Android gingerbread in a pnd?

[slaeshjag]

That's all the script really does. It was just a quick hack for those who are still afraid of the terminal

 

[relliker]

How difficult is it to continue on notaz's work? Anyone knows what it involves (how-to) and if it can be maintained by non-developers? I'm not really into Android but it gives me another reason not to need a smartphone and the way it was done as a pnd is having the best of both worlds without even a reboot and gives us more choice on what we can run on the Pandoras. I've just installed skype under android and kept staring at it in awe seeing it run on the Pandora at last after thinking it would never be a possibility.

 

[TrashyMG]

How difficult is it to continue on notaz's work? Anyone knows what it involves (how-to) and if it can be maintained by non-developers? I'm not really into Android but it gives me another reason not to need a smartphone and the way it was done as a pnd is having the best of both worlds without even a reboot and gives us more choice on what we can run on the Pandoras. I've just installed skype under android and kept staring at it in awe seeing it run on the Pandora at last after thinking it would never be a possibility.

Could you make calls with Skype.. while it ran the program fine for me, I could never actually make a call go through.

 

[pawprints]

I'm using super Zaxxon B4 and 3.2 Kernal and everything looks ok until the android logo appears and the light flashes over this. This repeats constantly and I can't get past this using R4 or R5, does anyone have any ideas on this? Cheers for any help.

 

[steveway]

I'm using super Zaxxon B4 and 3.2 Kernal and everything looks ok until the android logo appears and the light flashes over this. This repeats constantly and I can't get past this using R4 or R5, does anyone have any ideas on this? Cheers for any help.

You _need_ to use Beta 5a, or else it won't work.

 

[pawprints]

Ah thanks... anyone got a link to 5a they could paste here?

 

[Mr_Loon]

I asked about how to remap the main buttons in Andoid to Shoulders / ABXY on Pandora here. By main buttons I mean Home, Menu, Back & Search.


Notaz kindly responded with the following advice : You can edit /system/usr/keylayout/gpio-keys.kl, but that may break games that support hard keys


I gave this a go :


To find out what values to use when editing the file I used keytest.apk


This gave me :


Left shoulder : Scancode=54


Start : Scancode=56


Select : Scancode=29


What I'd like to do is remap Back to left shoulder button, Menu to Start (Alt), Search to Select (Ctrl)


However being a bit of a noob I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle, I edited gpio-keys.kl using the text editor supplied with ES file explorer and upon trying to save it tells me : 'Error occurred when trying to save the file. It will not be saved'


I suspect that this is because you require root privileges to save changes to such a file.


So here are my questions :


1) How do you save an edit of /system/usr/keylayout/gpio-keys.kl?


2) In /system/usr/keylayout/ there are the following additional files : AVRCP.kl, keypad.kl & qwerty.kl Do they also need to be edited to ensure user customisation works, for instance in qwerty.kl key 54 (left shoulder) is mapped to SHIFT_RIGHT (which is of course correct for normal Pandora use) could I just change SHIFT_RIGHT to BACK WAKE_DROPPED in qwerty.kl to remap the left shoulder to the back button?

 

[pawprints]

Cool it works, thanks, although a little slowly. I guess it's time to cook my pandora a little although if I recall it crashes at anything higher than 800. Still always good for a bit of fun until I get bored and revert back to the ipad Can't believe there's a 1ghz pandora now and a 512mb one too.

 

[mcobit]

You can have 1 ghz, too. Set max. Opp level in cpusettings to 5 and max. Cpuspeed to 1000. Then set cpuspeed to 1000 mhz.


Should work.

 

[milkshake]

However being a bit of a noob I seem to have fallen at the first hurdle, I edited gpio-keys.kl using the text editor supplied with ES file explorer and upon trying to save it tells me : 'Error occurred when trying to save the file. It will not be saved'


I suspect that this is because you require root privileges to save changes to such a file.


So here are my questions :


1) How do you save an edit of /system/usr/keylayout/gpio-keys.kl?

It could be because your trying to edit a file that is mounted over the appdata folder and they are non writeable, try to copy the file from the root of the android system to your app data folder but mapping the place it will be i.e. appdata//system/usr/keylayout/gpio-keys.kl then edit and save this that might work.

 

[PokeParadox]

As this has superuser, you can always force move the application to the second sd card after its installed using link2sd from the android market.

This doesn't seem to work either..


You just can't seem move apps to the SD...

