Flojomojo Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 I've been watching these for a while, but when I heard it had Dingux ported to it, I had to get one for myself. https://obscurehandhelds.com/2018/02/opendingux-and-gmenu2x-for-the-retrogame-rs-97/ It's a bit trashy out of the box, the screen isn't used properly, and the GBA emulator is slow. But if you load Dingux on it (which you can do from the internal OR external SD card), it's a whole new device, more like a GCW Zero than the cheap knockoff handheld it was. The mod is somewhat wonky but not difficult. Here's where I got mine for $60, with free Amazon overnight shipping but if you don't mind waiting you can get it for less from Chinese sellers. These emulators seem to run well, from what I've tested. There are others as well: Atari 2600 Atari 8-bit (incl 5200) Atari 7800 Atari Lynx Amiga Nintendo NES Nintendo SNES Nintendo GB Nintendo GBC Nintendo GBA Sega Master System Sega GameGear Sega Genesis MAME4ALL Final Burn Alpha Sega 32X and Sony Playstation have emulators but they don't run well. There was an Odyssey 2 emulator on native Dingoo, not sure if someone made a Dingux build, but that should run well too. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Interesting. I still have my OG Dingoo, but haven't got around to installing Dingux on it. I know the Neo Geo emulator is basically useless without the sprite scaling support, and the occasional crashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 The screen is a lot nicer than the OG Dingoo's screen, and the buttons are better too. It's a way better Sega Genesis portable than the AtGames things thus far, for about the same price -- even with the cruddy stock firmware. But making it into a SNES/NES/Lynx/VCS/Gen/SMS etc at the same price is sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Honest question - if I'm already rocking a PSP with CFW do I want to look at this beyond "another way to play"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 Honest question - if I'm already rocking a PSP with CFW do I want to look at this beyond "another way to play"? Depends on what you like. I never found the PSP very comfortable or pocketable. If you're "rocking" it you are digging it more than I did and are probably OK with what you have now. This is cheap and easy to set up, uses standard microSD cards, and charges from a miniUSB cable. It also comes with TV out if you like that sort of thing. It tops out at 16-bit. It's using an ancient CPU but it sips power, and the battery looks easy to source. PSP has a bigger screen and runs Playstation games perfectly, but it has that stupid disk drive, and needs proprietary memory cards and charging cables. I haven't held one or run hacked firmware on one in a while, but I'm that one weirdo who was really looking forward to the PSPgo because it was smaller than the PSP. The rs-97 is more GBA-sized, but sleeker. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Well I've already got all that stuff anyway except tv out. That never interested me personally. I've had the same PSP for 12 years now and - Nintendo Switch possibilities aside - it is my portable of choice for gaming and emulation. Just FYI (not to de-rail) - there are now tons of MicroSD -> MagicGate adapters that allow I think 64GB or even 128GB of space. I also haven't used the drive on my PSP since possibly 2010. You don't need a disc in the drive to run the CFW anymore. In my hands I prefer the PSP over the GBA - just feels better. I'll check out the RS-97 if I ever get a shot though. I am one of those nutcases that tries stuff just to "try another way to play". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 I like the Dingux scene, personally. Not sure if you'll ever get to put hands on this in a store, but buying one for a friend would be a nice thing to do. I'm aware of the microSD adapters that enable a ton of space. It would be cool to carry around a huge library of PSone games like that. How is your PSP battery holding up? Mine died years ago, too soon in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicGMR Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 How is your PSP battery holding up? Mine died years ago, too soon in my opinion. I replaced it in 2012 or so with a 3.6v 1800 mah battery but I have had zero problems that I can tell with how long it runs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odourman Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Very interesting! This looks great for NES and SNES. It does have L and R buttons? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 My big head scratcher with the dingoo was why they went for the Mini-SD format. Yes, I have an adaptor for Micro SD. MIni-sd was a format zero people used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted June 11, 2018 Author Share Posted June 11, 2018 Very interesting! This looks great for NES and SNES. It does have L and R buttons? Yup. It feels good in the hand, too. Definitely a win at that price. Do the Dingux mod to make it nice, though. https://boards.dingoonity.org/ingenic-jz4760-devices/%27ultimate%27-rs-97-guide/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odourman Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 Yup. It feels good in the hand, too. Definitely a win at that price. Do the Dingux mod to make it nice, though. https://boards.dingoonity.org/ingenic-jz4760-devices/'ultimate'-rs-97-guide/ That seller do not ship to Sweden... Where I am. I’ll look around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted June 11, 2018 Share Posted June 11, 2018 I'm in. Thanks for the heads-up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetick1 Posted June 12, 2018 Share Posted June 12, 2018 Very nice and the price is right ... likely because MIPS is a dying hardware architecture. No new Ingenic processors since 2012 and no new MIPS architecture since 2014. Ingenic is a fabless semiconductor company that licensed MIPS. When their MIPS license ends they will certainly look to switch to ARM or possibly but less likely embedded x86 or embedded PPC. