As rumoured on the baidu forums a couple of weeks ago, the V2.1 variant of the Retrogame RS97 has now made its way out to at least one customer. Discord user dribbletaint noticed there was a problem with his new unit when he tried to load OpenDingux on it and booted up to a white screen. After asking in the Discord channel and disassembling his device, it became apparent that the unit is the new version – V2.1. It looks like they silk screened the wrong year on to the board.
An upgrade is usually a nice thing to have, but in this case it’s a headache for both the developers and for the customers wanting to run OpenDingux immediately. The upgrade replaces the JZ4760 on the original 2.0 unit with the JZ4760B. I won’t pretend to know the intricate differences, and the datasheet links on the Ingenic website appear to be dead. Suffice to say, both CPUs are from 2010 and any performance upgrade from moving to the “B” version will likely be absolutely minimal at best.
The other difference, and the one that seems to break OpenDingux, is that the LCD has changed. It’s still the same size and same strange resolution but comes from a different manufacturer. The screen quality is arguably slightly better, but a rebuild of OpenDingux with the new LCD Driver will be needed to get the Open Source OS running on this version.
If you’ve received an RS97 and want to know which version you’ve got without taking it apart, you can probably tell from the front of the case. The new version has some screen printing on the widest edge of the screen, and it is also missing the cut out slot that’s present on the original.
Googling the part number EJ030NA-01B links to this site and the manufacturer appears to be Chimei Innolux.
I wouldn’t expect it’ll take very long for someone to build a working version of OpenDingux, so if you’ve got one of these in your hands just sit tight for a bit and keep your eye on the Dingoonity forum for updates.
update//
It looks as though someone on the Baidu forums has got it working.
Also, reading through some of MaxZhou88’s posts on the forum it seems this version may only have the screen change, not the JZ5760B CPU upgrade. Apparently that is to come in yet another update. 