a system that I can play, specccy, C64, Beeb etc on..

[paulb]

Well I returned that 353.. got a 35xx-H... still not happy..
Looks like I need a RG350..

The confusing thing about Anbernic handhelds is the model number proliferation. The RG350 uses a MIPS-compatible SoC, whereas most of the current models appear to use ARM-compatible SoCs. So, the referenced BeebEm port will not work on many of the current models, although this has less to do with the differing instruction set architecture than the specifics of the hardware that have percolated up into the code.

For example, in the dma.h file, we have the LCD controller register layout for the RG350's SoC (an Ingenic JZ4770, although it is likely to be compatible with most of the JZ-series), with the registers being accessed in dma.cc by memory-mapping /dev/mem. I guess that the permissions of /dev/mem have been loosened or that the emulator runs as root or in the kmem group.

I'm not sure what the DMA initialisation is really supposed to be doing. What it appears to be doing is to obtain the framebuffer address and then map the framebuffer memory. I would have thought that just memory-mapping the appropriate framebuffer device would have been sufficient, and SDL should be capable of doing so: it is a portable library, after all. Then again, I'm not in the handhelds "scene" and don't know what people get up to, let alone why they get up to them.

[Stainy]

Most of that went over my head. I ordered a RG350M.. will be here Monday
It`s four years old... it doesn`t bother me..
I just want to play the systems I want to play.. this looks like it`ll do.
Spectrum, C64, Beeb, Pico-8.. everything else is a bonus.. not that I have much love for those other systems/consoles.

paulb.. so how are you involved with the beeb and this handheld ?

[paulb]

Most of that went over my head. I ordered a RG350M.. will be here Monday

Sorry about that! I did write it for anyone who might follow along with the details a bit more closely, though. If anything, it helps people familiarise themselves with the topic if they suddenly find themselves having to face it down.

It`s four years old... it doesn`t bother me..
I just want to play the systems I want to play.. this looks like it`ll do.
Spectrum, C64, Beeb, Pico-8.. everything else is a bonus.. not that I have much love for those other systems/consoles.

Sounds like a good enough plan to me.

paulb.. so how are you involved with the beeb and this handheld ?

I'm not really involved at all. However, I find myself writing code targeting the same SoC family as in the RG350, albeit not the exact chip, and so I feel that I can comment with some knowledge about them. I have a Ben NanoNote which has a related chip, but I've never tried any emulators on it.

[Stainy]

I can’t get beebem running on my RG350M. it doesn`t create the dir structure after the first start.

I’ve put the roms in /media/data/local/home/.beebem/roms in both cards and it still complains that it can`t find the roms. :(

Any help?

[paulb]

I can’t get beebem running on my RG350M. it doesn`t create the dir structure after the first start.

I’ve put the roms in /media/data/local/home/.beebem/roms in both cards and it still complains that it can`t find the roms. :(

Is /media/data/local/home your home directory or is it a directory inside that like, say, /media/data/local/home/stainy? Or if the whole thing is running as root, I wonder if your home directory is actually /root. Here, I'm just going off what was said in the start of this thread.

I see that the BeebEm configuration file permits a rom_dir setting that might also be specified, too.

[Stainy]

Thanks

I actually used the commander in the system to move them to ( what I know as the home dir )
Got it running

[gavinlew]

Thanks

I actually used the commander in the system to move them to ( what I know as the home dir )
Got it running

Whats its behaviour/performance/experience like?

[Stainy]

Excellent... it reminds me of the Open Pandora version
Once you get the keymap done for the game.. it`s really really good.
Save states work I`m really happy after buying and returning other Ambernic devices ( newer ) They just didn`t do it for me..
Now to get Spectrum using the fuse emulator rather than the Retroarch core and C64 working nice and I`m sorted!

[gavinlew]

Excellent... it reminds me of the Open Pandora version
Once you get the keymap done for the game.. it`s really really good.
Save states work I`m really happy after buying and returning other Ambernic devices ( newer ) They just didn`t do it for me..
Now to get Spectrum using the fuse emulator rather than the Retroarch core and C64 working nice and I`m sorted!

Many thanks, I've ordered an RG350M as well to try it out

[tricky]

On the subject of mapping joystick to keyboard, I wanted a database of them when I added sorry to Beebem and b-em a few years ago and wrote a launcher, but couldn't find one.
I'd still like one

I was wondering about trying to scrape the instructions from BBC micro.co.uk but didn't get around to it, sounds like a job for AI