Buying advice

[Ian Rose]

Hello everyone. I have only just begun to learn about the Pandora and Pyra. The machines look amazing and the community too. My overwhelmingly major interest is retro emulation. Should I wait a few months to buy the Pyra until all the emulators are ported across? I believe that many will not be at launch. Any other advice for a complete novice?

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I would preorder on Sunday! It'll help the Pyra get made, and you'll already have it when stuff gets released.

 

[rygD]

Yes, preorder. Preorder hundreds of them if you can afford it!

 

[Ian Rose]

Now can we all be a little more enthusiastic please.....

 

[rygD]

Now can we all be a little more enthusiastic please.....

Ok, I will try to be more helpful.

Since it won't get made if no one preorders, if you want one in the future it may be in your best interest to preorder early.

Prototype units are being sent to people to work on software. This will include emulators and ports, so some games should be available when you get it in your hands, even if you preorder. Not everything will be ported at launch, that is true, but if the Pandora is any indication things will continue to be ported until late into the life of the Pyra. Also, the people working on software are very receptive and helpful. @ptitSeb spends about 36 hours of every day porting stuff, so you will probably have some of the more popular stuff he brought to us available immediately, or pretty quickly.

As for advice, don't be intimidated by Linux (if you don't have experience with it). While you shouldn't have a need to mess around behind the scenes in one of those scary terminals, it is not a bad thing to use. We can help you, and a lot of general information is out there if you want to give it a shot.

If you have more specific questions feel free to ask them.

 

[Ian Rose]

Thanks for the reply. I apologise if this information is available elsewhere. Are there confirmed emulators in place already? If so, what are they? Is there a list of other applications that are already in place? Again, I apologise if these are daft questions given that the Pyra is not fully available yet! One final question if I may. I have a PC arcade control panel with a joystick, buttons, spinner and trackball that I use in MAME. These have standard drivers in windows. I assume these would not work on the Pyra as the OS is different or are there stock drivers in Linux?

 

[WizardStan]

These are the minimum emulators that should be available at launch
They're what're currently available in Debian's ARM repository so are easy to install and can be used day-1. Most of the emulators currently on the Pandora repository will simply need a recompile to work on the Pyra and that should happen fairly quickly: if there's a specific emulator you want, sending a note to the author will probably make that happen faster. Or since most are open source, asking here for a specific emulator will likely get someone to recompile it.
If you're still not convinced on the buy-it-now-or-later front, what you can do is pre-order now anyway and finish the transaction later.
The pre-order prices are just a downpayment, the final price will be about twice that, but the pre-order is what will allow ED to order the parts necessary to fund the production. He's said, however, that you can make and pay for the final order in your own time. If you have the downpayment now, you can order and the first batch'll get made, but if you want to wait a few months before paying the rest of it and getting a better software experience that should be alright.

 

[HelenF]

What machines do you want to emulate? Preordering the Pyra will help it get made, but if everything you need runs fine on a Pandora, you could save a lot of money and get it sooner by buying one second-hand.

 

[Ian Rose]

It has crossed my mind. I have a real interest in everything 8 and 16 bit and especially spectrum, C64 and Amiga. I also have an interest in PSP and PS1. I expect the Pyra will give advantages for PSP(?) and the keyboard is great for computer as opposed to console emulation. I also just like nice tech too (don't we all). I wonder if the Pyra would be more suitable for on the go productivity and web browsing/email. I use my phone a fair bit but would like a proper keyboard. I hear that the Pandora isn't always ideal for browsing.

 

[HelenF]

Pyra will probably have a better keyboard as we were talking about here (but most people are happy enough with Pandora's keyboard).
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/keyboard-feel.77305/

The Pyra keyboard layout is much improved using lessons learned from the Pandora.

 

[WizardStan]

I wonder if the Pyra would be more suitable for on the go productivity and web browsing/email.

The Pandora is really starting to show its age when it comes to web browsing; web pages have steadily been getting more complex over the last 5 years. When it first came out I had a great browser experience, but now most pages are multi-megabyte and dynamic: it takes a very noticeable number of seconds to even download the page, and then more as the CPU struggles to build it. For the classic 8 and 16 bit emulators you probably won't notice a huge difference, even at the PS1 level (although the Pyra has a higher resolution and better rendering capabilities so there'll be some improvement for sure) but for anything more recent, DOS and Windows games, or N64, the Pyra will truly shine.
Also if you're looking for true on-the-go connectivity, the Pyra will have an (optional) cell module in it so you won't need to find a wifi hotspot.

 

[pmprog]

The Pandora is really starting to show its age when it comes to web browsing; web pages have steadily been getting more complex over the last 5 years.

I read an article recently that said web pages can be as large as the original Doom install... How depressing

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I read an article recently that said web pages can be as large as the original Doom install... How depressing

Why can't we go back to using plain HTML and serverside scripts/cgi-bin stuff? That would be so much better.

 

[Ian Rose]

I might be in the wrong place to ask this but here goes....I have a windows 7 machine with all my media set up to another one over ethernet running Kodi in a home network. Could the Pyra be set up to run Kodi and share the media files from the windows 7 PC in another part of the house? This would provide an additional benefit I hadn't considered.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I think you can use SMB/Samba for that! I couldn't say exactly how.

 

[TrashyMG]

yeah Kodi can mount Window shares, it also has a built in DLNA server, that could be used to media share with other computers.

 

[Ian Rose]

That sounds very promising. So the Windows 7 laptop can share its media files with the Pyra (not a clue how to do this as I have no experience at all with linux - the Windows share was trial and error to be honest!) and then Kodi accesses the shared files on the Pyra. If this is possible then I am getting tempted...I would need a USB to ethernet adapter for the Pyra.

 

[Swordfish II]

I might be in the wrong place to ask this but here goes....I have a windows 7 machine with all my media set up to another one over ethernet running Kodi in a home network. Could the Pyra be set up to run Kodi and share the media files from the windows 7 PC in another part of the house? This would provide an additional benefit I hadn't considered.

The Pandora can run Kodi and android. I use android on my Pandora to watch netflix, so the Pyra should be able to
[doublepost=1462036992,1462036911][/doublepost]

.I would need a USB to ethernet adapter for the Pyra.

You can pick one up for pretty cheap online. I bought one from officemax for about $17, works great

 

[Silent-Hunter]

That sounds very promising. So the Windows 7 laptop can share its media files with the Pyra (not a clue how to do this as I have no experience at all with linux - the Windows share was trial and error to be honest!) and then Kodi accesses the shared files on the Pyra. If this is possible then I am getting tempted...I would need a USB to ethernet adapter for the Pyra.

What about a WiFi access point so you can use it wirelessly?

 

[Ian Rose]

I have tried wireless but with the windows machines the streaming stutters. It's odd because my phone streams really well. Maybe the Pyra would too.
[doublepost=1462042722,1462042540][/doublepost]Any thoughts on the arcade control panel? The spinner in particular is great for Atari 2600 games. The spinner acts as a mouse under Windows and works fine with its stock drivers. Does Linux have stock drivers for a mouse that would work similarly?