53 replies to this topic

[jlenoconel]

cutterjohn, I hear you. I was late jumping onto the bandwagon as I bought my Wiz and Caanoo just this summer. I was seriously hoping they would outperform my CFW PSPs.

- Easier software installation: no, it's about the same
- Better emulator selection: no, the PSP has some emulated systems the Wiz/Caanoo do not
- Markedly better emulation performance: no, for every emulator that shines on the Wiz/Caanoo, there is at least one that is worse
- Better stability than PSP homebrew: no, just as many apps require the system to be powered off, a surprise that's not better than hacked PSPs
- Able to store most if not all of the software on a 32GB SD card: no, I've only been able to use an 8GB SD card without problems

Sure, I can run Ginge to get older GP software working, but running an emulator/interpreter to run another emulator is a kludge too far for me.

Sure, I could learn to build my own emulator ports, but unless I got deep into learning how to optimize for the Wiz/Caanoo my ports wouldn't run better than what's already out there. There's no reason for me to invest that kind of time to do something someone else has already done on a PSP or other device I own.

After my first month of use I am somewhat disappointed. Because the Wiz and Caanoo hardware are open source and therefore more easily accessible to developers, I expected the experience to be better than a closed-system PSP that is theoretically much more difficult to create software for. The SD card problems surprised me the most, and wasted days of my time trying to figure out what was going on.

After all of that being said, I'm still not ready to give up on them yet. I've still got a handful of Wiz emulators to fully test, I haven't even gotten to all of the native games, and most of my time has been spent with the Wiz so I've still got a ways to go with the Caanoo before I make my final verdicts...

I currently have a 32gb SD card in my Caanoo and am almost up to 8gb. I haven't experienced any problems yet but what problems can you experience or have you experienced personally?

[Yoshi Dragon]

cutterjohn;

You may think the ARM9 in Caanoo is ancient but it's not like the MIPS core in Jz4732/4740 is faster, quite the contrary..

All this talk about "just use a bluetooth controller and you're set" is silly. If that works for you that's great, but don't pretend that that's somehow perfectly equivalent to using a device that has gaming controls on it.

Selling a phone with a cheap ARM11 based Qualcomm SoC "+ Adreno 200" (it's funny that you list GPUs as if they're separate from their respective SoCs) for really cheap in a very poor country doesn't mean that something much better can be done for the prices you want. Homebrew handhelds can't be priced like phones that are sold in quantities exceeding millions, they won't have access to the same hardware at the same prices. And just because you "aren't expecting" various components like touchscreens doesn't mean that you represent a market that's worth designing a device over. If you feel so strongly about this maybe you should design your own device.

It's kind of unfortunate that you're as preoccupied with specs as you are without actually understanding the capabilities of the components you're evaluating. PDAs from 10 years ago came nowhere close to Pandora in capabilities, you probably think that something with a 624MHz PXA270 could compete with a 600MHz Cortex-A8 because the MHz are higher. In the real world the latter would be much faster than the former in any useful cases. You also seem automatically okay with a Jz4770 instead of something with a Cortex-A8 because it's 1GHz, but we know nothing about its actual performance. For all we know it could perform only half as well as the A8 in real world applications..

Exactly. Don't judge a computer by it's specs. I started programming on a IBM 4341 mainframe.



This system was able to maintain more than a million subscribers with complete batch and online processing.

Specs: 6.7 MHz CPU with 4 MB RAM

[akator]

I currently have a 32gb SD card in my Caanoo and am almost up to 8gb. I haven't experienced any problems yet but what problems can you experience or have you experienced personally?

So far I still haven't gotten around to using my new Caanoo, but I've had my Wiz since early July with with almost daily use.

32GB SD cards constantly get corrupted when used with my Wiz. I've tried different cards from different manufacturers and the same things happens. Things will work fine for a few days, then things I played the day before won't work anymore, then nothing on the SD card works at all a few days later. If I take out the 32GB card, reformat it, and copy the files over it works again but the same thing happens within a few days of use.

I loaded the 32GB cards with 16.8GB of software and ROMs, so there should have been more than enough space for scratch files. I have tested the cards for bad sectors, and they are not defective. The cards work perfectly in all other devices they have been used with. This is definitely an issue when using them with the Wiz.

