Stinkin' Newbie Needs Your Help


I did actually read your advice, Arutha. I wouldn't bother asking questions if I wasn't prepared to read the answers. However, after reading your (very insightful) reply, I noticed that Mofokubik said this:

"But if you really want windups, flashing isnt too hard"

I took that to mean that Windups is only obtainable by flashing hence my second question. What he really meant was that if you wanted Windups from startup, then you should try flashing.

You should probably bear in mind that my GP32 isn't actually here yet so I've no idea what the OS looks like, what it boots with or anything. I've not even held the damn thing yet, so I feel I probably have the right to ask a few dumb questions. I'm grateful for your advice but there's no need to put the boot in when I'm just making simple queries about a 'toy' that's cost me the best part of £150.
 
I truly apologize, I did not realize you were legitimately confused by some unclear posting. From my point of view, I had taken time to write a complete answer, followed by repeated questions that had been answered. More than anything else, I should learn not to post when I'm in a bad mood :)

Anyway, now that I'm not so pissy, to answer one of your additional questions posted, the other benefits of using Mr. Spiv's Multi-FW include not having to install free-launcher on every SMC (you either have windups on the SMC and can use that or Pac-Rom, one of the options of the multi-fw, allows you to run both commercial and home-brew games). There is also debugging information available after a crash (really only useful if you're a developer or beta testing for one).

For me, its truly the speed factor as I like to play around with different games/emulators frequently and don't constantly spend hours at a time on a single one. With the original FW, it takes a couple seconds to launch, then you see a Game screen. You select that and wait a few seconds while the list of commercial games (and freelauncher) load. Then you select freelauncher and wait (again) for that list to load. If you're like me and have 10-20 homebrew games/emus on your main 128 meg SMC, you then scroll through the list and select the one you want and (again) wait for it to load. Then you can finally play. With Windups and the Multi-FW, after you start up the power, it takes 1-2 seconds and windups is running. Then you simply move the "cursor" over the icon you want, click it and tada!

Well, that's it, other than apologies again for being rude earlier!
 
Im not saying that you have to flash your gp32 to use windup. Im just assuming that, because thats what other people told me. I dont have windups, and I havent flashed my bios. I dont plan on flashing it until I find a good enough reason to. I understand that windups has its advantages, but they are not really all that appealing to me. Most of the time I play nes games anyway, so I dont have to turn it off, and then back on, I just hold down the L and R buttons and I will be able to choose another game.
 
To put it in its simplest form: You do not need to flash your firmware to run windups.

However, running windups for anything other than testing (exploring to see if you like it) without flashing is very tedious... unless you're using windups address book or text editor, all you are really doing is launching a program. So using freelauncher to launch windups, just to launch an emulator that you could have launched with freelauncher is a waste of time (my opinion anyway). Flashing lets you start directly into windups, saving the extra steps and making it useful.

People probably speak of flashing and windups in the same breath since windups is of limited use without flashing, but I never encourage anyone to flash without reason and always suggest trying windups out first if that is your reason. As said in my original post, especially when you first get your GP32, enjoy it and see what it can do by default first, then look at things like flashing!
 
Arutha - Hey, no worries. Like I said, I'm very thankful for your help. :)

I still don't have my GP32 yet (mostly my fault, I ordered it from GBAX but put a different address to that on my debit card without explaining why, and the order was halted. I've since contacted them and everything has been sorted out...glad they take these steps actually) but I do like the idea of Wind Ups. I think I'd get pretty annoyed with the constant reloading after a while, but like you said, I'll wait until I've had the machine for a while and really got a feel for it before I start flashing anything.
 
Ok, got the GP32, had a quick fiddle around with it, and as you might imagine I have questions.

I've registered the machine, installed the PC Link software, installed Freelauncher and installed GPViewer.

The machine still displays in Koren. Is there any way of getting the screen text in English?

Where do I get Wind Ups from? I thought it would be on the disc provided by GBAX, but if it is, I can't find it.

Cheers!
 
r0lf posted on May 13 2003 said:
Oh and another thing, it should have that clear plastic protective stuff over the screen, leave it on! it'll protect the screen for a few months before it drives you insane enough to peel it off. Once you do you'll have a perfect virgin screen again. hmm maybe I'm a bit weird like that, but i've always done it to anything i own that has an LCD. Does anyone else do this?
I got my GP32 a couple of days ago and didn't know whether to remove this or not, but after I asked in #GP32 people said I should take it off. Actually it had some big bubbles in it, so I think the screen looks MUCH better without it.
 
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What portions of your screen are in Korean? If it is only a quick message when using freelauncher to load a game, then sorry, no way to do so. If it is more than that, you can flash the firmware... but as we've discussed before there's the potential risks (I think they're minimal, but everyone has their opinion). Let us know where/when you're getting Korean.

Wind Ups: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-...q=wind+ups+gp32

Glad to hear you're up and going!
 
Pretty much all information boxes and error messages are in Korean. For example, I've tried viewing a picture in GPViewer and it won't load and I get an error dialogue in Korean, so I don't know what's wrong!

I've only spent about an hour with the machine, had a real busy weekend. :(
 
You have to differentiate Applications/Games from the firmware. Anything you see from the time you boot up until after a program starts is firmware oriented. Anything you see after you start a program is based in that program. One catch... for the freelauncher, you start a program (freelauncher) that then starts a program (whatever emu/homebrew thing you start). The little Korean message you get after starting something using freelauncher is a freelauncher thing and can't be helped. After that, its whatever program you're running.

For the GPViewer, pretty much everything is in Korean. I can't help you too much with that program because I only played around with it for 5 minutes. I never needed to view pictures on my GP32 and for text file viewing I use the GP File Manager, its on this site somewhere. That app lets you run MP3 files, do some file managment like deletion, and run .fxe apps through it.
 
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