Hi all,

I'd like to change a screen or screens in my GP2X to show that I own it (in case it gets lost and someone honest finds it and wants to return it). Something like:
This GP2X property of
Brian Pipa - brian@blahblah.blah

I did this with my USB Flash drive by putting an if_found_read_this.txt file in the root, that's what made me think of it.

I was thinking the boot screen would be a great place to put it, but is the boot screen changeable? All the skins I downloaded don't include the boot screen so my guess is no. So, barring that, can I just edit the body.png in a skin and add in my contact info, then install the skin on my GP2X? Are there any tricks to the skins? I don't want to do something to hose my GP2X.

I'll post some pictures once I do this (though my graphic editing skills are WEAK)

Brian

Ok, my sister who is a graphics pro is going to do it for me. Pictures soon.

Not sure about the boot screen, I think you'd need to compile your own kernel for that - just a little excessive.

The background thing will work though. Just edit the png and copy to nand. Job's a good 'un.

Make sure that if you lose it you do so with a full set of NiMH batteries though, or whoever finds it'll just see some wierd vertical lines and drop it in the nearest bin...

LOL! I would hope nobody would thow it away! I don't plan on losing it, but just in case it is found by someone honest, this will help.

Brian

maybe a sticker/branding would be more effective? :-)

some one could peel the sticker off..

here's a good in-between:

Engrave your name into a non-removeable part of the gp2x.

Don't plan on selling it tho...

I like th eidea of having my name/email on-screen. At least that way if someone does find it and are honest, it will be easy for them to see who owns it. And if someone steals/keeps it, my name/email will be on-screen for all to see (at least until they figure out how to change skins). Maybe if a kid finds it their parents might see my name and try and return it.

brian

I would imagine it can't be too hard to replace the bootscreen in the kernel, I don't think you would need to "compile" anything.

Yes you would, as it's embedded within the kernel source.

I dont know of too many "honest" people.

They are few and far between, but they are out there. I'm one of them.

Brian

Ain't NOBODY outside of family and friends (and even they are suspect sometimes) gonna try to give back this gizmo.

I'd tell you I have it and offer to bring it to you and then beat you up for your girlfriend. If you didn't have a girlfriend, I'd probably take a sister or two instead.

I had a palm vx returned to me once. it was worth about £200 at the time. It was in a jacket that I left in a pub. Thankfully I also had a payslip in another pocket so he had my work address.

The cheeky bugger left a note on the palm saying something like "next time you get drunk try to remember where you left your stuff" so he clearly knew how to use it too.

He just dropped it off at reception wrapped up with my name on it, didn't even ask if there was a reward. There are still some good people in the world.

How about, just not losing it.

Radical, eh?

How nice .


At my school you don't even have to lose things to lose them...

I never got my pen drive back. It was found, and a teacher said he'd found it during assembly. He even said my name, which had been carved into the back with a pair of dividers. Yet when I went up to collect it at the end, somebody had already nicked it.

The worst thing is not losing my pen drive, that can be replaced. The worst thing is that my pen drive contained schoolwork, which I'd spent quite a bit of time on, and sourcecode, which I spent A LOT of time on. Sure, I have a backup, but it's old, and doesn't contain any of the code I did recently (about 30 hours' worth, at least).

always make backups... I accidently deleted a whole project of mine and no backups 0_O

I also always make backups after Frontpage destroyed every bit of PHP code in my entire website, making me lose the will to continue and shut the whole thing down.

However, the backups I have are fairly old, and again, I don't know if I can be bothered to get it back to the state it's in.

Fheusel made a boot logo replacer tool. So you can make a custom boot screen with your data or logo. You can download it here.
There is a thread in the german forum, so if you speak german you can go to this topic.

Regards,
Stephan

WOW! Thank you!!! This looks very cool .... and very scary

Could someone brave enough to take the plunge for us try this out and report back??

(I'm looking forward to creating some nasty start-up screens )

how do you define nasty?

@TelcoLou

It works flawlessly for me. But you all know: Messing around with the U-Boot is a dangerous task.

Regards,
Stephan

... see my avatar for an idea ...

*BOT*

I'm put off a bit by the bold letters warning about the need for a JTAG cable if you screw up

Thanks ... I'm a bit dim ... what do I need to do? There's a windows .exe included ...

i just did it, worked fine. but there must be some kind of special palette used.

i used this image to replace : http://deep.phpwebhosting.com/~paradox/upload/gp2xboot.bmp

but the orange on the image turns out a lime-greenish colour on the boot..


you just select the boot.img file with that .exe, and then select the .bmp to use..it'll add the image to the boot file, then put it on SD card, boot up the 2x and itll patch.

Thanks! I'm going to try it out now ...

OK ... you need to rename the newly created image file to "gp2xboot.img" ... and yes, there seems to be a palette issue ... oranges become green ...

Now if anyone boots up my GP2X, they'll be shocked so badly they won't want to keep it

Thanks so much for this info ... now if there was a way to kill that ugly green screen

If you want to get rid of the green boot screen, use the Open2x kernel and filesystem. There you can see a nice picture with Tux. AFAIK you can't change this picture at the moment.


Regards,
Stephan

Back to the "honest people" sub-thread.....
I was at the mall the other day and an old guy was walking by and he was putting money in his pocket. He dropped a bill and didn't notice it. He was probably 20 yards or so from me. I ran over. picked it up (it was a 20) and gave it to him - he had no idea he dropped it.

So yes, there are some honest people left in the world.

Brian

How about just changing the main menu screen to include your name, ot whatever, then copy this screen to your GP2x (as you would with the numerous skins available?).

That would work ... and be a nagging reminder to any thief of their evil deed



Good karma to you

Yeah TelcoLou, I adblocked your avatar a long time ago, it must have been pretty bad, what is it of again?

Thanx,
Stan

Will the modify u-boot work with art u-boot instead of one in the rar?

Nope, it's only hardcoded for the original U-Boot supplied with it.
DON'T USE IT FOR ANY OTHER U-BOOT!

My sister finally made it for me and it looks great! We modified the Poiosn blue skin:
http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,52,1102

Here is the original screen:


and here is the template she modified:


I was going to take a picture of it in action but the picture doesn't show it very well. Imagine the original image with the new text.

I'm very happy with it!

Nice! I can't show you my boot screen ... not work safe ... or school safe, home safe ...

eeew, why does an old man like you wants a "nasty" boot screen lol


Show Me, Show Me!!!

(It's not what you think, but not for public consumption nonetheless)