by @emuchicken and @dajoho of Team Pandory https://www.youtube.com/teampandory
The Pandory Mod is "sideloaded" firmware for the A500 mini which gives you full access to the machine and allows you to run native programs that enable many new game emulators, such as RetroArch. It comes in the form of a WHDLOAD package and exploits a hidden-feature of the A500 amiberry emulator to run native code. It runs completely from USB stick and is 100% removable.
Pandory enables:
- A new native RetroArch menu, with OpenGL video-driver support, allowing many new emulators alongside Amiga, including:
- Megadrive
- SNES
- Playstation 1
- 32X
- Amiga PUAE
- RetroArch has been configured with ADF and IPF support.
- Commodore 64
- Atari ST
- PC-Engine / TurboGrafx
- MS-DOS
- Game Boy
- Game Boy Color
- Game Boy Advance
- Game Gear
- MasterSystem
- Quake/DOOM ports
- ScummVM (RetroArch version)
- .. and many more ..
- Full root access to your device via Linux Terminal
- ScummVM (Native version)
- Allows switching between the normal A500 menu / Pandory Menu
- Thousands of thumbnails for many different games
- Allows configuration and mapping of controllers not usually supported by the A500 mini -> pandory bypasses SDL2-input and uses Linux-UDEV directly.
- Menu background music (Lotus 2) - see the "THANKS" section below.
- A selection of free homebrew-games to test before you add your own games.
- Flexible aspect ratio configuration options
Download the latest zip via torrent, or use the direct link.
Copy the Pandory and THEA500 folders to a FAT32-formatted USB stick. You can use the program Rufus to perform the formatting. If you already have a THEA500 folder, such as one from the fantastic Aminimiga project, you don't need to copy ours. To uninstall, just delete the Pandory folder.
IMPORTANT: One user experienced audio stutter when the A500 is set to 50hz. Set it to 60hz, or do a settings-reset if you experience audio problems. We will try to automate changing the frequency in the next release.
Insert your prepared USB, select it from the A500 menu, choose the Pandory folder and start Pandory. You should be greeted with the RetroArch menu. We have pre-installed a few homebrew games for your perusal.
If you want to add roms, put them on your USB stick in a subfolder of Pandory/.user/roms/. In order for them to become visible in the RetroArch menu, use the RetroArch settings menu to refresh your playlists, or to add a new playlist. We have pre-configured many playlists for individual consoles, but you can also add your own. To do this, use the Manual scan option in the RetroArch menu. Select a folder, select a core and start scanning.
Pandory contains several thousand screenshots from almost any game you wish to add. If you name your roms/folders according to the libretro naming scheme (see http://thumbnails.libretro.com/), the thumbnails should automatically appear.
Some games require BIOS files. RetroArch will tell you what they are called if they are missing. If needed, copy any required files to Pandory/.user/.config/retroarch/system. Pandory automatically copies the embedded A500-Amiga Kickstart files to this folder when you first start, so installing Amiga BIOS files is not necessary.
To quit a game, hold start and select. To modify settings while a game is running, or to remap controls, hold start. For some N64 games you will need to map the D-PAD to Controller Y+/Y- and X+/X- manually.
Since RetroArch is a linux application, the paths to all the files are in unix format on the A500. Here are some useful locations that you might need in the RetroArch menu:
- USB-Stick:
/mnt - Game-Roms:
/mnt/Pandory/.user/roms/ - RetroArch-Settings:
/mnt/Pandory/.user/.config/retroarch - RetroArch-Themes:
/tmp/pandory/share/retroarch/assets - RetroArch-Cores:
/tmp/pandory/share/retroarch/cores - RetroArch-Thumbnails:
/tmp/pandory/share/retroarch/cores - Linux Binaries:
/tmp/pandory/bin
As the USB stick has to be in FAT32 format, and FAT32 has performance problems when working with many thousands of files, we distribute Pandory as a virtual filesystem. This is the .pandory file within the Pandory folder. It is a linux ext2 disk image and contains all of the pandory programs, libraries, RetroArch assets, cores and game thumbnails. The .pandory file is mounted in the folder /tmp/pandory on the A500. If you wish to edit it, you can use an installation of Linux, such as Manjaro Gnome, right click the .pandory file and open it with Disk-Image-Mounter. It is also possible to mount the filesystem with the following commands: mkdir /tmp/pandory && mount -o loop .pandory /tmp/pandory.
- Many thanks to http://androidarts.com/ for the pixel-art icons used in the RetroArch menus.
- Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 title screen music used with permission by Barry Leitch. Thanks Barry! Please support him at his bandcamp here: https://barryleitch.bandcamp.com/
- Thanks to https://github.com/SimonLarsen/tobutobugirl, as we include TobuTobuGirl as a free rom inside Pandory.
The whole of the Pandory A500 modification, including reverse-engineered development toolchain, patched 3rd party packages and buildscripts will be released under GPL (or their own respective open-source license) within the next few days. We're still tidying things up so that they are usable and pretty.
Want to chat about the Pandory A500 Mod? Come and visit us on Discord: https://pg3d-hax.uk/discord