About the hardware


This device can handle a bit more than just old DOS games..


for DOS we have an ARM compiled version of Dosbox.. Currently Dosbox speeds are about comparable to running a 386DX or a low end 486SX also depends on the game..


The Pandora is quite a powerhouse when things are natively compiled to Linux Arm such as Quake3 arena which can show proper 3D acceleration without any over clocking.


As for things it can emulate we have good variety N64, PS1, SNES, TG-16, Sega Genesis, Nintendo... etc..


Outside of that we can use it for regular Linux Apps, photoshop with Gimp, spreadsheets ,abiword, etc.. SSH and x-forwarding if you need to connect to other linux/unix systems..


I think of it as an ultra mini PC, that's geared for gaming / emulation.


This forum has been hit by people that purposely try to irritate the supporters of this device since it's had a long development time and had issues getting off the ground. So you can see how some here can get upset by ignorance of what's going on here.
 
not the be an asshole for once, but please go read up on the pandora first, and where do you get this idea that a comparable x86 cpu can save battery life over an arm cpu? the pandora is in no way made to be a dosbox emulator, if there is one thing it was aimed for, it is amiga, but it isnt, although it runs quite a few dox games wonderfully, and please refrain from calling us immature if youre gonna refuse to read 2 threads about the pandora before starting a thread. we gladly welcome you to the community, but not if youre gonna troll us around with stuff like no usb and x86 better battery life and trying to get us to have 4:3 screens even in 2008
I've asked a simple question (mr hothead)!


No one says I can't!


It's an open forum!


You don't want to repeat yourself? Then don't!


You want to answer my question? You're welcome, and I will read it!


However by now you should have read that I was referred here by someone saying IT WAS a dos console.


Now most of you say it isn't, then a X86 processor makes little sense, and so does 4/3 resolution.


This device is not what I'm looking for, because I can get the same or better from a netbook.


have a good day!
Unfortunately, I don't see any reference to you mentioning you were referred by someone who stated the Pandora was geared for playing DOS games in your first post. I'd also be very surprised if you can find a netbook that can run for more than four hours (though I haven't looked into low-power netbooks for quite some time). Also, you mentioned in post #16 that you had only viewed a small image of the Pandora (presumably from the front), not to be a cynic, shouldn't you have looked into the Pandora a bit more before firing off questions you could have found the answers to in less time than the seven hours between your first two posts?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
In case if MS DOS would be the host operating system, even the lowest of Atom processors (like the Z500, with 800Mhz speed) would be sufficient to run most x86 programs created for MS DOS.
Except it isn't. Even in the x86 world, the OS's (and indeed the architecture itself) have advanced so much that you can't simply run most DOS games anymore: you still need to run DosBox in Windows. It's not even possible to install DOS on modern CPUs anymore, because of how much has changed since then. DosBox doesn't have a virtualization mode: even on an x86, it still fully emulates the system. We would save absolutely nothing if it were running on an x86 vs an ARM processor, so your arguments in favour of using x86 are moot.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
In case if MS DOS would be the host operating system, even the lowest of Atom processors (like the Z500, with 800Mhz speed) would be sufficient to run most x86 programs created for MS DOS.
Except it isn't. Even in the x86 world, the OS's (and indeed the architecture itself) have advanced so much that you can't simply run most DOS games anymore: you still need to run DosBox in Windows. It's not even possible to install DOS on modern CPUs anymore, because of how much has changed since then. DosBox doesn't have a virtualization mode: even on an x86, it still fully emulates the system. We would save absolutely nothing if it were running on an x86 vs an ARM processor, so your arguments in favour of using x86 are moot.

Funnily enough I tried this relatively recently... a friend had lent me a USB 3.5" disk drive. While I had it I used it to install DOS 6.2 onto an SD card for use with my Atom based netbook (just to see if I could) and it installed and booted just fine, :)


of course being DOS it doesn't have any USB based drivers, but the bios seemed to take care of that - my USB mouse just worked for example.


-Neelix
 
I'm really depressed at all the flaming. Yeah, this guy did not do the research (a quick glance to wikipedia would have been a good idea) and made some strange presumptions, but that doesn't make him a malicious troll and it's pretty mean to call him "stupid" over it. Keep things technical, to the point, and polite and if they still get all bent out of shape THEN you can be justified in telling them to piss off.


Anyway...

The 3Watts TDP is max power, only achieved on maximum CPU AND GPU utilization. In idle it uses less than a tenth of this. It has a graphics unit built into it, so no additional graphics card is necessary.
The Z500 and Z600 atom processors where designed in 2010 and 2009. They are modified pentium 4 processors, optimized for low power. Originally created to fit in cellphones, but never caught on because they used too much power for a cellphone (and would give them only 1 day battery life).