If I lock the 32GB SD cards, they work indefinitely and with no corruption. Problem is, some software won't run on a locked card, and the rest that works looses features.

The 16GB card I've used doesn't have this problem as badly, it worked for about 2 weeks before it needed to be reformatted.

The 8GB card hadn't had any problems.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Edited by akator, 02 September 2011 - 05:13 AM.

[stpat]

I've only had my caanoo for about 2 months, but I have 2 cards, a 16gb and an 8gb.... they're both loaded to the teeth and used constantly, and I haven't had a single issue with either of them.

I currently have a 32gb SD card in my Caanoo and am almost up to 8gb. I haven't experienced any problems yet but what problems can you experience or have you experienced personally?

So far I still haven't gotten around to using my new Caanoo, but I've had my Wiz since early July with with almost daily use.

32GB SD cards constantly get corrupted when used with my Wiz. I've tried different cards from different manufacturers and the same things happens. Things will work fine for a few days, then things I played the day before won't work anymore, then nothing on the SD card works at all a few days later. If I take out the 32GB card, reformat it, and copy the files over it works again but the same thing happens within a few days of use.

I loaded the 32GB cards with 16.8GB of software and ROMs, so there should have been more than enough space for scratch files. I have tested the cards for bad sectors, and they are not defective. The cards work perfectly in all other devices they have been used with. This is definitely an issue when using them with the Wiz.

If I lock the 32GB SD cards, they work indefinitely and with no corruption. Problem is, some software won't run on a locked card, and the rest that works looses features.

The 16GB card I've used doesn't have this problem as badly, it worked for about 2 weeks before it needed to be reformatted.

The 8GB card hadn't had any problems.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

[kayuz]

i use a 250 GB usb HDD with no problem

[Remy]

I've got a 16gb card that corrupted on me just once, when I switched cards with the device on and running an app (I was being dumb - I had MPlayer on my 16gb card and a video I wanted to see if it could run on another card). I did have the original 4gb card it came with corrupt almost immediately, though, which makes me kind of sad as I never did get to play any of the stuff that was on it.

I've never had any issues on any of the other cards I've used, including 8gb micro-sds in adapters and even an old 256mb card I use for code-testing.

[Com64]

A couple of times I had corruption problems with one of my 8GB cards (either Kingston 8GB MicroSD C4 or 8GB Lexar C6), but those were in February and I haven't had problems since. Hardly any program would execute, and most of my rom images were corrupt. I then had to format with GParted and restore from a backup (thank goodness my HDD was cluttered with backups).

I've also had some problems with sharing the MicroSD card with my PSP and Caanoo, thought I don't know which system corrupted it.

I don't have NEARLY the amount of SD card problems that I had with my Nintendo DS Flashcart, where I had to format my cards every month or so.

[Berserk]

If MAME and homebrew are important to you, then the Caanoo may be the better option.

If superior SNES emulation, superior GBC\GBA emulation, perfect PS1 emulation, and PSP game library are important to you, then the PSP may be the better option.

Other factors:

+ PSP 2000 and up have the best dpad of any handheld
+ PSP has better and larger screen
+ PSP isn't missing rows of pixels like Caanoo
+ PSP's video player is light years better
+ Superior battery life, especially with 2200mAH battery kit (7-10 hours)
+ Huge aftermarket for parts and batteries
+ Speaker holes are in front, as opposed to in back where fingers can cover holes like Caanoo
+ Volume is controlled by buttons, as opposed to an always moving slider like Caanoo
+ Battery charger light turns off when finished charging
+ Controls\buttons don't seem to fail as often
+ Super Mario 64, Wave Race, Mario Kart 64, and a few other N64 titles run smooth on PSP
- PSP lacks touchscreen, pen, and tilt, but use is limited (pen works great with Warcraft 2)
- Caanoo's 3D nub seems better than PSP's
- Caanoo boots slightly faster (I think)
- Caanoo seems to have better homebrew support

Edited by Berserk, 13 September 2011 - 07:35 PM.

[BAFelton]

Dosbox hasn't been ported on Caanoo

[kayuz]

psp? no no no, only the caanoo! on the psp i can't do anything, i can't make my own games/apps... is CLOSED! DAMN CLOSED!
no, opensource for life!

