Heroes 5 2020 in 1 game board

[nasoftz]

For my board revision
I must find a way to compile a remapped “sun8xi_gpio” module and properly install it to get my controller to work on armbian or android, more easy on 3droid or maybe from 1760in1 original image where I may get full system control than on the original heroes5 “locked” system img, I have already tried to simply overwrite it, but the system does recognize that module anymore ..

[Akira84]

A quick look at 6buttonmash SD image, the games.db file is not encoded, everything is readable including the game display names. It looks like it only uses fba, but there is an empty mame37 folder so there might be a version of mame installed.
Going to try to add ROMs and report back.

[6buttonmash]

Right sorry in advance for the long post folks, trying to respond to everything new

Great work, I'll download the image and take a look.
Very interesting the menu you found, let us know if you figure out how to access it again

No problem, hope it is of some help, there has to be something different between the pandora 6 and heroes 5 apart from just the menu art, and amount of games loaded. The reason i say that is the image i created of my pandora6 can be read on a computer system with ext4 partition support, or at least one of the larger partitions can.

When i Burn your heroes5 image though akira84 it boots up find and works just fine on my box (obviously did not try all 2020 games though) but plugging the sdcard in via my computer direct NOTHING can be read from it, so i assume either the file system is different (which would be strange, i doubt they have gone to any effort beyond loading different amounts of roms and changing menu art) something got corrupt during my download (which is a worry) or something weird happened when you created/copied the sdcard to make the image. Can you or nasoftz confirm i am not going insane and confirm that my image can be read IN PART on a computer with ext4 support but the heroes5 image can not.

maybe the same menu that launch factory settings apk? I managed to enable it pressing “insert coin”+”1player” buttons togheter while the system is booting up

Ah right it may weel be , ill check when i get home from work tonight and report back, if it is that and it that works on my box.

all in chinese .. however you can read the menu content using google translator app on your smartphone, just take a photo than use it to translate the content from chinese to english

Yep that was my plan, then either make notes what each option does save screengrabs if possible and also see if there is anything in there which could unlock this box a bit more.

I suppose that pandora 6 1760in1 version use the same board/cpu revision gb2000s and no jamma connectors like mine, if so it s not an h5 (1080p system) but an h2+/h3 (720p) that is still compatible with your revision board too, i think the h5 is the one used on the pandora 3d/key7 version, the one I purchased is a Grogrou pandora 6 720p with “advanced cpu”). I was not able to take a look on the chipset label due to a strange heatsink mounted on the pcb, I m planning to remove it at soon and check.... but from armbian and freedroid report the cpu as a h2+/h3 from allwinner..

I would imagine your board is a H2+, that is what is in mine and akira84s. My board revision is the same as Akira84s, the software on mine though is basically the same as yours (Grogou branded pandora 6) rather than heroes 5. His image and obviously my image both work due to the same hardware. Retrorangepi when in exiting to the command line if i remember right for my board report the same allwinner information that you have previously seen. So i imagine the CPU in your machine, mine and akiras is at least one thing that is the same lol.

The 1760 Arcade box is DEFINITELY a H5 CPU and not a H2+/H3 here is an image of the 1760 board...
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XDN9MwphK3Y/maxresdefault.jpg
Apart from the strange way they have mounted the CPU on that board does the layout look like yours? Its the only other Allwinner arcade games type board i know of with no jamma (apart from the 'home' versions of some of the REAL pandoras).

From what i understand the CPU is very similar to the H2+/H3 both are quad core, it main difference is the shared GPU in a H2+/H3 it uses the Mali-400 MP2 but the H5 GPU uses Mali-450 MP4. Apparantely this very small difference is enough for retrorangepi at least NOT to run on the H5... http://www.retrorangepi.org/about/ at the bottom of the page it says "NOTE: Until we get working GPU drivers, there will be no support for new boards like Orange Pi PC2, Orange Pi Win, Orange Pi Prime or any other with Mali 450 GPU or A64/H5 CPU." Whether that means it will not boot at all or if it just means retropie side of things will not run but the rest of the linux side (command line, Ambian GUI etc) will i dunno.

