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Pandora DXadd

The document provides instructions for adding custom games to the Pandora's Box DX (PBDX). It is recommended to copy the contents of the PBDX SD card to an external USB stick to avoid issues with limited save space on the SD card and for easier access to files. Games can then be added to the USB stick by placing them in folders that the PBDX expects, such as roms_playstation. This allows for trouble-free saving, backing up, and editing of files without opening the device.

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Fer Nanda
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165 views

Pandora DXadd

The document provides instructions for adding custom games to the Pandora's Box DX (PBDX). It is recommended to copy the contents of the PBDX SD card to an external USB stick to avoid issues with limited save space on the SD card and for easier access to files. Games can then be added to the USB stick by placing them in folders that the PBDX expects, such as roms_playstation. This allows for trouble-free saving, backing up, and editing of files without opening the device.

Uploaded by

Fer Nanda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

I've been seeing a lot of people asking about how they can add their

own games to the Pandora's Box DX lately, so let's talk about it.
Before we get to the meat and potatoes though, there are a few
considerations to make.

A Few Thoughts Before Starting


Before you start heading down this path, there are a few things I
would like you to think about first and then I will make a
recommendation.

The way the PBDX works is that the main motherboard has a flash
chip that contains the main operating system. On most other Pandora's
Boxes, the games and the main operating system itself is contained on
the same SD card and it's not the case here. This allows us a bit more
flexibility over how we want to do things. Because the main operating
system is not on the PBDX SD card, you can open up your Pandora's
Box DX, remove the SD card and put it right into your computer.
Unlike the Pandora's Box 6, there are no special hidden partitions or
secret data hidden anywhere on the SD card and it is formatted as
Fat32 so you can see all the file contents right on the card.

You have the ability to add your own games directly to the SD card if
you wish. You can also just use a USB stick for new games you want
to add and leave the original 3000 on the SD card. You could decide
to buy a larger SD card (original SD card is 32GB) and copy the
contents of the original one over to give you more space for games,
save files, etc... Or you can even copy the full contents of the SD card
to an external USB stick and remove the PBDX SD card entirely and
keep it somewhere safe as a backup. In all these scenarios, you'll still
be able to play all your games.

Why is any of this important?


Because the route you decide to choose here will affect how easy it is
to work with the PBDX in general when it comes to both adding new
games and fixing some of the issues some games have. Personally, I
don't want to dismantle my entire arcade stick and then open up the
Pandora's Box DX to get to the motherboard anytime I want to install
a game. That's a lot of work and effort to do something that should be
simple.

Also important to note here is that the PBDX now allows you to save
games and use save states. These files get written to the medium that
the game is being run from. For example, if you are running a default
game from the SD card and create a save state, that save state is stored
on the SD card. If you are running a game you added to the SD card,
that save game will also be on the SD card. If you are running a game
that you added to a USB stick, the save game will be written to the
USB stick instead.

The PBDX SD card has about 2GB reserved for save files, but that
could eventually be exhausted depending on how many games you
play or add. Also, let's say you wanted to back up your high scores.
There's the hassle of pulling the SD card out of the box every time you
want to do that.

My Setup Recommendation
Here's what I'm doing: Copy all files from the SD card to an external
USB stick, remove SD card from PBDX and keep somewhere safe for
backup.

Why?

• No need to worry about hitting the 2GB limit on save files on


the SD card.
• All save files will be stored on the same external USB stick
regardless of the game being a default or a newly added game so
you only ever need to go to one place to make changes/backups,
etc...
• So much easier to pull out the external USB stick to copy or edit
files and just reinsert into the PBDX without needing to take
everything apart, less wear and tear on potentially fragile SD
card.
• Allows your SD card to be a permanent backup.
• For someone like me that is taking a lot of time to learn and
tinker with things on the PBDX, being able to do everything
from the external USB stick is a godsend and makes things so
much more streamlined. It's a major reason why our PB6 hack
basically redirects everything to the USB stick - to make things
so much easier to change.

