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sf2000/README.md
vonmillhausen fbd7946b29 Update README.md 
Updated the custom firmware FAQ answer with the latest progress notes. Replaced the bootloader bug FAQ with a more generic FAQ covering the main situations under which the SF2000 fails to boot correctly. Added a brief note on the mysterious new `August 3rd` BIOS that has started appearing on some newer devices.
2023-08-19 17:44:04 +01:00

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SF2000

The SF2000 is a cheap hand-held emulation gaming console which was released in early 2023. Although the device itself is sold by a variety of vendors, it was the vendor "Data Frog" who caught public attention, and so the device is often simply referred to as "the Data Frog".

This document is a collection of notes and information I've made about the device.

Table of Contents

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Is this thing any good?

For a cheap device, it's actually fairly capable - most Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES and Genesis/Mega Drive games play at full speed, and many arcade, Game Boy Advance and SNES titles do as well. The device has an IPS panel (not OCA laminated), and a user-replaceable 18650 battery, which can be charged via a USB-C port on the device. It also has analog A/V out (note: not HDMI), meaning it can be connected to a CRT TV - the type of display most arcade, Genesis/Mega Drive and SNES games were originally intended to be displayed on. It has a built-in 2.4GHz antenna, and can receive input from a compatible wireless controller (usually sold separately).

Some downsides to the device: it's mono only (you only get the left-channel audio), there's no headphone jack (although there is a volume wheel), screen brightness cannot be altered (it's fairly bright), SNES and Game Boy Advance are hit-or-miss in terms of performance (some games are fine, many games run unplayably slowly), the stock firmware is closed-source so the device's performance may never get any better than as-shipped, and some folks have had issues with the buttons (quality control is hit-or-miss, and some folks have had terrible button response, such as a d-pad that can't do diagonals reliably, or ABXY buttons that sit flush with or even go under the case).

So is the "Data Frog" any good? Only you can answer that question for yourself. There are certainly more powerful devices out there, more fully featured devices, devices with better hardware, etc. - but almost all of those devices cost a lot more than the SF2000. At the end of the day, you have to look at the features offered at the given price-point, and only then can you decide if you're interested in the device or not.

Is there any custom firmware?

As of August 19th 2023, no, not yet. However efforts are underway; an SDK for the CPU has been identified, and custom firmware is now in the very early stages of development. Most recently, folks have been experimenting with trying to build different Retroarch cores, both to see if they build at all, and if they do, to see what their performance is like on the SF2000. Results thus far have varied. Some have functioned correctly, albeit at slow speeds; others have failed to run entirely. Most have crackly/broken audio due to running below correct speed, and some have no sound at all. Input problems with some cores have also been reported. The cores are individual cores, built as entire firmwares in their own right - there is currently no way to "switch" between cores without taking the microSD card out of the SF2000 and replacing the firmware with one built to contain a different core. Work on allowing the core to be switched by some mechanism is also an area of focus for future work by the devs.

A GitLab repo has been set up by ignatzdraconis for the work, and you can follow along with discussion in the Retro Handhelds Discord server (specifically, in the 🐸data_frog_sf2000 channel there's a SF2000 Dev thread where most of the tech talk and details are posted first). Note that any cores currently built should be considered highly experimental, and are not vetted to be "safe" to run (e.g., current builds may push the hardware of the SF2000 to its operational limits do to optimisation issues, and may incur thermal damage to the device if left running for too long, etc.).

I just got my SF2000; what modding can I do with it?

In no particular order, some of the current customisation options available are:

How do I install new menu themes?

The SF2000 doesn't natively support themes at all; however, all of the images and sounds for the stock theme live in the Resources folder on the microSD card. Therefore, by simply replacing the stock theme's files, the stock theme can be replaced.

A new centralised repository for boot logos, custom themes and background music has been created by Zerter#4954, which you can find here; you can also find many of them linked in the The Frog's Best Bits 🐸 thread of the 🐸data_frog_sf2000 channel in the Retro Handhelds Discord server.

Just take the files from the theme, and use them to replace the existing files on the microSD card. You might want to make your own backup of the stock Resources folder first, in case you want to go back to the stock theme yourself at a later date. Note also that in addition to theme assets, the Resources folder also contains data files related to your button mapping, favourites and history, etc.; so when backing up or replacing files in Resources for themes, just be aware not to overwrite anything non-theme-related you want to keep.

Another thing to note: some themes might come with an updated boot logo. If that logo is provided as a bisrv.asd file in the bios folder, this is actually a modified firmware for the device, which happens to contain the new logo. If you decide to replace your existing bisrv.asd file, you might want to make sure that the theme's firmware version matches the firmware version already on your device. Generally, it's probably safer just to update your own firmware's boot logo with an image file.

How do I change the four shortcuts/games listed on each system's main menu page?

Answer: with a fair bit of work! The images for the shortcuts are baked into each system's main menu background image - check out the "Images (Used)" section below, and use your browser's search feature to search for main menu background, and you'll see what I mean. Zerter#4954 has created a tool for theme makers which lets you more easily edit these icons, which you can find here. The text under each shortcut is stored in a separate image - in the 05.22 firmware, the files are gkavc.ers if the device's language is set to Chinese, or gakne.ctp for all other languages (again, check the details in the "Images (Used)" section below). Finally, the actual roms that are launched for each shortcut are stored in the xfgle.hgp file, which is plain text - you can learn more about it in the "ROM Lists" section below.

Recent versions of Tadpole by .ericgoldstein have support for changing the shortcuts if you're looking for a more automated way to do things.

SNES games run really slowly... what's wrong?

There's a bug in all stock firmware versions later than the original mid-March firmware which often causes SNES games to run really slowly on first launch (and their sound is slow and lower pitch too); this only impacts SNES. Usually this can be corrected by launching the game, then quitting back to the game selection menu via START + SELECT, and then immediately re-launching the game again. Note however that the stock firmwares do also struggle a bit with SNES emulation in general, so any additional slowdown after the second launch is just what you get.

Help! My SF2000 won't turn on, or is stuck at a black screen!

The three most likely causes for this are:

  • If you've switched to using a different microSD card than the one your SF2000 switched with, there's a good chance the new microSD card you're using is not compatible with the SF2000. The device seems to be very picky about the types of microSD cards it will or won't read. Try putting your original microSD card back into the SF2000 and see if it'll boot OK from that.
  • If you've done anything at all to the bios folder on the microSD card (anything at all), then there's a good chance you've run into the bootloader bug - you can find the two fixes to it below. Alternatively (or if neither of the two fixes work for you), follow Data Frog's instructions to wipe your microSD card and flash a clean firmware image.
  • Your battery could be running low. The SF2000 will still "turn on" when its battery is low on charge (the red light will still come on), but the device itself will actually fail to boot, just leaving you with a black screen. Turn the device off, and charge it fully (the stock battery takes 3.5 hours to charge from empty - the green charging light will not go out, so you'll have to time it yourself).

When I connect the SF2000 to a TV via the A/V cable, the sound is very quiet/low - is that normal?

It's "normal" for newer versions of the firmware, anyway! Older firmware versions had no issues with audio volume via A/V, but at least the 05.22 version does. Zerter#4954 from Discord found a workaround:

when I did this the AV audio work normally: I had to load the game first then plug-in the 2.5mm to rca jack. [...] but when I quit then exit then tried the game again it returns to very low audio. [...] will need to do the work around again

So you can try launching the game first, and then plug in the A/V cable to get full volume on the TV.

