[KurdtNervanna]

This is the work proposed in #11, now complete and tested on a RetroStone2 Pro. It is based on the current main
(0.1.3 + the version bump) and merges cleanly. The other boards are untouched.

What it adds

RetroStone2 Pro storage (Settings > Storage; docs/pro-storage.md)

• Fix: in 0.1.2 the Internal eMMC / M.2 SATA switches wrote /boot/rsos.env, but boot.cmd reads rsos_overlays
  from the U-Boot environment, so they had no effect. They now go through rsos-storage overlay (fw_setenv).
• Regular or Pro, found at the first start: boot.cmd probes U-Boot's mmc 1 (the eMMC U23) once, when
  rsos_model is empty, and saves rsos_model=pro|regular. A Pro gets the emmc and sata overlays on that same
  start; a regular unit loses emmc. The menu hides the internal storage on a regular unit and offers "Detect the
  model again".
• Install to internal storage (with or without the games, or update an existing install). The A20 boot ROM does
  not start this eMMC 5.0 by itself (Samsung AGND3R, EXT_CSD_REV 7; confirmed on hardware with breadcrumbs in AXP209
  data registers, U-Boot patch 0003). So the SD card can become a starter card: it keeps the SPL/U-Boot and the
  RETROSTONE partition, and U-Boot's bootcmd falls back to the system on mmc 1 (rsos_sysdev). The kernel learns
  the environment disk from rsos.envdev. Make this SD card a full system again undoes it.
• Game libraries on several disks: the eMMC, the SD card (when it is not the system disk) and an M.2 SATA SSD
  are mounted under /run/rsos/media/<name> and merged into the game lists (loader.c, games_merge). Import games
  gets Copy games to. Move games between drives uses a new move_games import option: files are deleted
  only after the whole copy is synced, and files the plan sees as identical are compared byte for byte first
  (test_import_move).

Game lists (Settings > Game lists)

• Download game covers from the libretro thumbnail server, as RetroArch does: a new rsos-covers helper reusing
  the updater's HTTPS client, with No-Intro/normalized/prefix matching and 400 px JPEGs in
  roms/<sys>/media/covers/. It can also run in the background.
• Group multi-disc games (.m3u).
• Rename this game (game options): the game's saves, states, cover, favorite and play time follow the new name.

Memory speed (Settings > Power): an opt-in DRAM clock of 432 or 480 MHz (U-Boot patch 0004 in
dram_sun5i_auto.c, which is the file sun7i builds). The faster speed starts as a trial: rsos-boot-ok runs a
memory test before confirming it, and a boot that freezes falls back to the normal speed. The trial state is kept
in AXP209 REG0D.

System information > Credits: generated from the git history (scripts/support/update-credits.sh).

System update: the update repository and the trusted key are now build options,
BR2_RETROSTONE_UPDATE_REPO and BR2_RETROSTONE_UPDATE_PUBKEY. The defaults are unchanged (this repository and
frontend/assets/update.pub). This lets a fork publish its own signed updates without patching the code.

Testing

• Hardware (RetroStone2 Pro, 32 GB M.2 SATA SSD): these were tested on the console and work:

  • the switches
  • install to the eMMC, starting through the starter card, and back to a full SD system
  • M.2 erase, import to it, and playing from it
  • moving games and renaming
  • covers, also in the background
  • multi-disc grouping
  • both memory speed levels with the trial and fallback

  The model detection is new and has not been on hardware yet.

• Tests: make check-ui check-loader check-transfer check-update pass (check-transfer: 669 tests). In
  boot-ab-qemu-test.sh, cases 14/15 were added for the model probe, and all 45 checks pass. The test U-Boot keeps
  the Cubieboard device tree, because uboot.fragment now selects the A20 eMMC one.

Not included: the fork's own update settings (its repository and signing key), which stay on the fork.

Builds of this branch: https://github.com/KurdtNervanna/RetroStoneOS/releases

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[PaddleStroke]

Thank you very much for this PR, @KurdtNervanna! The Pro storage, the starter card trick, game covers, multi-disc grouping, rename and the memory speed trial are careful, well-documented work, and the A/B update and rollback logic still passes all its QEMU tests. We'd like this in 0.1.4, so instead of sending you a list of changes we made the remaining fixes ourselves, as extra commits on top of yours (your commits and authorship are unchanged). Here is what we changed and why:

Merge with main: main moved (input, transfer, Raspberry Pi, release notes). One conflict, in loader.c (Refresh game lists): we kept your ui_invalidate_system() (it also clears the library drives' caches) together with main's reset of the empty-folder shortcut.

