Another Review?

[craigix]

You can play it at a really low MHz. Even Virtua Racing flys along at the default cpu.

 

[fusion_power]

You can play it at a really low MHz. Even Virtua Racing flys along at the default cpu.

Thats cool. Onto the GP2X Virtua Racing was actualy the only game that needed a little bit OC, but it alredy played well onto 200MHz with the 8-Bit renderer.
I'm sure, at the end 500MHz Pandora standard clocking is more than enough for MegaDrive and SNES Emulation. I only hope that Nintendo Super-FX games run as well as Segas SVP game. (Should actualy because SVP was a more powerful chip than the FX Chip from Nintendo. )

Anyway, Nice and very informative Reviews here. ^^

 

[chame]

thanks guys for the honesty. its the first step to improve the system.
as other guys, when mine arrives (~3000) many of software bugs will be gone.
I am a bit worried about OS stability, but maybe will be fixed in later firmwares.

seems that people are yet not happy with wifi speed. ¿could there be some improvement with those resistors?

thank you all (OPT and users) for the great support. this comunity rocks!!

 

[rmm2131]

thanks guys for the honesty. its the first step to improve the system.

Very true. Things only get better with honesty.

Has anyone tried a Zelda or Metroid game with their Pandora?

 

[CPS]

I've had no problems with WiFi, it's pretty quick for me. OS seems stable, it's never shut down or done a blue screen of death type thing. Don't mention Windows 7 to me grrr! The browser has shut down a few times, it's crashy in that respect.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Crashy? I actually find that surprising -- apps sure, not firmware issue; but the firmware itself should be pretty solid -- ie: over the last year, I've not found it actually crashy at all. Sometimes screwy for sure, but never crashy. The worst I see is a fullscreen nonSDL app (ie: framebuffer), gets wedged up, so no easy way to get out of it (ie: can't force it to go windowed, so you can't get back the screen.) But thats an app bug.

If you do get crashes, let us know, because (to me at least) thats pretty surprising

jeff

Uh... my entire system has locked up at least three times. For example, it can't deal with being put in fake-suspend and back again. I've had various issues... maybe I need to reflash the firmware?

Who should I PM about getting my unit swapped out? The Right shoulder button is screwed up (hanging out, doesn't actually press most of the time).

Do I have to pay the postage for that?

For me, the WIFI was painfully slow. And I'm comparing it to a first gen Ipod Touch on the exact same WIFI connection. It also can't connect 90% of the time, even when I reset the machine (unlike the touch).

Oh great... the roms folder on my first SD card has been wiped. Fabulous...

 

[paddy]

Btw i play pico on my psp nearly everyday and i have been a collector or roms for over 8 years ,pc emulation is my thing to be honest and i can notice the slightest thing ,to me pico on psp is better in terms of proper full emulation ,it feels better,looks better becase of the psp filter and there are no stuttering ,sonic 3 on psp has some slowdowns at some points and that is fact and if the gp32 is less powerfull than the psp i find it hard to beleve the gp can do sonic 3 fullspeed all of the time.

You can beleve me or not but at 500mhz pico on pandora is not fullspeed ,most games will do fullspeed at 500mhz but some games no not ,but really i can run at 860mhz max on my pandora without a lock up or anything and i can put sonic 3 on and it will have slowdown at parts even on level 1 ,i am telling the truth and i always do ,i have never owned a gp32 so i can't comment on if it really does run 100% all of the time on sonic 3.

Anyway pico rules and i love it already on the pandora becase it can do things the psp version can't like virtua racing at a great speed ,and i also understand that pico on pandora is no where near finished ,i am not getting at pico at all but i really want to be clear as i had stated on another thred that when i played pico on Ed's pandora i didn't think it was perfect and i could sware i saw vertical sync issues when a game slows down ,this is true as i have now tested pico for real on my pandora so i can confirm this ,if anyone else with a pandra wants to try it out please do so but at least play for more than 30 seconds.

 

[skeezix]

I don't think I've ever had a lockup with a shipping-firmware (lots of times when we were hacking the kenrel up way back, of course -- what were you doing at the time? If the OS seems fully operational, I doubt a flash would help, but its also not too hard to do so might be worth doing. (I just dislike that 'reinstall your OS' MS mentality

As to your other questions, you'd have to talk to craig/ED/your-store I imagine.

A directory 'vanishing' is also pretty hard to do; if its a FAT type filesystem, its pretty resistant to not being unmounted (ie: OS crash), but if the SD is ext2 or ext3, a crash can totally hose the SD pretty easily.

Reflash is pretty safe, and if you screw it up, you can always redo it (ie: unbricable ftw!), so might be worth doing, just on the off chance it solves half your problems.

jeff

 

[SomeGuy99]

I don't think I've ever had a lockup with a shipping-firmware (lots of times when we were hacking the kenrel up way back, of course -- what were you doing at the time? If the OS seems fully operational, I doubt a flash would help, but its also not too hard to do so might be worth doing. (I just dislike that 'reinstall your OS' MS mentality

As to your other questions, you'd have to talk to craig/ED/your-store I imagine.

A directory 'vanishing' is also pretty hard to do; if its a FAT type filesystem, its pretty resistant to not being unmounted (ie: OS crash), but if the SD is ext2 or ext3, a crash can totally hose the SD pretty easily.