 

[apersonthinks]

As this has superuser, you can always force move the application to the second sd card after its installed using link2sd from the android market.

This doesn't seem to work either..


You just can't seem move apps to the SD...

On your second sd card, is there a folder named .android_secure? (Look at it while in angstrom, android usually hides it). That folder should contain all of the apps that are on the sd card in .asec files. If it doesn't exist, try creating it

 

[Mr_Loon]

It could be because your trying to edit a file that is mounted over the appdata folder and they are non writeable, try to copy the file from the root of the android system to your app data folder but mapping the place it will be i.e. appdata//system/usr/keylayout/gpio-keys.kl then edit and save this that might work.

Thanks milkshake but my noobness strikes again :


Could you clearly explain what has to be done in Android & what has to be done in XFCE? From my limited understanding Android has no 'knowledge' of the appdata folder or its contents.


Where should I copy the .kl file to in the app data folder?


How do I map the place it will be?


EDIT : Forgot to mention that I tried using the button remapper APP to remap the shoulder to the back button but it did not work.

 

[pawprints]

I'm really liking this although my game runs at a disappointing 12 frames per second (I was hoping for a little higher) but maybe on a 1ghz unit or 512mb unit it runs much better Maybe it's time to overclock the pandora a little to see how it goes (beyond 800)... Any tips on what is a safe(ish) limit to try?

 

[TrashyMG]

I'm really liking this although my game runs at a disappointing 12 frames per second (I was hoping for a little higher) but maybe on a 1ghz unit or 512mb unit it runs much better Maybe it's time to overclock the pandora a little to see how it goes (beyond 800)... Any tips on what is a safe(ish) limit to try?

Both my 256MB and 512MB Pandora can clock over 1GZ, My older Pandora could squeeze out 1100Mhz stable, while my newer Pandora is only stable around 1040Mhz or lower.. You need to set your default max OPP value to 5 to allow the Pandora to clock this high.. Obviously you need to change your max CPU clock speed as well.. I generally run Android at 1000mhz.


What you can set your pandora to depends on the chip you got, some can do better than others. It's just a matter of figuring it out.. I'd start at 900mhz work your way up.. If you lock up then you've gone to high.

 

[WizardStan]

Any tips on what is a safe(ish) limit to try?

In theory, there is no safe overclock value: every time you increase the CPU speed, you risk damaging something.


In practice, the Pandora's processor doesn't overheat or anything the way an x86 does when it's overclocked, the worst thing that happens is that one bit overflows and causes an instruction to go bad causing the CPU to lock up. When it locks up you simply press and hold the Pandora button, and then flick the power switch to trigger a hard reboot and everything is back to normal. You risk corrupting your SD card if it was in the middle of writing data but that's fixable: don't keep valuable data on your card, and if it dies you can always reformat and put it back.


Safe values range from 850 to 1100 Mhz. Just keep increasing by 50Mhz and then running some CPU intensive application like video playback to give it a bit of a workout until you find the point where it locks up, then pull back a bit.


Even after you find something "safe", there's no guarantee it will always be safe at that speed, you may find some applications crash more frequently when overclocked and if that's the case you just pull it back a little bit more until it stops doing that. For example, because of how tight the optimization is and how very well the instructions are used, the PCSX emulator crashes for almost everyone at around 800Mhz or so.


Just experiment and don't worry too much about safety. Worst that'll happen is you need to reformat your SD card.

 

[relliker]

I'm really liking this although my game runs at a disappointing 12 frames per second (I was hoping for a little higher) but maybe on a 1ghz unit or 512mb unit it runs much better Maybe it's time to overclock the pandora a little to see how it goes (beyond 800)... Any tips on what is a safe(ish) limit to try?

Some of the older units have clocked up to and sometimes over 1GHz but mine, for example, does not go over 900 without crashing so maybe 900 could be a 'safe' speed?


Edit: lol....ninja'd as usual....with deeper philosophies than mine

 

[pawprints]

Awsome thanks, one final question and I know this has been covered somewhere but I can't find it. How do I get the google play store as I've got loads of purchased apps.

 

[Mr_Loon]

Awsome thanks, one final question and I know this has been covered somewhere but I can't find it. How do I get the google play store as I've got loads of purchased apps.

see here


What is 'your game'? Is it available on the play store?

 

[pawprints]

Sadly not yet but I hope to release an android version sometime this year along with ios.