UPDATE:
if you want to make some experiment, you can install mame4all and some other android emulator on the 3droid image we already tested..... they works! I m already trying to enable my joystick controller, i was able to manage mame4all using usb external pad... probably your/Akira integrated joysticks will work out of the box.... an alternative way to get an “openpbdroid” version :p

That experiment sounds like fun when i have a bit of free time, for a newbie to linux like me just getting the dd command working was a bit of a nightmare hehe But yeah i do plan of trying other things like Mame

For my board revision
I must find a way to compile a remapped “sun8xi_gpio” module and properly install it to get my controller to work on armbian or android, more easy on 3droid or maybe from 1760in1 original image where I may get full system control than on the original heroes5 “locked” system img, I have already tried to simply overwrite it, but the system does recognize that module anymore ..

Hmm this should be possible, on the Linux side of things the source code for sun8xi is available online, also i am not 100% sure but I THINK older versions of retrorangepi may have supported that GPIO. Im sure i read something somewhere about a different kernel revision having that driver.
I found this driver which is for use in Ubuntu/Debian installs on the Orange Pi which Armbian is based on and its named very similar to what you require, could this work???...
https://github.com/loboris/OrangePi-Bui ... o-sunxi.ko
Even if you had to start with a plain Debian/Armbian install and then install retropie or similar once you have things going that would be a start at least. I have no idea how or if it would be possible to port anything like that into our heroes5/pandora6 img files though.

[6buttonmash]

A quick look at 6buttonmash SD image, the games.db file is not encoded, everything is readable including the game display names. It looks like it only uses fba, but there is an empty mame37 folder so there might be a version of mame installed.
Going to try to add ROMs and report back.

Yeah as i briefly mentioned, my pandora6 image seems in some way less locked down, most of the roms are in sub folders of the media/0/ directory/folder of the image, ive no idea why a large partition of it can be read on a computer but your heroes5 image can not. I also noticed about MAME and that having no roms in it, weirdly it seems to have a couple of roms which i did not think were for FBA but for MAME in the FBA folder.

Im also going to do more experiments, now i know the file/folder structure it may be possible to even load them via USB stick, with my pandoras6 if you plug a usb stick in the back on one of the USB ports from memory a message pops up saying something about reading files/disk, but beyond that i never got it to do anything, now though knowing the folder layout for the roms it may be a different story

[Akira84]

Made a new entry in the games.db, it showed up and was playable

[Akira84]

Well this sucks, I had some loose wires in my test set up and one of them touched my board while it was running and I saw a spark and a puff of smoke, now it won't boot.
Made a nice discovery before that.
I copied the mame37 folder from my image to the new image,
I added mk to the games.db, under rom path put this /storage/emulated/0/mame37/mk/
Under emulator type put 2
It worked and was playable.
So we can add some mame games.
Sadly this might be it for me for awhile unless I can figure what fried on my board or order a new one.
This sucks we were starting to make some progress.

[6buttonmash]

That is bad news about your board Akira84 i am quite good at electronics repair though, if you saw the area where the board sparked and the smoke came from and better yet are able to upload a picture or two of the area i may be able to advise what has gone and if it is easily repairable or not.
If the board is still getting power (look at the LAN LEDs and the tiny LEDs on the board) there may be a chance it can be fixed easily
If the board is not getting power, then assuming the PSU itself is still working (The LED strip light and fan if your box has those should still spin/light up if the PSU still works) then it may be dead beyond repair
If the PSU is not powering the fan or Light strip then it may be the PSU itself which has died or the fuse in the mains plug (dont know what country you are from or if your mains plugs have those) may have gone.

Either way if any photos show any damage i may be able to advise you.

On a good note though its great to hear you were able to get other MAME games to run. I have one question though how did you copy the mame37 folder from your heroes5 image to the pandora6 image? I as i mentioned previously can not even browse/read your heroes5 image or the SDcard when written on my computer. My pandora/heroes box will read the Heroes5 SDcard fine but i can not read it at all on my computer.

Also is there any particular program you used to read and edit the game.db file? There seems to be a few free apps online to edit those, but might be best if we all test using the same programs.