Reflash is pretty safe, and if you screw it up, you can always redo it (ie: unbricable ftw!), so might be worth doing, just on the off chance it solves half your problems.

jeff

It was formatted in NTFS, but I made sure to install the codec pack first.

On my second SD some folders won't even open. On my Linux laptop they work fine. Why?

 

[skeezix]

SG99 -- Not seen that either; well, I have seen it in this case -- maybe you're getting something similar.

If I have a giant video (not transcoded to handhelds), it may or may not play; but often whenI run it, gnome-mplayer won't handle it (wont' start at all, or will blow up.) From that point on, the SD will be 'locked' in some werird state -- I never investigated what was up (if mmc daemon was buggered, or what.) ie: I coudl navigate some SD directories, but not others; some files would open, others not. I didn't pursue it .. just noticed and moved on, sorry!

But coudl be something like that for you .. some big file, or crashed app, or something is buggering something up?

ie: If you can't open a directory, and then reboot, can you open it then?

Or perhaps the NTFS driver is flaky on ARM? (note: NTFS drivers that are any good are a pretty recent thing to linux; the ntfs 3g driver has only been solid a couple years, so maybe its not fully stable? I've not used it on the pandora myself.. I use FAT on SDs, for crash resilience and being useful to every OS plugged into.)

Maybe NTFS is not very crash resistant? Maybe you wedged at the wrong time and the SD fs got borked some subtle way? *shrug*

jeff

 

[paddy]

My pandora doesn't always come out of standby ,most of the time it becomes very slow and then the mouse locks up ,i wait and if it doesn't look like it will resume i reboot the pandora ,i don't see it as much of a problem tho ,i am so used to shutting down an OS that i always do it on the pandora and i am sure in time it will get fixed anyway.

 

[Yannick]

In my experience, every ntfs-3g issue can be fixed by doing a windows scandisk

It's the killer app to keep a windows install around

 

[EvilDragon]

My pandora doesn't always come out of standby ,most of the time it becomes very slow and then the mouse locks up ,i wait and if it doesn't look like it will resume i reboot the pandora ,i don't see it as much of a problem tho ,i am so used to shutting down an OS that i always do it on the pandora and i am sure in time it will get fixed anyway.

You know about the bug with the lid close / standby problem?
If you go to low power mode with the power switch and later on open the lid when you ty to use it, the display goes on again but will still be in low power mode until you move the switch again?

I'm probably gonna fix that with the next hotfix pack, but until then it should simply work by flipping the switch

 

[SomeGuy99]

SG99 -- Not seen that either; well, I have seen it in this case -- maybe you're getting something similar.

If I have a giant video (not transcoded to handhelds), it may or may not play; but often whenI run it, gnome-mplayer won't handle it (wont' start at all, or will blow up.) From that point on, the SD will be 'locked' in some werird state -- I never investigated what was up (if mmc daemon was buggered, or what.) ie: I coudl navigate some SD directories, but not others; some files would open, others not. I didn't pursue it .. just noticed and moved on, sorry!

But coudl be something like that for you .. some big file, or crashed app, or something is buggering something up?

ie: If you can't open a directory, and then reboot, can you open it then?

Or perhaps the NTFS driver is flaky on ARM? (note: NTFS drivers that are any good are a pretty recent thing to linux; the ntfs 3g driver has only been solid a couple years, so maybe its not fully stable? I've not used it on the pandora myself.. I use FAT on SDs, for crash resilience and being useful to every OS plugged into.)

Maybe NTFS is not very crash resistant? Maybe you wedged at the wrong time and the SD fs got borked some subtle way? *shrug*

jeff

Well back on Windows the directories appeared again. Weird!

And yeah, I was playing big video files in Mplayer. So like you said, it may have locked up the memory card or something?

 

[paddy]

Ahh ,cheers Ed i get it ,ok cool.

 

[MDave]

I wouldn't use NTFS for an SD card. FAT32 is the best option if you use Windows to transfer files.

 

[EvilDragon]

And yeah, I was playing big video files in Mplayer. So like you said, it may have locked up the memory card or something?

We had that problem a few months ago with MPlayer. We fixed it - but none of us tried NTFS.
Sounds like an issue when you use NTFS with MPlayer and big movies.

 

[SomeGuy99]

And yeah, I was playing big video files in Mplayer. So like you said, it may have locked up the memory card or something?

We had that problem a few months ago with MPlayer. We fixed it - but none of us tried NTFS.
Sounds like an issue when you use NTFS with MPlayer and big movies.

I'm still trying to figure out why I can't open directories, and why my the media entries on the left side of Thunar are corrupted or not working. I rebooted, and at least I can load a few apps now (wasn't having it before).

And thanks for the pointer about the nub mouse! I was using up as single-click... duh, silly me! You need to make that really obvious, like in a dialogue popup maybe?

 

[SomeGuy99]

Thanks!
Does the Pandora key + power switch, not work for you?
I believe it's a reset so you shouldn't need to take out battery.

No, it totally locked up and the switch wouldn't respond.

 

[Pleng]

I'm probably gonna fix that with the next hotfix pack, but until then it should simply work by flipping the switch

...and waiting 10-15 seconds! Don't forget that vital step

@someguy, there is not 'response' from the system when flipping the switch. you just need to wait