The Gamestick That Lied Twice: Upgrading a Mislabeled Chinese Emulation Device with EmuELEC 4.8
The Purchase // Built with Most of the heavy lifting in this investigation — kernel log analysis, DTB decompilation, device tree patching, SoC identification, and this writeup — was done with Claude (Anthropic's AI), running as an autonomous agent via Claude Code . The human's job was to hold the knife and do the soldering. Not a bad division of labour. ❯ claude.ai | Claude Code It started with a Chinese gamestick marketed as a retro emulation powerhouse running on an Amlogic S905X3 processor. A popular form factor — compact, plug-and-play, hundreds of games out of the box. The kind of device that floods AliExpress and Amazon at suspiciously low prices. The first unit purchased turned out to be an obvious scam: an older first-generation S905 chip masquerading as something newer, locked to an ancient version of EmuELEC with no upgrade path. ($30 USD down the drain. The supplier nor Aliexpress gave a single f***, but it will make for a nice gift t...