Boot (boot.cmd, uboot.fragment)

• The first-start probe now saves rsos_model only and never changes rsos_overlays. The project rule is "peripherals off by default": the eMMC and the M.2 SATA slot stay off until the user turns them on in Settings > Storage, so every RetroStone2 starts as fast as before. Turning them on automatically meant SATA link bring-up, mounts and a game-list reload on every boot of a Pro.
• The probe only runs with the new bootcmd (rsos_sysdev set). A Pro updated over the air keeps its old U-Boot, which has no mmc 1, so it would have been saved as "regular" (and lost a user-set emmc overlay).
• The bootcmd loads the card's boot.scr first, exactly as before, and tries mmc 1 only when neither card slot has one. A normal start no longer does an extra ext4 lookup.
• QEMU: cases 14 and 15 updated, plus a new case 16 for the old bootcmd. 47/47 pass.

No storage work on every boot

• rsos-storage boot only runs when the eMMC controller (1c11000.mmc) or the SATA controller (1c18000.sata) is enabled, or the system is not on the microSD.
• The eMMC report is now a manual command, rsos-storage report. It reads the AXP209 breadcrumbs itself (REG0E/0F, which the boot logger never clears), so rcS no longer runs axpstamp raw on every boot.
• The menu no longer runs rsos-storage refresh when it starts. It polls /sys/block every 10 s instead of every 2 s, and Settings > Storage runs a refresh when it opens.

Brick and data-loss edges

• sd-starter refuses (and changes nothing) unless the card's own U-Boot is this system's and its saved bootcmd has the mmc 1 fallback. On a card flashed with an older version and then updated, it would otherwise leave a console that no longer starts.
• On the install's done page, "Keep SD as it is" is now preselected, and "Use as starter card" opens the same CANCEL-first confirmation as the menu item.
• sd-full is now safe against a power cut. The old file systems on the card's slots lose their superblock before their partition entries come back. Slot A is then copied and verified without its first 4 KiB, which are written last and read back, before the boot state. If the power is cut at any point before that, the card is still a starter card.
• Group multi-disc games skips systems whose emulator doesn't take .m3u files (there the playlist would hide the discs behind an entry that can't start). It writes each playlist to a temporary file, syncs it, then renames it.
• Move games: nothing is deleted if a file failed, a differing file was kept, or the copy was cancelled. gamelist.xml is never deleted. Before each deletion we lstat the source and its copy, and refuse for a link, a missing copy, or the same inode. A folder with a file whose bytes differ keeps all its files, so a .cue stays with its .bin. The summary says when games stayed on the source drive. test_transfer covers each of these cases.

Smaller fixes

• /dev/rsos-disk falls back to /dev/mmcblk0 when RSOS_DISK is empty.
• The Move games dialog keeps its own copies of the drive paths.
• overlay, redetect, sd-starter, sd-full and the carried-over overlays take /run/rsos/bootenv.lock, the lock that rsos-boot-ok and the updater use.

Translations, docs: po/rsos.pot is regenerated, so check-i18n passes. The new strings are translated into French. The other languages show English for now, as usual until they are translated. We updated docs/pro-storage.md (the model probe, off by default, a freshly flashed 0.1.4 card needed for the Pro storage, the hardware checklist), added a 0.1.4 release-notes entry, and added the doc to the README's table.

Left for later (not blockers, we'll track them): rename collisions, hardening the cover images (very large PNGs, an integer overflow, locking, cancel), running the memory test on the first trial only, a check byte in REG0D so that a stale register after reflashing can't start a trial nobody asked for, the flicker when the library reloads, and translations into the other languages. One hardware check is also still needed: a boot-time comparison with 0.1.3 on a freshly flashed regular RetroStone2.

Thanks again, this is a great addition to the RetroStone2 Pro!

[KurdtNervanna]