Game saves don't seem to be working for me? Save states are fine, but the built-in save function in games doesn't seem to work?

Unfortunately, correct - with the stock firmware, the built-in save feature of emulated games does not work correctly, and the SF2000 won't store new save data after the first time it's created for a game. If you want to save your progress in a game on the SF2000's stock firmware, use save states instead.

I have a question that isn't answered here... who or where do I ask?

If you have questions about the SF2000 you can't find the answer to, the best place to ask is in the 🐸data_frog_sf2000 channel in the Retro Handhelds Discord server.

Hardware

CPU

Although the main CPU of the SF2000 has literally had it's markings milled off by a routing tool, the community has determined that it's a HCSEMI B210, a single-core MIPS processor running at 810 MHz. It appears to be a clone of an ALi Tech chip. An SDK has been found for it.

Display

The SF2000 features a 240x320 IPS display panel (not OCA laminated), which has been rotated 90° clockwise to give a 320x240 display. It demonstrates screen tearing for all emulators, running from the right of the console to the left due to the panel rotation.

Buttons

The ABXY are basically a clone of the original SNES controller buttons. Although everyone seems to be getting two purple and two lilac coloured buttons, there's a disparity to the type of buttons folks are getting - some get two convex and two concave buttons, others have gotten three concave and one convex, etc..

Both the buttons and the underlying membrane from an original SNES controller can be swapped into the SF2000, which may improve the "feel" of the buttons. Note that the SF2000 uses ABXY buttons that have two plastic tabs sticking out to keep them in the shell (at 180 degrees from each other); some after-market SNES-style buttons have three tabs, and won't fit the housing.

Some folks have modded the stock ABXY buttons on their SF2000s by adding a thin strip of tape or other thin material into the circular depression under each button - this causes the buttons to be raised a bit higher out of the shell, and to not sink as far into the shell when the button is pressed.

D-Pad

Just like the ABXY buttons, the d-pad is a clone of the SNES d-pad. An original SNES d-pad and membrane can be swapped into the SF2000 as well.

Thumb Stick

The SF2000 uses a Switch-style thumb stick that does not depress for L2/R2. It is compatible with Switch thumb stick third-party covers.

Battery

The SF2000 takes a 18650 type rechargeable battery, which is easily user replaceable (it's behind a battery door with a screw), and comes with a 1,500mAh one which runs for about 4 hours. 18650 batteries with and without "nubs" both fit fine. The console has built-in over-charge protection, but does not have under-charge protection, so for safety do not leave the console turned on when the battery is low. From when it displays a full-screen low battery indicator, it takes about 3.5 hours to charge the stock battery. The green charging light does not turn off when fully charged.

Also note that while you can technically charge the SF2000 while it is powered on, doing so using a charger that supports fast charging or power delivery has a high chance of blowing the charging module IC and killing the device (multiple community reports). For safest charging, use a charger that only supports a maximum output of 5v.

Wireless Connectivity

The SF2000 does not feature wifi or Bluetooth, but it does have a 2.4Ghz antenna to support local wireless multiplayer using a compatible 2.4Ghz wireless controller for Player 2. The Y2 SFC wireless controller and the SF900 wireless controller have both been reported to work fine.

A/V Output

The SF2000 features a mini-jack for analogue composite A/V output. The device is capable of output a user-selectable PAL or NTSC video signal. Only the left audio channel is output - the device does not down-mix to mono, which results in missing audio channels in games that expect to output stereo sound.

There's some limited evidence to suggest the A/V output is at 576i. When outputting a PAL signal, while the signal is indeed 50Hz, it seems like the emulators are still targeting 60Hz output - PAL scrolling is "jerky". Switching the device to output NTSC, scrolling becomes smooth. This holds true regardless of using a PAL or NTSC version of a ROM. Depending on your external display, video output over A/V may be somewhat heavily cropped on all screen edges - if so, this can result in UI elements at screen edges in games (health bars, remaining credits, etc.) being out-of-frame. Switching between PAL and NTSC doesn't alter the visible screen area. I've tested with a modern flat-panel Panasonic TV (cropped), a 1980s Commodore 1702 monitor (cropped), and with an el-cheapo USB 2.0 "EasyCap" video-capture USB stick (not cropped).

On my own unit, plugging in a charging cable while outputting over A/V introduces a lot of video noise in the A/V signal; so those planning to use the SF2000 as a TV console may need to do so while running on battery for the best experience.

Emulators

The device advertises support for arcade, NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance; it also supports loading Master System ROMs. SNES and GBA performance are very hit-or miss (more miss than hit, really); the other consoles actually perform fairly well. All consoles currently stretch their output to fill the display, and do not maintain aspect ratio.

The SF2000 appears to be using Libretro with a custom front-end (i.e., not RetroArch).

Arcade

The device is running Final Burn Alpha v0.2.97.42 (Git commit 621e371). Thanks to some truly exceptional work by adcockm from the Retro Handhelds Discord, we know it supports an unusual mix of ROM sets, largely based on MAME 0.106 and Final Burn Alpha v0.2.97.42. adcockm has gone ahead and compiled two separate Clrmamepro dat files - one for all sets technically supported by the SF2000's current BIOS (as of May 2023; though note that "supported" does not mean working or playable), and one for all playable sets with duplicates removed (and note, "playable" may include games with missing sound, graphical glitches, performance issues, but are otherwise technically functional). If you want to build a working set (must be non-merged) from the dat files, adcockm has further provided a list of "hints" as the sets you'll need to track down - for obvious reasons neither I nor anyone else can provide links to such material, but hopefully the hints will get you something you can start searching for. Finally, there's also a HTML document with a list of all of the supported sets along with some useful metadata, such as the set's full name, playability information, screen orientation, etc.. The inrom column indicates if the ROM was included on the SF2000's stock microSD card; it's interesting to note that there were more ROMs located on the card than were defined in the mswb7.tax file (and thus available from the arcade game list); none of the unlisted games were actually playable on the SF2000, so it's possible someone from Data Frog actually tested the games to an extent, and removed ones from the available list that were broken.

adcockm also provided the following interesting statistics:

  • Number of arcade ROMs known by the SF2000's firmware: 1431
  • Number properly rotated: 1291
  • Number with vertical orientation: 134
  • Number with screen upside-down: 6
  • Number "playable" (maybe no sound, some slowness, minor graphics issues): 949
  • Number unplayably broken but technically running: 175
  • Number fully broken (load hang/crash, etc.): 307
  • Number of playable unique games (dupes filtered out) in proper rotation: 354
  • Number of playable unique games (dupes filtered out) with rotated display: 61
  • Number of different versions of Street Fighter 2: 60+ 😵‍💫 [Von Millhausen: I think this stat is only half a joke!]
  • Playable set total size: 3.10 GB (3,336,344,502 bytes)
  • Full set total size: 11.4 GB (12,245,306,389 bytes)

.skp Files

Another thing worth mentioning about arcade emulation on the SF2000; in the ARCADE folder on the microSD card is a sub-folder called skp. This folder contains (by default) 167 .skp files, each named after one of the zipped ROM sets in the ARCADE/bin folder (e.g., mslug.zip.skp). These files are actually save state bundle files, just like the ones you can save yourself using the save state feature - the only difference is that these have the .skp extension instead of .sa#, and these are loaded automatically when the game itself is loaded. Many of these files start their respective arcade game up with a credit already inserted. One speculative possibility for why these files exist is that some arcade games will start to a dip-switch screen, or some other ROM-check screen, which may be difficult to bypass with the SF2000's limited controls - a save state that automatically loads past such a screen is therefore very useful to have.

