v0.1.0 — Launch ETK Edition: GTP5 SPEC

v0.1.0 — Launch ETK Edition: GTP5 SPEC

First public alpha of the Emulation Tuning Kit for Rocknix. PS3 emulation on an ARM64 handheld, instrumented like a track-day car.

The 787B problem

Mazda's 787B won Le Mans 1991 with a rotary engine the rest of the field said couldn't be done — and the FIA banned the engine the year after. ETK is in that spirit: PS3 emulation on a Snapdragon handheld is somewhere between "unreasonable" and "shouldn't work," so the kit treats it as an engineering problem. Live telemetry, productive crashing, shader harvesting between runs, automated recovery from kernel panics, on-rig config tuning. The pitch isn't that PS3 emulation suddenly becomes easy. It's that you have professional-grade tools to make a fighting attempt — and a vault to remember every shader you compiled along the way.

GT5 Prologue is the named target; GT6 — including a clean Nürburgring Nordschleife lap landed 2026-05-26 — was an unexpected bonus.

Verified configuration

• Handheld: Retroid Pocket Flip 2 (SM8250 / Adreno 650 / Mesa Turnip 26.1.0)
• OS: ROCKNIX nightly-20260525
• Host: macOS or Linux (experimental Windows via WSL2)

The device-profile architecture in scripts/profiles/SM8250.sh should cover every SD865 / Adreno 650 / Turnip handheld (Pocket 5, Pocket Mini / Mini V2, AYN Thor Lite) — but only the Flip 2 has been on-rig verified. Tester reports from the SD865 cohort warmly welcomed. The RP6 / SM8550 / Adreno 740 needs a new profile and its own shader vault.

What ships in v0.1.0

• Native ETK Pitstop app in the Rocknix Tools carousel — TELEMETRY / TUNING / TOOLS tabs, gamepad-editable RPCS3 settings, headless PS3 .pkg installer
• Live DDU overlay via MangoHUD: FPS, frametime, GPU temp + load, battery, shader counter, vault size, RAM — all on one strip
• Pit Wall console TUI for install.sh and uninstall.sh — 6-step / 4-step dashboards, mDNS rig auto-discovery, no per-file rsync flood
• Device-profile architecture — scripts/profiles/<soc>.sh separates hardware-specific values (thermal zones, cpufreq policy IDs, GPU paths, thresholds) from runtime scripts; adding a new SD865 device is a calibration pass, not a code change
• Smart thermal protection with auto-PIT failsafe (CPU + GPU throttle on overheat)
• Shader vault indexed by chipset / game ID / shader, bi-directional rsync between host and rig
• Crash recovery via R3 panic button (headless on-device Nuclear Recovery)
• Session telemetry — per-game ledger with summary stats, recovery signatures, config-change provenance
• Tier-B auto-backup of telemetry, tunings, RPCS3 user profile, and screenshots on every install
• L1 screenshot capturing the MangoHUD overlay (which RPCS3's built-in screenshot strips)

Pre-alpha caveats — read before installing

• Requires the exact Rocknix nightly above. Not tested against any other build, the official release, or future nightlies.
• Use a sacrificial SD card — not your main ROM library.
• This is a tinkerer's kit. Expect rough edges, partial coverage, and the occasional crash-into-the-vault that you turn into a lap time next run.

Getting started

See Getting Started in the README. ./install.sh auto-discovers your rig via mDNS — if Rocknix is on your LAN, you don't need to hunt for its IP.

What's next

• Phase 14: RP5 verification, rig-side self-update from the Pitstop TOOLS tab, broader tuning + shader sharing
• Phase 15: Beta testing
• Graduation: Rocknix stable when the SD865 stable channel catches up to the spring-2026 nightly features the kit pins
• SM8550 profile: RP6 / Odin 2 family

License + provenance

GNU GPL v2.0, matching Rocknix. Co-developed with Google Gemini (prototype) and Anthropic Claude Code (current). See AI_MANIFEST.md for the development laws and provenance details.

🏁 The vault is not empty. Drive accordingly.