Im going to play a bit more today, check on the menu trick nazsoftz mentioned, to see if that works and if i can translate any of it easily. and maybe have a go at what you mentioned with regards to adding MAME games. Shout back if you have any further advice for me or if i can potentially offer advice and help to you in pointing to what may be wrong with your board

[Akira84]

Hi,
My board still gets power, I'll take some pictures and explain in more detail what happened,incase you have any ideas on how to repair it.
I do all my editting and reading of the SD card using a Linux operating system on my laptop. My heroes image is accessible just fine on my laptop. I have found the programs to read ext file formats on Windows to not always work properly. What opperating system are you using on your computer?
I got frustrated with using Windows to read/write Linux filesystem, so my laptop dual boots Linux and windows.
This is the program I use to edit the games database.
https://sqlitebrowser.org

[nasoftz]

look near the pcb dc power plug, if it s not power up at all, problem will be around there, diode cap, voltage regulator, etc


just starting to inspect the fresh uploaded 6buttonmash emmc dump ...
the packages.xml show that your system use same "private" apk s I already uploaded, maybe an early release than the one installed on my system that 's why no encryptions found the Akira one is in the middle, than mine... XD

Still not tested directly on my pcb,
planning to see if I can get my gpio joysticks to work with your img as soon

[nasoftz]

https://sqlitebrowser.org

I use the same sql browser :p

[nasoftz]

Hi,
My board still gets power, I'll take some pictures and explain in more detail what happened,incase you have any ideas on how to repair it.
I do all my editting and reading of the SD card using a Linux operating system on my laptop. My heroes image is accessible just fine on my laptop. I have found the programs to read ext file formats on Windows to not always work properly. What opperating system are you using on your computer?
I got frustrated with using Windows to read/write Linux filesystem, so my laptop dual boots Linux and windows.
This is the program I use to edit the games database.
https://sqlitebrowser.org

ops ... it's still power up...? than better to check all pcb's voltage regulators and diodes

[Akira84]

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... _5Hks97STH
If it works the above is a link to my Google drive with pictures of my board. Was not sure how to upload photos.
The j38 connector on my board, has 3 pins , two of the pins have a jumper on them. I believe it's the equivalent of a power switch, as without the jumper the board does not turn on.
A loose wire touched the j38 connector and I believe connected the empty pin to the jumpered pins, saw a small spark, puff of smoke and smelled a burning smell.
Now when I power on the board, 2 red leds on the board stay lit, one blinks , which I think is normal.
But all I get on my monitor is some pink colored lines.
Prior to this, I would get the same colored lines if I had no SD card in it or the wrong SD card.

[Akira84]

Here is some random info on the gpio for my board, the jamma edge, and gpio pins are both connected to the J11 spot on my board. Looking at other orange pi boards, J11 is used for a camera interface.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1elOrpL ... p=drivesdk
So that is probably why the controls don't work on the non jamma board.

[Akira84]

Here is a zip file of the mame37 folder and files, and a modified games.db file with the 11 ROMs added to it.
They should display, be playable and have a video preview.
Extract the zip, copy the contents of the mame37 folder to the empty mame37 folder, make a back up of your games.db file, then replace it with my modified file and it should work.
I have no way to test it but it should work.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... VOJOz9TAqd

[6buttonmash]

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... _5Hks97STH
If it works the above is a link to my Google drive with pictures of my board. Was not sure how to upload photos.
The j38 connector on my board, has 3 pins , two of the pins have a jumper on them. I believe it's the equivalent of a power switch, as without the jumper the board does not turn on.
A loose wire touched the j38 connector and I believe connected the empty pin to the jumpered pins, saw a small spark, puff of smoke and smelled a burning smell.
Now when I power on the board, 2 red leds on the board stay lit, one blinks , which I think is normal.
But all I get on my monitor is some pink colored lines.
Prior to this, I would get the same colored lines if I had no SD card in it or the wrong SD card.