As the .skp files are just save states under a different name, if you want to mess around with them you can use my Save State Tool to do so - if you're creating a new .skp file, just pick any save state slot, and change the downloaded SF2000 save state bundle extension from .sa# to .skp.

You can learn more about save states below.

NES

Emulator is FCEUmm (Git commit 7cdfc7e). There are references in the firmware to different NES palettes, but there's no interface or configuration for the emulator itself to choose one. On the original firmware, the A and B buttons were swapped. See "Button Mappings/Key Bindings" section below.

SNES

Emulator is Snes9x 2005 v1.36 (Git commit b94a804). With the April 20th version of the firmware, SNES games often appear to run very slowly on first launch; but if you exit the game and load it again, it usually starts performing much better.

Genesis/Mega Drive

Emulator is PicoDrive 1.91 (Git commit cbc93b6). Works pretty well. This emulator is capable of loading Master System ROMs if placed in the user ROMs folder on the microSD card; Game Gear ROMs do not load. Some PAL-region games may run too fast; NTSC-region games seem to always run at the correct speed. On the original firmware, A was mapped to A, B was mapped to B, and RB was mapped to C for some reason. See "Button Mappings/Key Bindings" section below.

Game Boy

Emulator is TGB Dual v0.8.3 (Git commit 9be31d3). Uses a black and white colour palette, which currently cannot be changed. On the original firmware, the A and B buttons were swapped. See "Button Mappings/Key Bindings" section below.

Game Boy Color

Emulator is TGB Dual v0.8.3 (Git commit 9be31d3). On the original firmware, the A and B buttons were swapped. See "Button Mappings/Key Bindings" section below.

Game Boy Advance

Emulator is gpSP v0.91 (Git commit 261b2db). Performance is fairly poor. On the original firmware, A and B buttons are mapped correctly, but the GBA shoulder buttons are mapped to X and Y for some reason. See "Button Mappings/Key Bindings" section below.

While the SF2000 does include a copy of the real GBA BIOS file in the bios folder, there's a bug in the 05.22 firmware (and possibly earlier firmwares) that prevents that BIOS from ever actually being loaded. As such, gpSP always falls back to the built-in "NORMMATT" BIOS instead (a reverse-engineered BIOS that is not identical to Nintendo's one). This has been noted to have some compatibility issues - for example, the main menu on "The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap" is broken on a stock SF2000 using the 05.22 firmware due to the NORMMATT BIOS. You can correct for this bug by copying the gba_bios.bin file from the bios folder to the two following locations (create any folders as needed - and credit to bnister for the finding!):

  • GBA/mnt/sda1/bios/gba_bios.bin (this fixes it for the main GBA game list)
  • ROMS/mnt/sda1/bios/gba_bios.bin (this fixes it for GBA games added to the user ROMS folder)

Save States

All of the above emulators support stave sates natively through an interface that is accessed by pressing SELECT + START simultaneously in-game. Four save state slots are provided per-game; the files have the extensions .sa0, .sa1, .sa2 and .sa3 depending on which slot they're for. The extension is appended to the name of the ROM file the save state is for; for example, if the ROM is called Apotris.gba, and the save state is for slot 2, then the save state file name will be Apotris.GBA.sa1. One weird note is that save states created for ROMs stored in the user ROMS folder on the device get their ROM file extension capitalised when a save state is created (as per the previous example with Apotris, where .gba became .GBA); this does not happen with save states created in the other ROM folders. The capitalisation doesn't appear to matter - the SF2000 successfully loads save states with any extension capitalisation in any folder.

The save state files themselves contain two zlib-compressed data blobs, plus associated metadata - one blob for the raw save state data created by the emulator itself, and one blob for the thumbnail used for the save state in the UI. The exact format is as follows

  • The first four bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the length of the zlib-compressed raw save state data
  • The next N bytes are the zlib-compressed raw save state data
  • The next four bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the width of the thumbnail image in pixels
  • The next four bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the height of the thumbnail image in pixels
  • The next four bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the length of the zlib-compressed thumbnail data
  • The next N bytes are the zlib-compressed thumbnail data (deflates to a raw RGB565 image, much like many of the other images used by the SF2000 UI)
  • The last four bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the offset within the file of where the thumbnail metadata starts (i.e., the offset of the first byte of width data)

If you want to mess around with SF2000 save states, you can do so using my SF2000 Save State Tool, which you can find here.

Default ROMs

The default full firmware for the SF2000 comes with over 6000 ROMs across the seven supported systems. The manual suggests these are for "demonstration purposes" only, and should be deleted by the owner (with any failure to do so not being their responsibility) - despite the fact that the SF2000's menus are hard-coded for this specific list of ROMs. The ROM files themselves are a custom bundle format; the first 59,904 bytes are an RGB565 image shown as a thumbnail beside the game when selected in a game-list, and the remainder of the file is a slightly mangled/obfuscated ZIP file containing the game's single ROM file. The only exception to this format are the arcade ROMs, which consist of a plain-old Final Burn Alpha ROM zip file, coupled with a .zfb file containing the thumbnail image and a pointer to the ROM zip file name.

I was curious to see how the included ROMs matched up against the current "No-Intro" catalogue for each of the non-arcade systems, so I wrote a small script to extract the ROMs from the SF2000's bundles (05.22 firmware), and compare the hashes against the current (June 9th, 2023) set of No-Intro DAT files. You can find a big HTML file with all of the results here, and a raw CSV file of the same data here. You can click most of the column headers in the HTML version to sort the table by that column. The NES ROMs had their first 16-bytes stripped to remove their "iNES" header (thanks for the tip, bnister!), and were compared against the "header-less" No-Intro NES dat file.

Firmware/BIOS (bisrv.asd)

The firmware for the SF2000 is actually located on the microSD card, in a file called bisrv.asd located in the BIOS folder. This file is a monolithic binary blob, which contains the device's OS, the emulators, their settings... basically everything. Data Frog have issued some firmware updates for the device since launch; the updates have added new features (e.g., additional language support, favourites, history, etc.), but have also introduced bugs (e.g., some SNES games run very slowly until they are quit and launched again, etc.). Data Frog have published a YouTube video showing how to update the firmware on the device, which you can find here; the video's description contains a link to where you can download the latest firmware.

Known firmware versions are currently (dates approximate):

Date Version Notes
Mid-March ? The original firmware that shipped with the first batch of devices
April 20th ? The first official firmware update; fixed some button mappings for Genesis, added support for 15 new languages. Also partially broke SNES compatibility - many SNES games will run very slowly on first launch, but quitting and immediately re-launching the game will have it run at normal speed (normal for the SF2000, anyway)
May 15th ? Added a built-in UI for global button mapping (which is broken in several ways, mainly SNES and Genesis controls are swapped, and no support for setting Player 2 controls), added a History feature, added a Favourites feature
May 22nd 1.5V First firmware with an official version number. Fixed the SNES/Genesis swapped button mappings, and now sets Player 2 controls to be identical to Player 1 (no way to set independently). There's some evidence of undocumented emulation improvements; some GBA homebrew that was non-functional in previous firmwares now loads correctly, and some GBA titles see marginally improved performance

There's a new firmware that has started appearing on some devices delivered to folks around the end of July, beginning of August 2023 that seem to have a different BIOS on them than any of the four above; I'm dubbing this BIOS the August 3rd or 08.03 BIOS as that was when its MD5 hash was first posted to the Retro Handhelds Discord server. Currently, little is know about this BIOS revision, including whether or not it's official; at least initially it appears to be very similar to the May 22nd revision.

