The Retron 5 used to be a household name. Until people realized that it had a bogus set of wireless controllers and, oh yeah, featured a non-licensed emulator. Fast forward to 2019, the Retron 5 is barely talked about any longer. YouTube videos about it are getting very little clicks. Enter “ManCloud” a hacker from Germany that didn’t want to let the Retron 5 fade into obscurity but also didn’t want it to keep its old witchy ways. He’s created something very tasty for those who still own a Retron 5 or wanted to buy one but saw the negatives as a deal breaker.
Some insight about the root:
‘The process was originally intended only for a “Factory Restore” after a bit of back and forth…I’ve managed to leverage
the system to pull the UpdateFiles unencrypted from the system and even to patch the boot.img. ‘‘If you do not use the RetroN interface, you can install emulators like retroarch via a few “small scripts”. You just have to install a normal launcher (eg nova launcher).’
A few things from ManCloud that you should know if you proceed with the instructions.
- ‘Your warranty has just expired.
- I am not responsible for Bruised Devices, Destroyed SD Cards, or a Thermonuclear War.
- YOU have decided to make this modification. If you should point your finger at me afterwards … I have to laugh unfortunately ^^
- Still, I’m not letting anyone down, of course’
What You Get:
- ‘Pre-rooted system
- ADB enabled by default
- German system interface (self-translated – notes are welcome … but bring some time;))
- Blue system surface (the red was really crappy)’
Instructions:
- Download a SD card image burning program (like an etcher or Win32DiskImager).
- Grab an SD card that is at least a capacity of 2GB.
- Download the image file from here.
- Burn the image to your SD card using the respective program you downloaded for step 1.
- Eject your SD card properly. Head over to your Retron 5.
- Plug a wired controller into the Retron 5. Any of the controller ports will work for this (wireless is not enough).
- Insert the SD card into the RetroN 5.
- Power on the system. RetroN 5 should restart.
- This will get you into the recovery mode (featured on some Android devices). We recommend that you do a “full wipe”, but it’s not necessary. It just makes sure that you will have zero issues before you proceed.
- Whether you have done a full wipe first or are choosing to skip it, you’ll now choose “Update rkimage from external storage”.
- You’ll see a few things scroll over the screen for a moment. Then you will be taken back to the main recovery menu. Once you’re on that menu, choose: “Reboot Now”.
- This should take you to a screen you can mess around with. Enjoy!
Final Thoughts:
This is still something that is more useful for more experienced users. This isn’t a full package with built in everything like emulators and launchers. But that isn’t to say that since it’s Android people couldn’t now sideload emulators that are better and open sourced to be used. We may even see better compatibility across games. And maybe it could even have emulators added that aren’t on the Retron 5 in the first place. What we’re looking at here is a chance for what ManCloud gave us to be expanded upon and updated in the future. This is the start of a hack of a subpar product to make it better *cough*PS Classic*cough*.
Where to buy a Retron 5.
SOURCE
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