Manufacturers have used many of these processors in all kinds of other devices ranging from tablets, to netbooks, to portable media players etc.


Most of these processors are too slow to actually host an operating system like Windows. But they work fine for watching HD video, listening to MP3, and browsing the web.


In case if MS DOS would be the host operating system, even the lowest of Atom processors (like the Z500, with 800Mhz speed) would be sufficient to run most x86 programs created for MS DOS. But as some said, it is not a DOS console, so I will quit my chatter here.

Atom is actually a new (rather cumbersome) CPU design, not in any way related to Pentium 4. I imagine Netburst would be the last design they'd want to revisit for power sensitive applications, it was a real power drain.


Intel has made some good progress in reducing power consumption for Atom and its chipsets, but they're still nowhere close to Cortex-A9 SoCs, which tend to have an over 2x advantage in performance per Watt and lower leakage (although that's the area Intel has improved the most in). Citing Z500 is very misleading; not just because it doesn't include a GPU and memory controller on-die, but because the associated I/O hub chip you have to use is not nearly as power optimized and made on an older process it burns far more power at the system level. Suffice it to say that there isn't a price advantage either, far from it; Intel has much higher margins and $20 for just a CPU at this level is actually very expensive (an entire Tegra 2 costs less than that). So Menlow, the original Z-series platform, was basically dead on arrival. It made its way to some UMPCs but we all know how niche that market is, and how it's apparently okay to only last a couple hours on battery there.


Moorestown at 3W is better, naturally, but that's still only 1.1GHz single core - a dual core Cortex-A9 @ at lest 1GHz is a better choice and uses substantially less power. Bottom line: Moorestown has been out for a good long while and has not released in a single product, or at least none I've heard of and I pretty routinely check to see if I've missed any. It's quite the market failure on Intel's part, with the only saving grace being that the main Lincroft chip is used in Oak Trail which does at least have a few design wins.


Note that even Moorestown has a much higher cost and board space footprint than ARM-based chipsets. This is because it's a three-chip set instead of two-chips, because the chip itself is pretty big (and is not using anything close to TSMC's super dense 40nm transistors), and because it isn't using PoP memory meaning it needs extra board space for that. Check out a picture of the Pandora PCB some time - it's pretty crammed. Frankly, I doubt you can even fit Moorestown on it. And you certainly wouldn't be able to buy it in the volume of a few thousand; OMAP35xx is attractive because it's a hobbyist chip available in small volumes from suppliers.


Word has been that Intel dumped Moorestown to focus on the 32nm Medfield, but it turns out Medfield isn't coming out until 2012, and it'll still be single core and will probably look ridiculous compared to quad-core Cortex-A9s and dual-core Cortex-A15s. In 2013 Intel will be releasing Silverpoint which will be both out of order and on 22nm (well ahead of the competition's ability to release near this node), and they're anticipating a massive shift in performance. They could very well overtake ARM, but until then I'm not seeing it.


Of course if you want x86 compatibility going with Atom is a no brainer. It goes without saying that DOS emulation is not really that high on the list compared to everything else; it's hard to imagine that anyone would try to make a handheld just for DOSBox. If they did it'd be weird to go with ARM, but I think even Atom wouldn't be as seamless as you think. For over a decade now I've seen major compatibility problems in running straight DOS on modern PCs. For instance, devices hogging up the first 1MB memory space that needs to be free for various things. Or the need for direct hardware interfaces that no longer exist, like Soundblaster (and somehow I think that the SGX chips on current Z-series Atoms don't offer vanilla VGA or VESA, or at least it'd be pretty weird if they did). These days everyone uses DOSBox, although I suppose in a pinch you could use dosemu on Linux to get better performance while avoiding the hardware problems. If you do use DOSBox using x86 only gives you a small theoretical advantage, although in practice the x86 recompiler is far superior to the current ARM one. I expect that could eventually change.
 
and the award for making somebody feel stupid for thinking atoms are less power hungry then cortex A9 SoCs with 6 paragraphs worth of information goes to....
 
Funnily enough I tried this relatively recently... a friend had lent me a USB 3.5" disk drive. While I had it I used it to install DOS 6.2 onto an SD card for use with my Atom based netbook (just to see if I could) and it installed and booted just fine, :)
Ah, but did you actually try running anything? I'd be surprised if modern video cards still had full VESA support, and sound cards aren't really interrupt based anymore, not to mention the 1MB memory limits. The hardware just doesn't work the same as it used to.
 