Custom firmware (CFW) is currently in the very early stages of development (see here). In the meantime, the stock firmware has been investigated quite a bit; here are some findings from it:

Bootloader Bug

The bootloader on the SF2000 (the bit of code embedded in the devices hardware; it initialises things, and kicks-off loading of the BIOS from bisrv.asd) has a bug, which can cause the SF2000 to lock-up with a black screen during boot if the bios folder has been messed with. Specifically, the bug is triggered when the bios folder's FAT table contains a multiple of 4 entries, or a multiple of 4 plus 1.

If your device is currently not booting, and you've modified the bios folder in any way (e.g., patching a new boot logo, upgrading firmware, etc.), you can attempt to get the SF2000 booting again by creating empty text files inside the bios folder, one at a time (this creates new FAT entries, and should get you away from numbers of entries the stock bootloader doesn't like). For example, create an empty file in the bios folder called "temp1.txt", put the microSD card back in the SF2000, and see if it boots. If it still doesn't, add a "temp2.txt" file to the bios folder, put the card back in the SF2000 and try booting again, etc..

Alternatively, bnister found the root cause for the bug, and has created a patch which permanently fixes it (no added files required). Below are the patching instructions.

NOTE: While many people have already reported success with patching their bootloader, and no-one has yet reported any issues with it, this patch should be considered experimental:

  1. Ensure your SF2000 is in a state where it boots normally when turned on (displays a boot logo, proceeds to the main menu)
  2. Ensure your SF2000's battery is fully charged (having the device power off during the patching process will likely "brick" it, rendering it inoperable)
  3. Power off the SF2000, and remove the microSD card
  4. Connect the microSD card to your computer
  5. Download this zip file: SF2000_bootloader_bugfix.zip
  6. Extract the zip file; inside is a folder called UpdateFirmware, containing a single file called Firmware.upk
  7. Copy the UpdateFirmware folder to the root of the microSD card, so that the UpdateFirmware folder is in the same place as the bios and roms folders
  8. Eject the microSD card from your computer, and put it back in the SF2000
  9. Turn the SF2000 on; you should see a message in the lower-left corner of the screen indicating that patching is taking place. The process will only last a few seconds
  10. When the patching is complete, you will be taken to the main menu as usual
  11. Power off the SF2000, and remove the microSD card
  12. Connect the microSD card to your computer
  13. Delete the UpdateFirmware folder (it's no longer needed)

Button Mappings/Key Bindings

bnister discovered that the OS supports loading game-specific key bindings from .kmp files, stored in the save folder for each system and named after a game's ROM file (e.g., /FC/save/Game Name.EXT.kmp). They also discovered where in the bisrv.asd file the default mappings for each emulator are stored. Working with this information, notv37 worked out what bits related to what buttons for each emulator. Using both their findings, we now have a tool which can be used to update both the global button mappings for the emulators, as well as create per-ROM mappings - you can find this tool here.

Note that the game-specific key bindings function have been removed from the May 15th firmware onwards.

When the device is powered on, a "Welcome" image is displayed for a short time before the main menu appears. This image comes from inside bisrv.asd, (towards the end; exact offset varies between BIOS revisions). It's a 512x200 RGB565 Little Endian raw image file, and looks like this:

Boot Logo

The image is actually displayed at half-resolution on the internal display though, 256x100, centred in the middle of the screen. The boot logo can be changed to an arbitrary 256x100 image using a web-based tool I wrote, which you can find here.

Resources

The Resources folder on the microSD card contains all of the resources used by the device's firmware to construct the user interface at runtime. The following tables list the files from various firmware versions (the numbered columns, in approximate mm.dd format) and what they are used for, grouped by broad categories. Resolution and format given are for the latest firmware version only; details may be different for older firmwares. The icons in the firmware columns have the following meanings:

  • ✨: file is new to this firmware version
  • ✅: file is unchanged this firmware version
  • 🚩: file is changed this firmware version
  • ❌: file is removed this firmware version

Fonts

Filename 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description
Arial_cn.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ The "Arial" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, and Japanese characters. Duplicate of yahei_Arial.ttf, the single font file from the original firmware version
Arial_en.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ The "Arial" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew and Arabic characters
Arial_jp.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ The "Arial" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese and Japanese characters
Arial_kr.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ The "Arial" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters
Tahoma.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ The "Tahoma" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic and Thai characters
yahei_Arial.ttf ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ The "Arial" typeface, containing Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters

Images (Used)

As far as I am aware, all of the below images are actively used by the 20230515 version of the firmware; happy to take any corrections if it turns out any of them are unused! Note that while the stock theme is based around a 640x480 resolution, the actual display on the SF2000 is a 320x240 one. The OS on the device uses nearest-neighbour scaling for its images, giving the stock UI a somewhat aliased appearance. If you're planning to make your own theme for the SF2000, design it for 320x240, and then double the resolution when exporting the final images to the device for a crisper look on the internal panel. I've written a generic image tool for the SF2000 - it lets you convert SF2000-formatted images to PNG files, and lets you convert PNG or JPEG images to SF2000 formats (which may be useful if you want to theme your device); you can find this tool here.