I am glad you liked some of my changes. I’m up to version 16 now, I really developed and matured the game covers downloads as well as made connecting to wireless easier and displayed ip addresses on the Internet device line when they receive an ip address. The WiFi module now scans and shows a list of WiFi access points to choose from. A few more fixes as well, I will work on the documentation for version 16 in the next day or so. I also added overclocking on version 16 and tested for stability and everything seems to work great. My next addition in 17 will be focused on running native ports of games… I’m working on recompiling the publicly available n64 games to arm native code made for the retro stone. I have Mario 64 mostly done and I’m working on implementing a “native port” folder so games can run without an emulation layer… more things to come as I work on them… I also will see if I can implement a customizable startup sound (I used to have the ps1 startup sound on my old os and want to try and implement it again.) anyway. Thanks again for reviving this old project. I do love my retro stone and I am so happy to be using it again.Cheers KurdtOn Oct 23, 2026, at 2:39 AM, PaddleStroke ***@***.***> wrote:PaddleStroke left a comment (PaddleStroke/RetroStoneOS#12) Thank you very much for this PR, @KurdtNervanna! The Pro storage, the starter card trick, game covers, multi-disc grouping, rename and the memory speed trial are careful, well-documented work, and the A/B update and rollback logic still passes all its QEMU tests. We'd like this in 0.1.4, so instead of sending you a list of changes we made the remaining fixes ourselves, as extra commits on top of yours (your commits and authorship are unchanged). Here is what we changed and why: Merge with main: main moved (input, transfer, Raspberry Pi, release notes). One conflict, in loader.c (Refresh game lists): we kept your ui_invalidate_system() (it also clears the library drives' caches) together with main's reset of the empty-folder shortcut. Boot (boot.cmd, uboot.fragment) The first-start probe now saves rsos_model only and never changes rsos_overlays. The project rule is "peripherals off by default": the eMMC and the M.2 SATA slot stay off until the user turns them on in Settings > Storage, so every RetroStone2 starts as fast as before. Turning them on automatically meant SATA link bring-up, mounts and a game-list reload on every boot of a Pro. The probe only runs with the new bootcmd (rsos_sysdev set). A Pro updated over the air keeps its old U-Boot, which has no mmc 1, so it would have been saved as "regular" (and lost a user-set emmc overlay). The bootcmd loads the card's boot.scr first, exactly as before, and tries mmc 1 only when neither card slot has one. A normal start no longer does an extra ext4 lookup. QEMU: cases 14 and 15 updated, plus a new case 16 for the old bootcmd. 47/47 pass. No storage work on every boot rsos-storage boot only runs when the eMMC controller (1c11000.mmc) or the SATA controller (1c18000.sata) is enabled, or the system is not on the microSD. The eMMC report is now a manual command, rsos-storage report. It reads the AXP209 breadcrumbs itself (REG0E/0F, which the boot logger never clears), so rcS no longer runs axpstamp raw on every boot. The menu no longer runs rsos-storage refresh when it starts. It polls /sys/block every 10 s instead of every 2 s, and Settings > Storage runs a refresh when it opens. Brick and data-loss edges sd-starter refuses (and changes nothing) unless the card's own U-Boot is this system's and its saved bootcmd has the mmc 1 fallback. On a card flashed with an older version and then updated, it would otherwise leave a console that no longer starts. On the install's done page, "Keep SD as it is" is now preselected, and "Use as starter card" opens the same CANCEL-first confirmation as the menu item. sd-full is now safe against a power cut. The old file systems on the card's slots lose their superblock before their partition entries come back. Slot A is then copied and verified without its first 4 KiB, which are written last and read back, before the boot state. If the power is cut at any point before that, the card is still a starter card. Group multi-disc games skips systems whose emulator doesn't take .m3u files (there the playlist would hide the discs behind an entry that can't start). It writes each playlist to a temporary file, syncs it, then renames it. Move games: nothing is deleted if a file failed, a differing file was kept, or the copy was cancelled. gamelist.xml is never deleted. Before each deletion we lstat the source and its copy, and refuse for a link, a missing copy, or the same inode. A folder with a file whose bytes differ keeps all its files, so a .cue stays with its .bin. The summary says when games stayed on the source drive. test_transfer covers each of these cases. Smaller fixes /dev/rsos-disk falls back to /dev/mmcblk0 when RSOS_DISK is empty. The Move games dialog keeps its own copies of the drive paths. overlay, redetect, sd-starter, sd-full and the carried-over overlays take /run/rsos/bootenv.lock, the lock that rsos-boot-ok and the updater use. Translations, docs: po/rsos.pot is regenerated, so check-i18n passes. The new strings are translated into French. The other languages show English for now, as usual until they are translated. We updated docs/pro-storage.md (the model probe, off by default, a freshly flashed 0.1.4 card needed for the Pro storage, the hardware checklist), added a 0.1.4 release-notes entry, and added the doc to the README's table. Left for later (not blockers, we'll track them): rename collisions, hardening the cover images (very large PNGs, an integer overflow, locking, cancel), running the memory test on the first trial only, a check byte in REG0D so that a stale register after reflashing can't start a trial nobody asked for, the flicker when the library reloads, and translations into the other languages. One hardware check is also still needed: a boot-time comparison with 0.1.3 on a freshly flashed regular RetroStone2. Thanks again, this is a great addition to the RetroStone2 Pro! —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.Triage notifications, keep track of coding agent tasks and review pull requests on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS and Android. Download it today! You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>