[Berserk]

Dosbox hasn't been ported on Caanoo

Noted.

[Exophase]

If MAME and homebrew are important to you, then the Caanoo may be the better option.

If superior SNES emulation, superior GBC\GBA emulation, perfect PS1 emulation, and PSP game library are important to you, then the PSP may be the better option.

Other factors:

+ PSP 2000 and up have the best dpad of any handheld
+ PSP has better and larger screen
+ PSP isn't missing rows of pixels like Caanoo
+ PSP's video player is light years better
+ Superior battery life, especially with 2200mAH battery kit (7-10 hours)
+ Huge aftermarket for parts and batteries
+ Speaker holes are in front, as opposed to in back where fingers can cover holes like Caanoo
+ Volume is controlled by buttons, as opposed to an always moving slider like Caanoo
+ Battery charger light turns off when finished charging
+ Controls\buttons don't seem to fail as often
+ Super Mario 64, Wave Race, Mario Kart 64, and a few other N64 titles run smooth on PSP
- PSP lacks touchscreen, pen, and tilt, but use is limited (pen works great with Warcraft 2)
- Caanoo's 3D nub seems better than PSP's
- Caanoo boots slightly faster (I think)
- Caanoo seems to have better homebrew support

One plus for the Wiz/Caanoo over PSP, at least IMO, is that they're more dev friendly on account of letting you SSH into them over standard USB gadget. After having this it's very hard to go back to PSP development. I know there's a shell for it but I really hard time getting it to work like I needed it to.

PSP has better emulation for some consoles, especially PS1 and N64 (PS1 is hardly "perfect" though, come on) but Wiz/Caanoo have the upper hand for others like Genesis/SegaCD and PC-Engine and I'm sure there are other obscure platforms that work better on one than the other (if even available). For Wiz/Caanoo this includes the GP2X library via ginge. Before buying it's best to look at exactly what interests you and go from there..

[Berserk]

One plus for the Wiz/Caanoo over PSP, at least IMO, is that they're more dev friendly on account of letting you SSH into them over standard USB gadget. After having this it's very hard to go back to PSP development. I know there's a shell for it but I really hard time getting it to work like I needed it to.

PSP has better emulation for some consoles, especially PS1 and N64 (PS1 is hardly "perfect" though, come on) but Wiz/Caanoo have the upper hand for others like Genesis/SegaCD and PC-Engine and I'm sure there are other obscure platforms that work better on one than the other (if even available). For Wiz/Caanoo this includes the GP2X library via ginge. Before buying it's best to look at exactly what interests you and go from there..

I forgot about that USB feature. That is definitely an added plus for the Caanoo.

Perfect may have been a poor word choice since there are some known issues with POPS, but I'd estimate that emulation and speed are well over the 90% barrier. In other words, it matches or surpasses most well known emulators. The fact that Vib Ribbon is perfectly playable underscores it's great compatibility.

There's a reason I didn't cite the Genesis\SegaCD\PCEngine as an advantage for either handheld. They're both in the same imperfect boat, AFAIC. While the PSP has the occasional fps issue, the Caanoo suffers from constant tearing issues. A momentary drop from 60 fps in some games isn't nearly as noticeable as the screen constantly tearing back and forth. I find frameskip 1 with vsync FAR more playable than frameskip 0 with no vsync.

[Exophase]

I dunno about Caanoo, but on Wiz Genesis/SegaCD/PC-Engine are fine at 60Hz w/o frameskipping and tearing. Probably GPH messed up the timings again and stuff ran through ginge isn't as smooth as it's supposed to be. FS0 vs FS1 is no contest.

That's probably the biggest problem with Caanoo: no Wiz compatibility out of the box but pretty much the same hardware made a lot of Wiz developers totally uninterested in porting stuff to it, so you end up with compromises.

I've only played one game on POPS, FFT, and while it was overall pretty good it still had graphical glitches, which I hear is not at all uncommon for it. Hard to really give it "perfect" in that light, and I doubt it matches up well to say, PC PS1 emulators with software rendering.

[kayuz]

Exophase, you haven't a caanoo?