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Dingoo A320 setup on Ubuntu/Linux

Posted on December 29, 2011 at 11:37 am

For Christmas this year, I decided to buy myself a Dingoo A320, which I had been wanting for a long time now. For those of you who don’t know what it is, Wikipedia says it “[…] is a gaming hand-held that supports music and video playback and open game development.” I say its my portable little piece of classic video game emulation heaven.

By default it plays Gameboy Advance, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Megadrive/Genesis, Neo Geo, CPS1 and CPS2 games. With a few simple downloads available on the internet thanks to an active community, the list can be expanded to include various other Atari, Commodores, Gameboys, PC Engine/TG16, playstation, a custom Linux install (dingux) and more. (read more about what it can do on wikipedia using the above link.)

While the allure of putting linux on something else is definitely there for me, I find that at my age I don’t want to tinker with things anymore than I have to – I just want them to work. So I set out to simply have all my favorite childhood games in my pocket, and nothing more.

After unwrapping it, I quickly plugged it into my computer to explore the file-system and….. nothing happened. I am currently running Ubuntu 11.10, and was expecting it to recognize the usb storage device and mount it automagically – but nothing happened.

After doing a little bit of research, I learned that the Dingoo (at least mine, and many others’) by default does not have valid partition table on it. The only way I could see what was on the device was by manually mounting it. This is what I did to correct the problem.

First, since I already manually mounted the device, I copied the contents to a folder on my desktop – I was going to want to keep everything it came with, after all. Then, I unmounted it.

Instructions:

  1. Open a terminal
  2. fdisk -l . get the name of your drive, something like /dev/sdb
  3. fdisk /dev/sdx (x being the letter of the device)
  4. press o to create an empty dos partition table.
  5. press n for a new partition
  6. set it as a primary partition and leave default values for start and end(max size).
  7. mkfs.vfat /dev/sdx1

Once I did that, I unplugged the device from my computer, and turned it off. Then I plugged it back in, and dun-dun-dun! Auto-mount worked, permissions were properly set, and I was ready to start loading up my favorite games. First I copied the files I had backed up previously back onto the device. Then I went about downloading all my “legally acquired” copies of my favorite games.

I copied over various titles, all of which worked beautifully. Then I decided to try a classic Gameboy title, and it failed miserably. I searched around and found that someone had put together a dingoo expansion pack with a bunch of other popular emulators on it.

Dingoo Mega Pack 2.0
http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingoo-games-and-homebrew/dingoo-mega-pack-2-0/

Read all about it on the thread there, and follow the download link. It was as easy as unzipping the archive and copying the contents straight to my dingoo.

And thats all there is to it. Since then it’s been working flawlessly and I’ve been a happy man.

Anyone else have similar problems and/or experiences setting up their Dingoo? What are your experiences? Recommended apps and/or game titles?

Useful/Related links:

As a side note, I purchased it from thinkgeek.com (http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics/retro-gaming/bd6f/), in case anyone is interested. You can probably find it for a bit cheaper on ebay or other online-merchants, but I decided to go with a name I trust. Sometimes its worth paying a little more knowing that you’re dealing with a real company; Also they were having a sale so I paid a bit less than their normal price! Cheers!

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John is a web-developer by day, dashing, handsome, and death-defying super-hero by night. Based out of Silver Spring, MD, he does his best to make things do things other than the things they were supposed to on a daily basis, in the process, making the world a better place.

There are 9 comments.

Comment by Razvan T. Coloja

I also bought an A380 for myself for Christmas. It should arrive in a couple of days. Thanks for the tutorial – I am also a Linux user; this should come in handy.

JAN08 2012 07:22:00
Comment by Zandra

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Please stay us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.

OCT18 2018 00:48:00
Comment by Flossie

Great blog! Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers?
I’m hoping to start my own site soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you advise starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for
a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m
totally confused .. Any tips? Thanks a lot!

OCT25 2018 04:09:00
Comment by Harold Burton

there is hundred of games one of my favorites skyblazer sunset riders , topgear dracula x gaia ilusion of the time , demon crest ff especial act raiser.1.2 super bomberman , turrican sonic blast man Rival Turf , the peace keaper brawl brothers , super street figther 2, capitan comando . ninja warrior , metal warriors . hagane king of dragons clock tower , the fire men, biker mice from mars , Ghost Sweeper Mikami goof troop, gundam win

AUG07 2021 12:40:00
Comment by Harold Burton

I’ve learn some just right stuff here. Definitely value bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how so much attempt you put to create one of these magnificent informative site.

SEP10 2021 13:11:00
Comment by Kelly Hubbard

I view the situation as this: Rosalina represents her Iceworld plus all unowned rainbow tracks. Although Honey Queen primarily represented MK7’s Rainbow Road, that’s not to say it doesn’t represent Rosalina as-well. Rainbow Road is located in space with a Mario-Galaxy feel to it; therefore can relate to both HQ and Rosalina. However, Rainbow Road won because it was a great course and not because of the characters that represent it. The characters popularity may have helped a little, but for the most part, no not really.

SEP22 2021 09:53:00
Comment by freya

nice

SEP15 2022 11:25:00
Comment by Paul Brown

Sorry to say but Donkey Kong Country is NOT better than its sequel, Diddy’s Kong Quest. Everything that was done well in the first game was done EVEN BETTER in the sequel. Also, Super Metroid is leagues ahead of some of the choices above it, such as DKC, Mario World, and ALTTP (my opinion on those last 2, it is definitely better than DKC). However I think DKC 2 is better than Super Metroid, but they are my favorite and second favorite games respectively.

JAN16 2023 09:27:00
Comment by Paul Brown

My Top 10 Snes games:
1. Super Mario World
2. Chrono Trigger
3. A Link to the Past
4. Super Metroid
5. Earthbound
6. Final Fantasy III
7. Super Castlevania IV
8. Megaman X
9. Donkey Kong Country
10. Starfox

JAN20 2023 03:21:00

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