Once you've decided how you want to proceed, let's talk about
actually adding our own games.

Let's Get to Adding the Games


The good news here is that regardless of the path you've decided to
take, adding your own games works exactly the same way: Create the
folders that the PBDX looks for on the root of your preferred FAT32-
formatted medium and drop your games into those folders. That's it.

What folders does the PBDX look for added games in? What kinds of
formats are supported?

• roms_playstation - (Sony PlayStation -


.bin/.cue/.img/.mdf/.pbp/.toc/.cbn)
• roms_mame2003 - (MAME2003 - MAME 0.78 ROM set - .zip)
• roms_fba2012 (FBA2012 - FB Alpha v0.2.97.30 ROM set -
.zip)
• roms_md (Sega Megadrive/Genesis - .smd/.zip)
• roms_fc (Nintendo Famicom/NES - .nes/.zip)
• roms_sfc (Nintendo Super Famicom/SNES - .sfc/.zip)

The SD card already has these folders created for you so you can
proceed to dropping the games directly into the folders. You'll need to
manually create them on your external USB stick if that's the route
you've decided to go.

Troubleshooting / Additional Questions


• Is there a community collection of working ROMs just like what
you've done for the Pandora's Box 6? No, not yet, but it is
definitely in the plans. If you are interested in contributing,
please feel free to let me know.

• I've added a PlayStation game and it doesn't get added to the


game list. Make sure that the extension of the filename is in
lower case. FinalFantasy.pbp, not FinalFantasy.PBP.

• Does PS1 game Einhander work on the PBDX? What about the
PS1 versions of NFL Blitz that would crash on the PB6? Do we
still need to disable vibrations to avoid crashing the PS1
emulator? Einhander does indeed work on the PBDX. Yes, the
PS1 versions of NFL Blitz all work. No, you do not need to
disable vibration manually as the crash was fixed. (YAY!)

• I've added a Genesis/NES/SNES game but it does not launch


and returns immediately to the menu. The problem here is likely
in the filenames of your games. Spaces, underscores,
parentheses and quotation marks are all known characters that
will cause problems in your gamenames so you will want to
remove them. If you are using zipped ROMs, this goes for not
just the zip name but also for the ROM inside of it.

• Why aren't my games alphabetized? How do I order them


better? So the way the PBDX works is very much like the PB6
in this regard. Your default 3000 games always come first on the
list followed by the games you've added. For added games, the
order of games is like this:

• roms (default 3000 games)


• roms_fba2012

• roms_mame2003

• roms_fc

• roms_sfc

• roms_md

• roms_playstation

However, the PBDX will display the files from each of those
directories in file write order, because for some reason when you grab
a set of files to write to a USB stick, Windows does not write them out
in alphabetical order because that would be too easy. You can easily
use a program like DriveSort to sort the files alphabetically without
needing to recopy your files back over. Once you've used DriveSort
on each of your directories, you'll have each ROM folder
alphabetized. (I may write up a little tutorial on DriveSort. In the
meantime, all you really need to do is open your USB stick in the
program, select Sort and Save from the menus. Do this for each folder
you wish to sort and you're done.)

Sidebar: Why is the MAME version


supported older than the PB6? Isn't this
bad?
The Pandora's Box 6 used MAME 0.106 and the Pandora's Box DX is
using MAME 0.78. No, it isn't bad. It's basically a tradeoff. As
MAME progresses and matures, it gets more accurate over time and
also requires more powerful hardware. For boards like the Pandora's
Box, speed is essential so using an older version is more desirable on
this level of hardware. You may lose out on some games and bugfixes
that were added after the version being used, but it means that games
you may not have had enough speed to run before will run now. This
is especially true with the various Midway arcade games (NBA JAM,
Mortal Kombat 2, etc...) which struggled to play well on the PB6, but
now play beautifully on the PBDX.

I would highly suggest getting a PC and running latest MAME instead


if you are able to do so as that would blow away a Pandora's Box any
day, but if you're on this hardware, you have little choice in the matter
than using older MAME builds.

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