Filename Resolution Format 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description View
aepic.nec 1008x164 BGRA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Korean view
apisa.dlk 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ Arcade game-list background view
appvc.ikb 150x214 BRGA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game art placeholder view
awusa.tax 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Thai view
bisrv.nec 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 3) view
bttlve.kbp 60x144 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Battery level indicator icons view
c1eac.pal 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ SNES game-list background view
cero.phl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy Color game-list background view
certlm.msa 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ NES game-list indicator view
cketp.bvs 640x816 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ The console selection images at the bottom of the new button mapping feature screen view
d2d1.hgp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 2) view
dism.cef 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 1) view
djctq.rsd 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ SNES game-list indicator view
djoin.nec 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Spanish view
dpskc.ctp 640x320 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu save-state slots (positions 1, 2, 3 and 4) view
drivr.ers 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ SNES main menu background view
dsuei.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ User ROMs main menu background view
dxdiag.bin 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Genesis/Mega Drive game-list indicator view
dxkgi.ctp 1008x164 BRGA ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in English view
dxva2.nec 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Search keyboard (pressed) view
ectte.bke 161x126 BRGA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Main menu icon selection box view
efsui.stc 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ Game Boy Advance game-list background view
esent.bvs 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Turkish view
exaxz.hsp 152x1224 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ ✅ Main menu "Games Exist" and "Start: Open" labels for all languages view
fixas.ctp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ NES main menu background view
fltmc.sta 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy game-list background view
fvecpl.ai 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy game-list indicator view
gakne.ctp 576x256 BGRA ✨ ✅ A new copy of the English menu labels image, identical to older versions of dxkgi.ctp (which was changed entirely in 05.15) view
gkavc.ers 576x256 BGRA ✨ ✅ A new copy of the Chinese menu labels image, identical to older versions of itiss.ers (which was changed entirely in 05.15) view
gpsvc.bvs 392x80 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu save-state slot (position 3) view
hctml.ers 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Arcade main menu background view
hgcpl.cke 392x80 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu save-state slot (position 2) view
hlink.bvs 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Search keyboard (hover) view
htui.kcc 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy Color game-list indicator view
icm32.dll 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy Advance game-list indicator view
icuin.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Genesis/Mega Drive main menu background view
igc64.dll 217x37 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Yes" and "No" text, with "No" selected; used when being asked if you want to overwrite a save-game slot view
ihdsf.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Genesis/Mega Drive game-list background view
irftp.ctp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy Advance main menu background view
irmon.tax 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Dutch view
itiss.ers 1008x164 BRGA ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Chinese view
jccatm.kbp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Battery Empty" screen view
ke89a.bvs 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Portuguese view
kmbcj.acp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ The full-screen background image for the new button mapping screen view
ksxbar.ax 392x80 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu save-state slot (position 4) view
lfsvc.dll 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Search game-list background view
lk7tc.bvs 52x192 BGRA ✨ ✅ Transparent labels for the button assignments in the new button mapping feature; these are the ones overlaid on the big SF2000 image showing the current assignments view
lkvax.aef 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ History game-list background view
mkhbc.rcv 640x1440 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ Six vertically-stacked images of the SF2000 with different buttons highlighted, used as part of the new button mapping feature's UI view
mksh.rcv 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Search keyboard (normal) view
msdmo.gdb 392x80 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu save-state slot (position 1) view
msgsm.dll 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Arcade game-list indicator view
mssvp.nec 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Japanese view
normidna.bin 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Search game-list indicator view
ntdll.bvs 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Polish view
nvinf.hsp 16x240 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Latin numbers 0 to 9 listed vertically, used for the number of games available in each main menu category view
okcg2.old 32x32 BGRA ✨ ✅ The star icon that appears beside favourited games in the game-lists view
pcadm.nec 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Italian view
pwsso.occ 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 4) view
qasf.bel 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ User game-list background view
qwave.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy Color main menu background view
rmapi.tax 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in German view
sdclt.occ 120x240 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ 🚩 🚩 ✅ TV system selection icons view
sensc.bvs 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in French view
sfcdr.cpl 576x1344 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ ✅ Main menu system logos view
subst.tax 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Russian view
ucby4.aax 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Arabic view
urlkp.bvs 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ NES game-list background view
uyhbc.dck 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ Favourites game-list background view
vidca.bvs 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Hebrew view
vssvc.nec 1008x164 BRGA ✨ 🚩 ✅ User settings screen icons and labels in Malay view
wshrm.nec 217x37 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Yes" and "No" text, with "Yes" selected; used when being asked if you want to overwrite a save-game slot view
xajkg.hsp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Game Boy main menu background view
ztrba.nec 64x320 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ Non-transparent labels for the button assignments in the new button mapping feature; these are the ones that pop up when you go to change a button assignment view

Images (Unused)

To the best of my knowledge, the following image files are currently unused by the 20230515 firmware, and were probably left over from previous devices (the SF2000 shares a bit of lineage with some USB-stick devices) or development. The images marked "Alternate UI" below appear to have been for a UI where the systems were scrolled through horizontally, and the "shortcut" games for each system were scrolled vertically.

Filename Resolution Format 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description View
aeinv.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Genesis/Mega Drive main menu background view
aepic.ers 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: User main menu background view
c1e.pal 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ CPS2 game-list background view
cca.bvs 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 1; Chinese language hardcoded) view
dectMap.key 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Button test screen (active) view
desk.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Eight-game selection screen view
djoin.hsp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Arcade main menu background view
fcont.ctp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: User main menu background view
fdbil.ph 1100x120 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Large icons for each system, including systems not supported by the SF2000 (selected) view
gpapi.bvs 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ In-game menu (position 5; looks like it was for some kind of button layout changing UI) view
ihds.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Genesis/Mega Drive game-list background, with baked-in thumbnail placeholder view
kdill.hsp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Game Boy Advance main menu background view
logilda.be 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ CPS1 game-list indicator view
mfc64.emc 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ CPS2 game-list indicator view
mfpmp.ers 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Arcade main menu background view
mhg4s.ihg 400x192 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ Background and buttons for a "warning" prompt with "OK", "Yes" and "No" buttons. Also has rounded edges stored in a separate image file, zaqrc.olc view
mrtac.klo 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Neo Geo game-list indicator view
msdtc.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Game Boy Advance main menu background view
mswbv.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Game Boy Advance main menu background view
nettrace.dll 40x24 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Unknown game-list indicator (grey joystick with yellow buttons) view
nsibm.ctp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Arcade main menu background view
nvinfohsp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Genesis/Mega Drive main menu background (note: there's no extension separator for this file, I suspect the file name is typo'd in the filesystem!) view
pcadm.hsp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: User main menu background (NTSC TV system selected) view
plasy.ers 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Game Boy Advance main menu background view
rmapi.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: User main menu background (English UI language selected) view
seltMap.key 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Button test screen view
spmpm.gdp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: NES game-list background, with baked-in thumbnail placeholder view
subst.bke 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Arcade main menu background view
tsmcf.cpl 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Alternate UI: Arcade main menu background view
url.bvs 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ CPS1 game-list background view
werui.ioc 320x240 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "NODATA" save-state thumbnail placeholder image, with a "horror" style typeface view
wshom.ocx 1100x120 BGRA ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Large icons for each system, including systems not supported by the SF2000 (normal) view
x86e.hgp 640x480 RGB565 Little Endian ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ Neo Geo game-list background view
zaqrc.olc 8x224 BGRA ✨ ✅ Rounded ends that pair with the warning dialogue stored in mhg4s.ihg view

Other Files

These are other files that have been identified, which don't fit into the other categories. Non-Latin characters in the files are encoded in UTF-8.

Filename 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description
Archive.sys ✨ 🚩 ✅ ✅ Stores the settings for UI language and TV system. Two 32-bit words (4-bytes), little endian. The first is UI language; 0x00000000 is English, 0x01000000 is Chinese, etc.. The second is the TV system setting; 0x00000000 is NTSC, 0x01000000 is PAL. Note the "🚩" icon here indicates the format of the data, or the permissible values were changed (as opposed to the data itself, which will vary from device to device based on user settings)
bfrjd.odb ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Korean
bxvtb.sby ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Thai
dufdr.cwr ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Turkish
eknjo.ofd ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Spanish
Favorites.bin ✨ ✅ Used to store the list of ROMs added to the Favorites list; only appears after the first game is favourited after installing the 05.15 or later firmware. User ROMs cannot be added to favourites, only built-in games
fhshl.skb ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in English
Foldername.ini ✨ 🚩 🚩 ✅ Used to control menu rotation for the main menu; see below for more notes on this
History.bin ✨ ✅ Used to store the history of played ROMs; only appears after the first game is played after installing the 05.15 or later firmware. User ROMs are not added to history, only built-in games. If a built-in game that is referenced in history is removed from the device, the device will crash when trying to view the History screen. You can delete the History.bin file to clear the device's history; there is no built-in functionality to do so
jsnno.uby ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Dutch
kcbn7.avc ✨ ❌ Duplicate copy of bisrv.asd, the main firmware for the device which is found in the BIOS folder
KeyMapInfo.kmp ✨ ✅ Used to store the user-assignable global button mappings for each emulated system
lf9lb.cut ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Portuguese
ntrcq.oba ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Japanese
ouenj.dut ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Polish
qdbec.ofd ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Italian
sgotd.cwt ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in French
snbqj.uby ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in German
t2act.sgf ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Chinese
Test.zsf ✨ ❌ A SNES ROM, which displays a controller test program
tvctu.uby ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Russian
vdaz5.bjk ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Arabic
wtrxj.lbd ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Malay
xjebd.clq ✨ 🚩 ✅ UI strings in Hebrew

