Dingoo bites!

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A wave of negative sentiment seems to be emerging around Dingoo Digital Company’s approach to a few things, here:

http://a320.freeforums.org/they-ve-now-known-about-the-y-b-button-issue-for-3-months-t191.html

and here:

http://a320.freeforums.org/i-am-beginning-to-dislike-dingoo-ethics-t192.html

… to which I say that Dingoo Digital has indeed been rather silent on things like development information and the X/B button bug, which is a shame. Jim and Sofia, it would be nice to hear from you about these issues!

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 8:18 AM

    All source code for the systems os and firmware should be made public so anyone with the skills required can make improvements if they feel like it. Leaving it up to the official Dingoo devs will most likely result in people getting pissed off and turning their backs on what is a good device despite the lack of real support. They are using software that should be GPL and not even acknowledging the devs responsible for it, and they are closely guarding their own crappy code because it's their "commercial secret". They are making things unnecessarily difficult and unpleasant for everyone, including themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 9:26 AM

    What has already been suggested by other people is more likely IMHO: They simply do not have access to the firmware, because it was made by someone else. The "commercial secret" is therefore be merely an excuse, for the fact that tehy don't even know whether the thing runs on MicroCO/S II, Linux, custom OS or something else.

    It makes me even wonder whether they really had any programmers working on the dingoo at all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 9:35 AM

    It seems like they must know something about it if they made the 7 days game. Also, while I agree with the sentiment..I don't think it will help. Saying negative things will reduce sales and ultimately drive the Dingoo to assured failure. Which means definitely no progress in homebrew for those of us that already have one.

    If everyone starts bashing we will be looking at the same "scene" as jxd 301..which is nothing basically. Not that there is much proven growth for Dingoo as of yet, but at least there is still talk.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 10:05 AM

    I think we should be as honest as possible about the device. Saying negative things should not be a problem unless it isn't the truth. If it ultimately reduces the sales of the unit, then whose fault is it? Dingoo needs to be more supportive of the machine because being secretive and hiding information only makes them look bad. It's nice that they've actually come out and answered a few of the communities questions, but that talk really doesn't mean much in the end unless they do something about it. Also, the consumers have a right to know about the problems of the device before they purchase it. This device has potential, but they themselves are holding it back.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM

    I'm not saying it isn't Dingoo's own fault. I'm just saying that ultimately bad sales of the unit at this point is bad for all of us.

    I would love to see some talk from independent developers about what things they may be working on. As it stands there haven't been any big developments and that itself is discouraging.

    Since the device supports flash, there should at least be a huge library of those kind of games that simply need button remapping to work just fine on it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. NatroxApril 22, 2009 at 1:41 PM

    The firmware is openable with a HEX editor and even extractable. Couldn't it be possible that some people tried to fix it on their own? If the problem lies within the firmware, this may be possible, not?

    I looked into it myself, but I could not find anything that references to the A/B/X/Y buttons.

    Perhaps someone else?

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 2:18 PM

    Well GNX, every file, provided you have read access to it, can be opened in a hex editor ;) The numbers won't make any sense however, if you do not know what they mean in their context.

    Unless you want to decode the instructions and data by hand using reference docs of the CPU part of the Dingoo, you'll have to load it in a disassembler like IDA PRO to make any sense out of the whole thing. That being said, I don't know if IDA currently supports the binary format of the firmware and/or the instruction set used by the dingoo.

    If the problem really lies in the firmware (lets hope it does) then it could be indeed be fixed by tracking down the bug using the dissassembly.

    Unfortunately there aren't many people that have these type of skills and lot of time to spare, but I sincerely hope someone does. I have something similar happing with a DVD player (Proview 858) for which the manufacterer didn't release updates, but other people hacked the firmware into something marvelous.

    The reason you didn't find anything related to the A/B/X/Y buttons, is because those are very likely referred to with a number, something like this: A=0, B=2, X=4, Y=8, etc. not the letter itself.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 2:21 PM

    To complement my post above: I'd would look in hunting the bug myself, but my assembly skills suck. I'm however looking into porting some stuff the dingoo: I have the SDK up and running in VS2008 here.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousApril 22, 2009 at 5:17 PM

    the chances are pretty good that the coding was outsourced and what they have is too confusing for them to figure out so they just used it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. NatroxApril 22, 2009 at 9:58 PM

    When I snooped around in the file, the code was pretty much possible to read. I believe there is a HXF binary template for 010 editor somewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousApril 23, 2009 at 5:02 AM

    What do you mean by pretty much possible to read? Just hexadecimal numbers are useless and the ascii representation normally isn't good for anything but reading literal strings.

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousApril 23, 2009 at 5:47 AM

    //--------------------------------------
    //--- 010 Editor v2.1.3 Binary Template
    //
    // File: HXF template
    // Author: mcuelenaere
    // Revision: 0.1
    // Purpose:
    //--------------------------------------


    http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/ChinaChip

    ReplyDelete

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