Nokia N900

[Wing-0]

I don't plan on buying that phone. It would surely be horribly pricey and I want to save to either buy a Nintendo 3DS or probably an XBox 360... For the Mass Effect series and Halo Reach. Let's see how long Microsoft takes this time to destroy my interest in their device with a new flaw in the system.

The suckers...

[Zucca]

If you want cheap portable retrogaming console then I suggest Pandora. But it seems that they are still assembling the first set of Pandoras... :|

[BenoitRen]

Actually, the cheapest would probably be a PSP with hacked firmware...

[Wing-0]

Not really. A PSP with a hacked firmware is not cheaper than one with an official firmware.

Let's say you buy one. If it is hacked already, they ARE going to charge you for it an extra fee that you wouldn't pay if you didn't get it hacked.

That is, unless someone who is not an ass hacks it for you. Like I had mine hacked by a friend, and in turn, I have hacked two others. Some people do make money out of hacking and distributing ISOs along with the hack job.

If going after ISOs, that might work in playing for free, but I actually have paid for my games. Only time I used an ISO was when I had bought a game, on preorder, but didn't want to wait the three weeks it took the package to get here and downloaded the ISO.

On the second I got the package, however, the ISO went poof.

But back on the topic, I have seen Pandora, and the good thing is that it is an open platform, as opposed to hacking (more like cracking) a PSP. As I have said before, it is a shame Sony insists on keeping their platforms closed. I occasionally visit a site dedicated to PSP programming, and they DO make the little console shine. Free homebrew games, utilities, extensions for existing functions, themes to make the OS look WAY better than Sony's original, even new functions altogether, among many other free and useful things.

It's like a world upside down.

I'm sure Pandora could be way better than the PSP in its hacked form as far as open software is concerned.

[BenoitRen]

Uh, I didn't have buying a pre-hacked PSP in mind. I meant buying one and then hacking it yourself.

[Zucca]

Oh. First set of Open Pandoras have already been delivered to pre-orderers. :o

[Wing-0]

Uh, I didn't have buying a pre-hacked PSP in mind. I meant buying one and then hacking it yourself.

That no longer applies.

There are four models of PSP: 1000, 2000, 3000, Go.

Only the 1000 could be hacked by itself, and under a certain version of the firmware. For 2000 and 3000, depending on the motherboard, either you needed someone else's hacked PSP to hack it or it was unhackable. I dunno if it applies to this day, but I do know you need a second to hack it for those two types. The Go is not yet cracked.

But as far as a retrogaming device goes, it is so far the best I know. There are emulators for most of the non disc consoles (if not all), arcade machines (King of Fighters, Street Fighter, etc) and such. It is quite a versatile machine. Hell, I played the hell of Snatcher in it after my Sega CD kicked the bucket. I will see if I can resurrect it somehow...

[Zucca]

I have now installed the power kernel which applies much new things.
Now the maximum CPU frequency can be as high as 1150MHz. That's almost double what it is with preinstalled kernel. Of course there would be some stability issued with highest frequencies, but for example I have now set the frequency limits to 500-1000MHz and the frequency will be raised "on demend". I haven't even noticed any stability issues (yet).
Playing emulator games there can be (emulators usually eat the whole cpu power). So before playing one should lower the maximum frequency to 900MHz at least. Reports say that 900MHz is stable even with full load for long perioids of time.

Now while loading web pages surfing isn't slow at the heavy sites because of CPU but rather because slow network connection. :P
Even pages like facebook and youtube load fast.