Firstly everything im about to say do powered off until i say or it may also be you that ends up not working right (humans dont like mains electricity)

Look around that jumper, you are correct it does act as a power switch, on my board (it came in one of the typical 2 player pandora metal desktop boxes) i do not have a jumper but a connector which uses the same 2 pins which is connected via 2 wires to a on/off switch at the back. You want to make sure it is not burnt in anyway and is still soldered properly to the board. (prod very lightly with tweezers or similar the soldered pins on the bottom of the board to check its still soldered if its not you will see movement). If it is still soldered and there are no burning marks. Then...........

Move on to the DC power jack on your board, check that for any signs of burn and bad solder joints, make sure its still attached as it should be if that is also fine Then.........

Go back to the jumper, is it a removable jumper (a bit like what was on the back of old IDE hard disks and what some motherboards still have)??? If it is removable, take it off the board to expose the pins more. Then........

Find something that has a very small metal tip one end and plastic, rubber or similar the other end (a very tiny tipped screwdriver would be ideal or failing that a bit of thin wire that is insulated and only has a tiny amount of wire exposed at each end)

touch the 2 pins the jumper was connected to with the tip of the screwdriver (or your chosen implement) and while holding it there plug the board into the PSU... MAKE SURE your hands are not touching anything metal (including any metal bit of the screwdriver, wire or whatever you are using).......... Does it then work?

If yes congrats you have discovered the Chinese person that made your board used a jumper with stupidly thin metal/wire in it and what has happened is when you shorted it, it has broke the connection in that jumper. To fix that i suggest fitting a switch (or you can bodge it and bridge both points/pins on the board where that jumper was with a bit of solder)

If it still does not work, the next thing i would try is re-making/burning your image file to the SDcard (preferably try a different SDcard to what you were using, its possible your SDcard has got fried in some way when your accident happened)

If it still does not work i personally would then start getting out the volt meter and checking readings both where the power enters and at the jumper/switch points on the board, from there i would check the 2 silver capacitors (one is right next to the jumper on your board and then there is another just above it. If you then still have no joy id start to think the worse and that a chip or similar/important/not easy to get hold of component has cooked itself

PS..........
I can solve the mystery of why your board has to use an SDcard...... Your board does not have any EMMC/Onboard storage on it. The chip for that is missing from your board, it is located on my board right above the SDcard slot. On your board the space is unpopulated (a white rectangle with a white + sign in the middle of it, right next to that uboot switch)

PPS....
Nice job with the TTL soldering, planning on doing some USB debugging as well are you


@nasoftz
I tried your holding the coin and 1 player buttons down when powering up my box, and even tapping them together, alternately but no luck getting into that hidden chines menu on my board....... Really makes me damn well wonder what was being pressed now when it happened. Ive spent most of the day trying to do it again with various button presses and still can not get it again


PPPS............
Thanks to you both reading and replying with the info on the editor you use for the game.db file may have a play with that at the weekend to see what i can add from MAME

[Akira84]

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... 4dySvYNNAm
The above link is a couple pictures of some components that look off.
One is an led that still works but looks like some possible bubbling around it.
Not sure what the other component is but it looks possibly melted or it was just malformed to start with.
The jumper is removable like a hard drive jumper but it is intact and still works.
Capacitor s test good in the circuit and are receiving 12 volts when plugged in.
Tried a couple SD cards still not working.
Are the lights on the Ethernet port supposed to be lit up? They are not lit up.
Tested random spots on the board for power, the spots that I thought should have power do.
Plugged the board into my computer to use as a USB encoder for the joystick s and that part still works.
Not sure what else to test, lots of surface mounted components and it's hard to trace any of circuit s.

On another note, you guys should try plugging your boards into a computer it should show up as 2 gamepads, check if all buttons and joysticks work. On mine even before the accident would not register all buttons, I think it was the coin and start buttons did not work, curious if they fixed that issue with either of your revision s. If they all do work on yours then it's an easy way to get your controls working on retrorange pi etc. You just use a male to male USB cord and plug your board into itself

[6buttonmash]

Picture 1 and 2 if that is the LED and it still lights up is probably fine, even if it did not light up i doubt that is the issue. From your picture there are basically just 2 traces on the board that run to that LED (assuming there are not more on the other side of the board) which will be to power it, the little resistor next to the LED just ensures it does not get too much power, if anything that would likely blow first and then take the LED with it.