Funnily enough I tried this relatively recently... a friend had lent me a USB 3.5" disk drive. While I had it I used it to install DOS 6.2 onto an SD card for use with my Atom based netbook (just to see if I could) and it installed and booted just fine, :)
Ah, but did you actually try running anything? I'd be surprised if modern video cards still had full VESA support, and sound cards aren't really interrupt based anymore, not to mention the 1MB memory limits. The hardware just doesn't work the same as it used to.

I did get something running - hence knowing the mouse worked. I think it was one of the kings quest games, but its been a while. I must admit I certainly didn't give it a thorough work-out, having successfully installed and booted and run a program on it, my curiosity was sated, and I had no motivation for any further experimentation.


I expect you are correct that a lot of DOS based software wouldn't work properly on modern hardware. To be honest I was shocked that some of my hardware *did* work with it in the limited ways I was able to get it working, mostly because the bios seemed to be providing some sort of compatibility layer. SD cards for example presented as hard drives - if the card wasn't present at boot time DOS could not see it.


You had however stated that it wouldn't be possible to install DOS, which is what I was responding to.


-Neelix
 
Technical discussion aside, it's probably worth pointing out to ProDigit that the hardware simply can not be changed.


It's taken years just to get to where we are now. Switching architectures is not possible. The deal is done. End of story.
 
Technical discussion aside, it's probably worth pointing out to ProDigit that the hardware simply can not be changed.


It's taken years just to get to where we are now. Switching architectures is not possible. The deal is done. End of story.


That's true, but I got the distinct impression ProDigit has no intention of returning, having been made to feel unwelcome. :(
 
Ah, but did you actually try running anything? I'd be surprised if modern video cards still had full VESA support, and sound cards aren't really interrupt based anymore, not to mention the 1MB memory limits. The hardware just doesn't work the same as it used to.
I can't talk about sound cards, but whenever you boot up Linux without any driver support for a graphics card, Xorg's VESA driver is the only way to get a graphical session running, and in my experience, it works (for some definition), even on cards from the last 2 years.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There's always FreeDOS. Actually if somebody was to make a console running DOS FreeDOS would be the only option for him because MS does not sell licenses for DOS anymore.
 
Wellwell, I see two issues here:


One guy who came to these boards with an unlucky first post (because, yes, to be honest, he COULD'VE easily checked the OpenPandora main page... but those things happen) and some guys who start flaming him.


Please, don't simply flame right away, first try to give reasonable answers or ask further questions if you're unsure if he was trolling, making a joke or meant that question for real.


There ARE people not knowing what the Pandora is (heck, about 99,9% of the world population probably doesn't know what a Pandora is!), so please try to be a bit more friendly towards new users, mmkay?

I did get something running - hence knowing the mouse worked. I think it was one of the kings quest games, but its been a while. I must admit I certainly didn't give it a thorough work-out, having successfully installed and booted and run a program on it, my curiosity was sated, and I had no motivation for any further experimentation

Errm - wait a sec.


You ran MS-DOS off an SD Card on your Intel Atom Netbook. That might be possible with harddisk emulation, all right.


However - the mouse worked?


There is an Atom Netbook with a serial port out there? :eek:


Because the USB mouse will definitely NOT work... or did you mean the internal touchpad worked? That might be possible, if it's connected as PS/2.
 
There ARE people not knowing what the Pandora is (heck, about 99,9% of the world population probably doesn't know what a Pandora is!), so please try to be a bit more friendly towards new users, mmkay?

This. This this this. Come on! I am going to sound like an asshole here, but are you guys (you know who you are) all fucking retarded?! This guy is now going to go tell all his friends how the OpenPandora community are elitist dicks. Congratulations; are you happy? Have you had your laughs? Have you enjoyed your preteen-esque image macros and your bullying? Good for you.


Enough of this, guys, and you'll kill what we have-- a growing, healthy, independent community based on openness and helping one another. A community that has a history of making it through everything the Universe, Mother Nature, God and/or Cthulhu has thrown at us.


These people are ignorant, yes; stupid, no. They're just used to seeing devices like the 3DS and the PSP and the netbooks in advertisements where the system specs are forced down their throats! They've never had to research before, because advertisements have done it for them; on their television, on their radios, in their magazines and their newspapers. On the highway; in their music; in the movies. Stop being elitists and realise that the reason they don't do research on the Pandora before coming here is because they're not used to it.


Every time this happens, another nail is driven into OpenPandora Ltd's coffin. Every time you do this, EvilDragon, Craig, Fatih, and Michael Weston each lose a huge chunk of their own pocket money they'll never get back... they become more jaded and more likely not to continue running OP Ltd, and our community gets nearer and nearer to eventual death by starvation.
 
Back
Top