Foldername.ini

This file controls some of the UI settings for the main menu. It's a plain-text file, but not an actual INI file. It's contents from the 05.22 firmware (just as an example) are as follows:

SF2000
17
FFFFFF
FF8000 ROMS
FF8000 FC
FF8000 SFC
FF8000 MD
FF8000 GB
FF8000 GBC
FF8000 GBA
FF8000 ARCADE
FF8000 ROMS
FF8000 ROMS
8 7 0
24 184 144 208
40 24

And here's my current understanding of what each line is used for:

  • SF2000: The name of the device; I don't believe it's actively used anywhere, please correct me if I'm wrong!
  • 17: The number of languages supported by the firmware
  • FFFFFF: Hexadecimal colour (RGB) for the general game-list texts, and the x/yyy game count in the top-right corner of each game-list
  • FF8000 ROMS: The first defined main menu section (the sections that are scrolled vertically on the main menu). Internally they are numbered from 0; so the ROMS section (user ROMs and settings) is 0, FC (NES) is 1, SFC (SNES) is 2, etc.. The FF8000 is the hexadecimal colour (RGB) to display the text of the currently selected/highlighted game in the list; the default colour is orange. Side note: after the ARCADE section, there's two additional ROMS sections; the firmware is hard-coded to have ten sections. The SF2000 appears to share its firmware with other similar devices, and some of those devices feature different menu sections (e.g., "CPS1", "Neo Geo", etc.). I suspect that the best of those systems has ten sections in its main menu, which doesn't match up with the eight sections on the SF2000 (seven supported systems + the user ROMs/settings section). As the firmware requires ten sections to be defined, they just repeated the ROMS section to fill in the remaining places. Like I say, that's just a guess!
  • 8 7 0: This is used to control the main menu rotation. 8 tells the firmware how many main menu sections are actually in-use on this device; for the SF2000 that's seven supported consoles + the user ROMs/settings section, for eight total. 7 tells the firmware which menu section to default to when the device boots up, which is why by default it always starts in the ARCADE section. 0 tells the firmware which section to display the special "user settings" menu on (the one with History, Favourites, TV System, Language, etc.). So for example, if you wanted the SF2000 to start up on the user ROMs/settings screen instead of Arcade, you could change this line to read 8 0 0
  • 24 184 144 208: These numbers control the position and size of the game artwork in each system's game-list. The first two numbers are the X and Y coordinates from the top-left corner of the screen for where to start drawing the artwork; the second two numbers are the width and height of the artwork to draw. Note that the SF2000 doesn't do any image scaling; the dimensions are for the rectangular area the device will begin adding each pixel of the source artwork to. If the artwork's dimensions don't exactly match the dimensions specified here, the artwork will not display properly
  • 40 24: The width and height of the icon shown beside the currently selected/highlighted game in a game-list. Again, these are the dimensions of the rectangular area the SF2000 draws the pixel data into, so if these numbers don't match the dimensions of the list indicator image, the image will not display properly

NOTE: While the text colours above work just fine with the SF2000 first boots up, after loading a game and returning to the menu the general game-list/game count colour reverts to an off-white colour, and is likely being pulled from inside the BIOS somewhere. Also note that currently there is no way to choose a highlight colour for the Favourites or History sections - those are fixed at the stock orange colour (FF8000), and are almost certainly hardcoded in the BIOS as well.

Favourites and History

The Favorites.bin and History.bin files above both share the same file structure:

  • The first 4 bytes are a little-endian Uint32 storing the number of entries in the list
  • The rest of the file is composed of pairs of 2 byte little-endian Uint16s - the first byte pair is a number indicating which ROM list the entry belongs to (more on that below); the second number is the 0-based game number within that list

The ROM lists are numbered as follows:

Number ROM List List File
1 NES rdbui.tax
2 SNES urefs.tax
3 Genesis/Mega Drive scksp.tax
4 Game Boy vdsdc.tax
5 Game Boy Color pnpui.tax
6 Game Boy Advance vfnet.tax
7 Arcade mswb7.tax

So, for example: if your most recently played game (first in the history list) was "Batman - The Video Game" for Game Boy, and that game happened to be the ninth game listed in the Game Boy section on your device, the fifth and sixth bytes in your History.bin would be 0x04 0x00 (which is 4 in decimal, i.e. the "Game Boy" ROM list), and the seventh and eighth bytes would be 0x08 0x00 (which is 8 in decimal, i.e. the 9th game in the 0-based list of Game Boy games). The Favorites.bin file works exactly the same way, just with games you've favourited rather than played recently.

For more information on the ROM lists in general, see the next section.

ROM Lists

Credit for this section goes to taizou, author of FROGTOOL. These files relate to the built-in game-lists under each main system; the list of games is pulled from these files instead of being built at runtime - annoying, but presumably for performance reasons. It means if you want to change the list of built-in games (instead of using the User ROMs section), you have to edit these files - hence FROGTOOL, you should really check it out. There is also a tool called Tadpole by .ericgoldstein which provides a GUI for FROGTOOL along with some additional features.

Files Description
mfpmp.bvs (Arcade), mgdel.bvs (Game Boy Color), nethn.bvs (NES), qdvd6.bvs (Game Boy), sppnp.bvs (Game Boy Advance), wmiui.bvs (Genesis/Mega Drive), xvb6c.bvs (SNES) Pinyin translations of the English ROM names, used for Chinese language searching. Not all game names are translated
adsnt.nec (SNES), fhcfg.nec (NES), htuiw.nec (Game Boy Advance), msdtc.nec (Arcade), setxa.nec (Genesis/Mega Drive), umboa.nec (Game Boy), wjere.nec (Game Boy Color) Chinese translations of the English ROM names, used to display the game-lists when the UI language is set to Chinese. Not all game names are translated
mswb7.tax (Arcade), pnpui.tax (Game Boy Color), rdbui.tax (NES), scksp.tax (Genesis/Mega Drive), urefs.tax (SNES), vdsdc.tax (Game Boy), vfnet.tax (Game Boy Advance) English ROM Names, used to display the game-lists when the UI language is set to English
xfgle.hgp, xfgle.hgp.bak The xfgle.hgp file is a plain-text file containing the ROM "shortcuts" on the main menu for each game system. The xfgle.hgp.bak file appears to be a test version of this file that was not removed from the firmware before being sent to production
TSMFK.TAX This is a ROM list file similar to the other .tax files, except it is built at run-time from the ROM files in the user roms folder. The file is regenerated each time the device boots

Sounds

There are several sound files in the 20230420 firmware, stored in raw signed 16-bit PCM format (mono, little-endian at 22050 Hz). The SF2000 seems to play the files back at an incorrect sample rate vs. the raw data; if you want to customise the background music, resample your audio to 21560 Hz (21561.1 Hz is technically precise, but 21560 Hz is easer to remember, and all but the most exacting of human ears is unlikely to detect the difference), and then speed the audio up to 22050 Hz, using the resulting audio as the raw data (credit to notv37 in Discord for doing the initial discovery math, and to bnister for doing technical follow-up in the firmware - you can read their deep-dive into the details here (Discord link - you may need to be a member of the Retro Handhelds Discord server first for the link to work)).

