Broken Pandora units


craigix

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I went through the final returns here (most go to Ed now, unless they are considered dead).

200 units :(

Fortunately it looks like maybe 100 of them can be fixed... surprising how many 'dead' units just needed a boot SD, but I know how frustrating these are to make, my mac simply cannot make them, even though it appears it has (but they don't work). These people probably followed the guide but it just didn't work.

Also, on opening up 2 of the units they had clearly been dropped in liquid! Argh.

One had a dead spider in it.
 
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my mac simply cannot make them, even though it appears it has (but they don't work). These people probably followed the guide but it just didn't work.
Stupid question out of the way, are you sure you're ejecting the card properly? Giving it a chance to finish writing data? Creating a boot SD card is not hard: download zip file, unzip to the SD card. There isn't anything fancy going on that could cause frustration. The only thing I can think of is if you remove the card without syncing it.
 
He is talking about boot SD that is needed when bootloader on NAND is dead I guess. That card has to have non-standard specifically laid out partition table or else TI's ROM code can't handle the card and boot it. I can only remember 1 or 2 cases over the years where people managed to trash their bootloader, I'd be really surprised if many needed such card. If those pandoras can show something on LCD, just about any FAT32 card can be used to reflash with just the zip extracted.

200 units :(
200 exactly? Now that's a round number.
 
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MMM... :

current.jpg


My spare room, right now - each silver packet is one or two PCBs, the box in the middle has 100 in it, the stack to the right with a silver pandora on the top is 19 units, all the packets to the top left are dead PCBs.

No idea why you find it 'really surprising' that some people broke their boot loader, it's a pretty common thing to see with returns.
 
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So the Pandoras from the 200 which can be fixed , is the plan to fix them and send them out to pre-order customers?.  That would be good news - ie if a 100 could be fixed that would mean 100 less to be funded.
 
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No idea why you find it 'really surprising' that some people broke their boot loader, it's a pretty common thing to see with returns.
Because it's not a very easy thing to do, accidentally OR intentionally. It takes several very deliberate steps to thrash a previously working boot loader. I've had my BeagleBoard for about 4 years now, and while I've borked the filesystem on more than one occasion, it's the exact same boot loader I originally flashed to it all those years ago. It shouldn't just suddenly go bad, not with any statistically countable frequency, at any rate.
 
Maybe you flashed some units and didn't test if the bootloader works before shipping?
 
So far, I got two RMAs with missing bootloader, but I think those were missing from the beginning, as these were new ones returned right away.

Can't remember I ever got any other Pandoras with missing bootloaders back.
 
I'm confused why there is a huge stack of returned units... did they just come in recently, or did they come back ages ago and you're just now getting around to looking through them?
 
Maybe Craig and you have extremely different clients who do totally different things with their Pandoras :)
Yeah, Craig evidently has clients who like to dunk their Pandoras in a nice cup of tea.
Ship it all to ED and let him sort it out.. he's got the touch


I'm confused why there is a huge stack of returned units... did they just come in recently, or did they come back ages ago and you're just now getting around to looking through them?
Nope, he's just had them sitting in a box for 12 months.
 
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My spare room, right now - each silver packet is one or two PCBs, the box in the middle has 100 in it, the stack to the right with a silver pandora on the top is 19 units, all the packets to the top left are dead PCBs.
Guests staying at your house will have to tread very carefully when getting out of bed!
 
My spare room, right now - each silver packet is one or two PCBs, the box in the middle has 100 in it, the stack to the right with a silver pandora on the top is 19 units, all the packets to the top left are dead PCBs.
Guests staying at your house will have to tread very carefully when getting out of bed!
That would explain the high return rate :)
 
Because it's not a very easy thing to do, accidentally OR intentionally. It takes several very deliberate steps to thrash a previously working boot loader. I've had my BeagleBoard for about 4 years now, and while I've borked the filesystem on more than one occasion, it's the exact same boot loader I originally flashed to it all those years ago. It shouldn't just suddenly go bad, not with any statistically countable frequency, at any rate.
Over here it'd be easy to make a case for violation of warranty, if there's a warranty clause to begin with, but I guess over there you must refund any kind of return. Even if they have water in them.
 
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As he only saw now what happened to the units, I guess Craig didn't even check the returned units when they got back to him :(
 
I'd like to know what terms the units were returned under. I always thought it was strange that so many people would demand refunds for returned units since most people who buy something actually wanted to own one. Especially something you have to order online from a specialty shop.

There's a huge difference between the following two scenarios:

1) Unit was sent back with request for full refund

2) Unit was sent back with request for repair, sat around for months with no status update (as we know happened with at least some repairs), then the customer requests a refund for something he/she suspects he'll never receive and is tired of waiting for
 
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It's triple sad Craig equally treats his product and his customers. )))-:

It's the finest portable computer since HP 200LX and Sharp Zaurus. More respect to electronics, please.

Maybe some who couldn't pay extra will get back the exact came CC unit he sent in. (with the liquid spider inside, of course.)
 
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