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted June 12, 2018 Author Share Posted June 12, 2018 Maybe we will get cheap GPD Win clones at that time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted June 26, 2018 Share Posted June 26, 2018 I got my RS-97 from China, and installed 97Next 1.9 on it. It's good for what I purchased it for - I mostly want to catch up on some of the GBC Zelda games, and revisit miscellaneous titles from 2600 to GBA. I haven't pushed it harder than that yet. If I had a magic wand I'd give it a bigger screen, but for the price (with the right performance expectations) it's a solid buy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doug0909 Posted July 2, 2018 Share Posted July 2, 2018 I just bought this recommended on suggestions here, and for the price I'm fairly happy with it. It runs NES games very well, which alone may be worth the price. Also some of the built in games including Arkanoid play nicely. I think SMS/Genesis ran well. I have version 2.1 with the latest software which loads from the external CD. But...SNES runs at a decent speed but with lowered frame rates. All games in MAME (I've tried mostly old ones) look and play well (make sure to adjust the video settings so it fits the screen size). However, a bunch of them have static-y sounds, no matter which settings I try. Same thing for Atari 7800 but it's a large percentage which have sound issues.No built in emulator for my childhood/favorite system, Odyssey 2.Haven't yet gotten Atari 8-bit/5200 emulator to work, but that's probably because I have to point it to the system ROMs.And worst of all...Atari 2600 emulator runs slow. I saw someone else with the 2.1 device complaining about the same thing.... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted July 2, 2018 Share Posted July 2, 2018 I bought this for GBC, GBA, and NES, and these run very well. Turbografx runs great too. Agreed on the 2600 emulation being too slow to be usable. For the 7800 emulation, bump the CPU up for the emulation. If you still get scratchy sound, reload the rom from within the emulator's menu. This removes the static for me. The A8 emulation runs well, except light static sounds. Not really an issue with in-game sounds, but annoying for music. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doug0909 Posted July 3, 2018 Share Posted July 3, 2018 Thanks your advice, it helped with the 7800 emulator. Oddly some games which were scratchy when the rom was loaded internally from the emulator had clear sound when the rom was loaded at startup. Commodore 64 emulation is slow as molasses too I discovered. Another complaint... The flimsy screen protector /film which was on the device when I got it won't come off; it's like it's super glued on there. There was a tab to pull it off but that proved useless... Now I've marked up the film in the corner with my fingernail, and it still won't come off... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarifan88 Posted July 10, 2018 Share Posted July 10, 2018 (edited) Thought of this immediately after reading the post title... Edited July 10, 2018 by atarifan88 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted July 27, 2018 Share Posted July 27, 2018 I'm not sure if this is related to the 97Next v2.1 firmware update I did, but I found that if you clock the 2600 emulator at the highest rate and set frameskip to 1 or 2, then most games are playable. Sometimes a frameskip of 1 is a problem for games that flicker sprites every other frame, as this makes some sprites invisible. Use a frameskip of 2 for those games, or any game that's still slow with a skip of 1. This probably won't become my preferred mode of playing 2600 games, but at least it's usable now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 I've flashed my Rs97 with the latest version of the custom firmware. Looks like there are several hardware variants now, but they've all been patched. I get the sense this might be the last version for a while. Runs well, and it's easy to do from an external card. I'm particularly fond of playing the Atari Lynx like this. Sega Genesis, too. https://boards.dingoonity.org/ingenic-jz4760-devices/all-rs97-firmwares-here-(internal-external)-all-systems-supported/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hwlngmad Posted January 2, 2019 Share Posted January 2, 2019 Has anyone bought the slightly updated version as reviewed by RetroCore on YouTube recently? Just wondering as it seems to be a good little system that I might considering going to should my PSP give up the ghost for any reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 2, 2019 Author Share Posted January 2, 2019 Has anyone bought the slightly updated version as reviewed by RetroCore on YouTube recently? Just wondering as it seems to be a good little system that I might considering going to should my PSP give up the ghost for any reason. I have an older one, but I saw this post which is not encouraging Nevertheless, I think you could get around the USB issue with a SD card flash. At the price, I think even the "bad" one is going to be "good enough" for most people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yakumo1975 Posted November 25, 2019 Share Posted November 25, 2019 The RS-97 is back but this time they may have finally gotten it right. We now get an all new IPS screen with a true 60Hz refresh rate and it has better performance. The machine also comes jam packed with roms for every system featured including a few PlayStation games. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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