If you want to do it using Audacity, the steps are:

  1. Open your audio file; there's a hard-coded limit of 1 minute 30 seconds on the maximum length of the audio you can use, so if your audio file is longer than that, you'll need to trim it to be 1 minute 30 seconds or shorter (longer audio will glitch)
  2. Click the "Audio Setup" button on the top toolbar, choose "Audio Settings..."
    • Set "Project Sample Rate" to "22050 Hz"
    • Click "OK"
  3. Click the "Select" button in the lower-left corner of your audio track area to select all the audio
  4. If your track is stereo, down-mix to mono: "Tracks" menu > "Mix" > "Mix Stereo Down to Mono"
  5. "Tracks" menu > "Resample..."
    • Set "New sample rate (Hz)" to "22050"
    • Click "OK"
  6. "Effect" menu > "Pitch and Tempo" > "Change Speed..."
    • Set "Speed Multiplier" to "1.023"
    • Click "Apply" (your audio will now sound slightly too high-pitched if you play it back, but don't worry - the SF2000 plays everything slightly slow/low-pitched, so we speed/pitch things up before exporting so it plays back correctly)
  7. "File" menu > "Export" > "Export Audio..."
    • Set "Save as type" to "Other uncompressed files"
    • In "Format Options", set "Header" to "RAW (header-less)"; set "Encoding" to "Signed 16-bit PCM"
    • Enter your "File name" as pagefile.sys, and click "Save"
    • If the "Edit Metadata Tags" window appears, just leave everything blank and click "OK"
  8. Replace the existing pagefile.sys file in the Resources folder on your SF2000 microSD card
Filename 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description Listen
c2fkec.pgt ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ "Popping" sound that is played when moving around the search keyboard listen
dpnet.dll ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Downwards Zap" sound, unknown usage listen
dsreg.bvs ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Upwards Bleeping" sound, unknown usage listen
help.lis ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Double Buzzer" sound, unknown usage listen
mfsvr.nkf ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ "Beep" sound that is played when entering a letter on the search keyboard listen
nyquest.gdb ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ "Whooshing" sound that is played when switching between emulated systems on the main menu, between the "Resume", "Quit", "Load" and "Save" options on the in-game menu, and scrolling by pages within a system's game-list listen
oldversion.kbe ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ "Three Note Upward Chime" sound that is played when deleting a letter on the search keyboard listen
pagefile.sys ✨ ✅ 🚩 ✅ Main menu background music. If you don't like background music, and would rather just have silence, you can find a replacement silent pagefile.sys here - just replace the one in the Resources folder (don't forget to backup the original file first, in case you ever want that jaunty tune again!) listen
swapfile.sys ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ "Squishy" sound played when navigating horizontally through "shortcut" games on the main menu, or vertically within a system's game-list listen

Unknown Files

These are files that I have not yet determined what they do; if anyone has any information on these, do post about it in the Data Frog channel in the Retro Handhelds Discord server please!

Filename 03.15 04.20 05.15 05.22 Description
kcnuv.lit ✨ ✅ ✅ ✅ UNKNOWN; a bunch of 4-byte binary chunks (e.g., 0xC4 0x00 0x00 0x00), followed by a list of .NES ROM file names. Very similar to the .bvs/.nec/.tax files detailed above, but doesn't have the same type of "header" they have

Notes For Theme Creators

This section isn't really about the Resources files per-se, but it's tangentially related. The fact that the SF2000's UI resources are pulled from the microSD card opens up the door to "theming" the device, which is great. However, if you do decide you want to make a theme for the SF2000, here's a few things I've found that you may want to bear in mind:

  • If you're including background music in your theme, note that when the SF2000 starts up it fails to output about the first 1 second of audio; therefore, if you'd like the person using your theme to hear your background music from the start, cut one second off the end of your background music loop, and move it to the start of the loop instead.
  • If you're creating custom system logos (sfcdr.cpl), make sure the logos don't overlap the "Games Exist" image's screen area (exaxz.hsp, top-left coordinate 456, 88, width and height 152, 72); the main menu compositor clips an area of the section's background image behind where the "Games Exist" artwork will be drawn, renders the "Games Exist" artwork into that clipped section, and then draws the result on top of the system logo. As a result, any pixels of the system logo that should be visible in that area will be replaced by the background image, even if you make the "Games Exist" image fully transparent. Removing the exaxz.hsp file entirely doesn't work either, as you get garbage drawn on the screen in the same area instead. The only section not impacted by this is the "User ROMs and Settings" section, as on that screen the "Games Exist" artwork is not drawn.
    • There's a workaround, but it's not perfect: you can bake a system's logo directly into the background for its main-menu section, and make it's portion of sfcdr.cpl fully transparent (so that you don't see the logo physically moving). As the code for drawing the "Games Exist" image pulls from the section's background, it'll pull the portion that overlaps with the system logo and render that too. The downside is that the poor draw code of the stock OS only updates the horizontal portion of the screen that contains the rotating logos during section transitions, and only draws the lower portion of the screen (the bit under the rotating logos) afterwards. So baking your logo into background for the section will create some artificial "latency" for the theme user - they'll see the new logo appear instantly, then have to wait the quarter second for the invisible "rotation" animation to complete, before the lower portion of the screen with the new shortcuts for the new section appears.
    • One other workaround (that's even worse than the first workaround): bake just the portion of the system logo that overlaps with exaxz.hsp into the background. Doing it this way, you can still have your custom system logo in sfcdr.cpl, and still have it in the rotation animation (which gives the user something to look at, and reduces that fake "latency" feeling from the workaround above)... but you'll see the bit of logo baked into the background appear instantly, and then the rotating logo will slide up/down to meet it, so it'll still look a bit janky. So really it comes down to picking your particular flavour of jank: scaling your logos to avoid the exaxz.hsp screen area (which might leave you with a lot of empty space), baking your logo into the section background (adding fake "latency" to the experience), or only partially baking your logo into the section background (which will make things look jank during the rotation animation, but perfect otherwise)... the decision is yours!
  • When designing your theme, think carefully about the use case in which you want your theme to look best. Although the SF2000 uses many different UI images at many different scales, internally the screen area it draws to is 640 x 480 pixels in size. However, the actual physical display is only 320 x 240; as the SF2000's OS does not do any image resampling when downscaling its UI output to the screen, what essentially happens is every second row and column of pixels is thrown away - and as a result, a theme designed for the internal 640 x 480 resolution can look a bit aliased or "jagged" on the internal display. If you want your theme to look pixel-perfect on the internal display, design it for 320 x 240 instead (i.e., for any image asset you create, design and create it at half of the original resolution of the same file in the stock SF2000 theme), and perform a nearest-neighbour upscale of the image back to the original resolution when converting it to an SF2000 data format. The resulting images will be pixel perfect on the internal display. HOWEVER... there is one major downside to do thing this: AV output. When using the AV output of the SF2000, it does so at 576i - higher than the resolution of the internal display. If you're using a theme that was scaled up from a 320 x 240 design base, you can clearly see pixelisation of the UI assets on the external display; a 640 x 480 based theme displays smooth assets. So what if you want to design a theme that looks decently sharp (not aliased) on the internal display, and looks decently smooth on an external display, then design your theme for three-quarters resolution (480 x 360 design base), and do a bilinear upscale to 640 x 480 based resolutions during final data conversion. To summarise:
    • If you only care about how your theme looks on the internal display, and don't care about how it looks on AV output, design for a 320 x 240 base resolution and do a nearest-neighbour 2x upscale when converting to SF2000 formats
    • If you only care about how your theme looks via AV out, and don't care about it looking aliased/jagged on the internal display, design for the regular 640 x 480 base
    • If you care about both display types, and want your theme to look great (but not perfect) on both, design for a three-quarters 480 x 360 base, and do a bilinear upscale to regular 640 x 480 base resolutions when converting to SF2000 formats

Tools and Links

All of these are linked above already in their relevant sections, but just in case you prefer to see them as a pulled-out list, here they are again:

Version History

  • 20230819 - 1.34: Updated the custom firmware FAQ answer with the latest progress notes. Replaced the bootloader bug FAQ with a more generic FAQ covering the main situations under which the SF2000 fails to boot correctly. Added a brief note on the mysterious new August 3rd BIOS that has started appearing on some newer devices.