Picture 3 and 4 if you are referring to the winbond chip is also probably ok though the soldering does not look the best (particularly the top 3 right pins as you look at the picture) you could if confident with a soldering iron have a go at reflowing the legs on that chip, take a picture after like you have been and zoom in to make sure nothing is bridged and then try the board again, personally though id guess the best i can just from the pics its probably ok just poorly soldered.

Ethernet lights on mine DO light up (one red one green LED) only when an Ethernet cable is plugged in. And sometimes temporarily at very first power on.

I have had another thought on why your board may not be working looking back at the old pics you uploaded........ When did you solder on the USB debug cable??? did you do that before or after the board failed? It may be worth checking that you have not bridged the 2 points to the little "uboot" switch/button when you were soldering. I do know for a fact if you hold that "uboot" button down when you power on the board does not boot and you sometimes get the weird pink screen you had, so could something to do with that be bridged/broken? Also with the board powered off try pressing that tiny uboot button a few times to make sure it still clicks/feels tactile.

My board from what i remember works ALMOST FULLY when plugged into a PC but the buttons are weirdly configured, button A, B, C for example rather than showing as something obvious like 1,2,3 show as something silly like button 5,8,2 <<< or other randomness, dont remember exactly what. P1 coin and start buttons register (again as some random number you would not expect) while for P2 coin/pause button and start only one of them worked properly (i dont remember which), if you pressed the other button then in windows device manager/controllers it would result in none of the other buttons working after pressing it. Id need to check more as beyond that i never bothered with it on my computer as i assumed it would just be a pain to use. Before i can recheck id have to buy a male usb to usb cable as the one that came with my system i gave away to a friend to use in his bar top arcade build. I also only have a windows system running at the moment so how that detects things may conflict/be different to what it does for you with a Linux computer. But yeah for me the 2p pause/coin/start button side of things like you does not work quite right from memory.

I do not have an orangepi to test it on though the usb to usb connecting of it is a good idea for people that want to run retroorangepi on the board I have a raspberry pi which ive tested it on previously and the stick and buttons when plugged in via the PS3/controller USB port to a raspberry pi using retropie/emulationstation did not work, i guess retropie on the raspberry pi does not have the drivers for it.

[nasoftz]

You just use a male to male USB cord and plug your board into itself

already tried doesn t work with retropie image but I m planning to make more test installing some alternative controller drivers on retropie setup
about your damaged board, looking at pictures of your board , if you do not see clear sign of damages and like you already suspect, the problem is probably first components near that jumper, check all of them around with a multimeter following the circuit.

[6buttonmash]

What i would personally do if i wanted to run Retrorangepi on the box and have no luck getting the controllers working for it due to driver issues, is buy some type of cheap USB encoder known to work on RaspberryPis, OrangePis, BannaPis, PCs and Android like this thing...

ZeroDelayBoard_grande.jpg

and in very simple terms do this mod...

buttonmodpan.jpg

After doing that you could plug the Grey cable into the back of the Pandora box on one of the normal USB Ports (The NON PS3 USB or whatever it is called on your version). You could also then connect it to a PC, Consoles and probably 99% of all small board computers available with no issues.

Would require some soldering or reconnector -ing / rewiring, but that would allow it to work in regular Pandora/Heroes Mode, also use Retrorangepi as and when you want and allow you to hook the stick up to other devices without driver issues in most cases. Not a perfect solution i grant but an easy one if willing to spend time doing wiring.

[cheezemasta]

Hello Everyone! I have recently purchased the "Heroes" board that states it is a 3d Pandora Games board when you boot it up. I've only been able to get it to recognize PS2 ISO's so far with the usb on the back. Is there a fairly easy way to add mame roms and possibly dreamcast type games etc to this? Here is a link to what my board looks like and the Heroes Bios from the menu screen! Thanks for any help!

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6y16bqrttoxc ... 6bT4a?dl=0