  • 20230804 - 1.33: Updated the custom firmware FAQ answer with the latest progress notes.

  • 20230730 - 1.32: Added a link to "ZFBTool" by dteyn in the "Tools and Links" section. Updated the custom firmware FAQ answer with the latest progress notes.

  • 20230724 - 1.31: Fixed Discord links (thanks xdpirate!). Added mention of Tadpole to FAQ about changing menu links.

  • 20230720 - 1.30: Corrected that gpSP Retroarch core demo does indeed have sound (but it's stuttery/crackly). Added a new FAQ about where to ask questions. Updated the Audacity steps for custom sound creation with some additional detail.

  • 20230720 - 1.29: Another custom firmware FAQ update (a second core, gpSP, has now been compiled and is at an early stage of running).

  • 20230719 - 1.28: Moved most of the intro section under the "Is this thing any good?" FAQ, and slightly reworded parts of it. Fixed a few typos.

  • 20230718 - 1.27: Updated FAQ about custom firmware with latest details (first running Retroarch core! 🎉)

  • 20230714 - 1.27: Updated FAQ about custom firmware with latest details (Retroarch input driver in basic functional state)

  • 20230712 - 1.26: Updated FAQ about custom firmware with latest details (Retroarch video driver is now able to display the main menu!)

  • 20230710 - 1.25: Added link to Zerter#4954's new main menu icon editor tool.

  • 20230709 - 1.24: Updated FAQ about custom firmware with latest details (initial Retroarch build! 🎉)

  • 20230705 - 1.23: Updated FAQ about custom firmware with latest details. Moved "what can I do" bullet point about custom themes to its own separate FAQ to make it easier to find, and added more details about how to actually install a theme.

  • 20230630 - 1.22: Added a FAQ about save games not working.

  • 20230626 - 1.21: Added a FAQ about slow SNES games. Updated details of CFW development with the latest status. Added a link to the discovered SDK. Added a link to Zerter#4954's new theme collection site. Added a link to the Tadpole tool by .ericgoldstein.

  • 20230622 - 1.20: Added a note to the Game Boy Advance section about the newly discovered gba_bios.bin loading bug, and how to work around it (thanks bnister!)

  • 20230618 - 1.19: Added a question to the FAQ regarding how to change the main menu shortcuts.

  • 20230617 - 1.18: Added an FAQ. Added a section about the bootloader bug, along with steps for installing bnister's patch. Added a link to ignatzdraconis's Gitlab Repo. Some folks have updated their Discord handles to Discord's new naming convention, and those handles have been updated throughout.

  • 20230609 - 1.17: Added a section about the default ROMs that come with the SF2000, including a HTML file and a CSV file that have the SHA256/SHA1/MD5/CRC32 hashes for all non-arcade ROMs, and details about which ROMs match the current No-Intro database.

  • 20230605 - 1.16: Added my new Save State Tool. Added documentation to the Emulators section about the save state files and their format. Also added a note specifically to the Arcade section about the .skp files (which are secretly just save state files with a different extension). Added a "Favourites and History" section detailing the format of the Favorites.bin and History.bin files.

  • 20230530 - 1.15: Added link to the community ROM compatibility list. Added some personal notes for theme creators.

  • 20230529 - 1.14: Updated the main menu BGM sample rate details with the latest findings from bnister. Clarified which menu text colour resets after exiting a game. Added a note about charging safety (thanks for your sacrifices, Zerter#4954! 🫡)

  • 20230526 - 1.13: Updated Audacity instructions to support latest version of Audacity. Added a BIOS CRC32 patcher tool for the reckless and brave. Added a note about Foldername.ini text colours reverting after loading a game (thanks Zerter#4954!)

  • 20230525 - 1.12: Added a section about the internals of the Foldername.ini file. Added a note to the Arcade section about the "inrom" column in adcockm's metadata document. Added a small firmware note for the 05.22 about community-spotted GBA performance improvements. Added specific emulator versions and Git commit links for each emulator (thanks bnister and notv37!). Added specific steps for producing SF2000-format audio files using Audacity.

  • 20230524 - 1.11: Added my new Generic Image Tool. Added more exceptional information from adcockm in regards to arcade emulation on the SF2000, and cleaned up the old info accordingly. Corrected some typos related to bisrv.asd (thanks luke7352!). Usage of nvinf.hsp was tracked down to the numbers of games available on the main menu pages (thanks kid_sinn#9691!).

  • 20230522 - 1.10: Updated resource tables for the new 05.22 firmware (no changes); added a table with details about known firmware versions. Added a "Tools & Links" section.

  • 20230516 - 1.9: Updated most of the Resources file lists to include firmware-related information (added, (un)changed, removed). Added new image resources for the latest May 15th firmware. Updated some images files previews to contain the fake name extensions as well. Added detail about the removal of per-game button maps from May 15th firmware. Renamed the sound previews to contain the fake name extensions as well.

  • 20230513 - 1.8: Discovered two "unused" images (the yes/no buttons) are indeed actually used, when being asked if you want to overwrite a saved game. Fixed a few typos. Changed formatting of file names used throughout. A bit more info on A/V out.

  • 20230512 - 1.7: Added a note about stock battery runtime. Added a section with information about A/V output performance. Added a bit of info about PAL/NTSC region speed for Genesis/Mega Drive. Retitled the "bisrv.asd" section to make it clearer that's the BIOS/firmware.

  • 20230511 - 1.6: Added a quick note about the display panel to the Hardware section, and added a new section for Emulators, including an incredible collection of ROM notes for Arcade thanks to adcockm! Also added a "silent" background music file for download, and a table of contents (this page is getting fairly long 😅). Added a favicon.ico to get rid of that one annoying console error.

  • 20230510 - 1.5: Added additional detail to the Hardware section about the buttons, d-pad, thumb-stick, battery, and wireless controller support.

  • 20230510 - 1.4: Added my own version of bnister's button mapping tool at their request, and changed the link in the Key Mapping section accordingly.

  • 20230509 - 1.3: Added more details about how the boot logo ends up scaled on the screen, as well as a link to a new tool I wrote for altering the logo. Corrected one small formatting error.

  • 20230508 - 1.2: Added details for Archive.sys - thanks to bnister for the hints on what it related to!

  • 20230507 - 1.1: Some "unknown" files from the Resources folder identified with taizou's help (thanks!); moved them to the Sounds and Rom Lists sections with details. Only two files left!

  • 20230507 - 1.0: Original creation of this page.