Finishing up the hardware


2GB of RAM should be adequate to run the Debian OS,  3 Android VMs, web browser, LibreOffice, a movie and one incredibly resource intensive game all at once - but not much more than that.   :lol:
Do not under-estimate Game makers ;) Even on the Pandora, there are some games that will not work without a swapfile...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
2GB of RAM should be adequate to run the Debian OS,  3 Android VMs, web browser, LibreOffice, a movie and one incredibly resource intensive game all at once - but not much more than that.   :lol:

For the eMMC - you guys are thinking about it backwards and valuing size over speed.

eMMC is capable of TWICE the data rate of microSD.  However the fastest eMMC are MUCH more expensive per GB.

eMMC maxes out at 200MB/s (+/-)

microSD maxes out at 100MB/s (+/-)

If a 16GB 200MB/s eMMC costs the same as a 32GB 100MB/s eMMC, I'd rather have the 16GB eMMC installed.

Max out the speed on the internal eMMC.  I can already buy microSD cards that max out the speed of the microSD port.  That gives the end user a choice of sorts.  Use the smaller, but super fast internal eMMC or drop in a slower but much larger microSD card.

Heck, if it makes the eMMC considerably faster, I'd be OK with the eMMC being only 8GB.  User data can all go on the two SD cards anyway.
I'm not sure if raw transfer speed is really that important for the eMMC. It would have a bit of impact on the boot time, and the time needed for a suspend-to-disk, but other than that, I don't think it really makes a huge difference in practice between 100MB/s and 200MB/s. At least not for the loading times of most software.

For data transfers (e.g. if you put movie files or something on the eMMC) from the eMMC to something external over USB 3.0 or eSATA, it does make sense to have an eMMC that is as fast as possible.

The thing is: if the eMMC is small, you'll probably want to use it only for software, not for data, so the fast data transfers are not really very useful.

If the eMMC is big, you might want to use it for data, and then the data transfer speed matters more.

So I would say: try to find a good balance between speed, size and price.
 
2GB of RAM should be adequate to run the Debian OS,  3 Android VMs, web browser, LibreOffice, a movie and one incredibly resource intensive game all at once - but not much more than that.   :lol:
Do not under-estimate Game makers ;) Even on the Pandora, there are some games that will not work without a swapfile...
Firefox (5 windows, +2600 tabs total, +400 pages active), GIMP, GPicView, OpenOffice, PcManFM, HexChat, Terminator (tmux, mplayer, EMACS)

Thats what i have on my desktop right now, and it does take quite much 8GB of ram and 2GB of swap.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
... +2600 tabs total, +400 pages active ...
What for?  If it's just for testing purposes then even if PYRA were to have a gazillion GB of ram, it's still not enough as you always have ways to max out the ram by opening a +2600 gazillion tabs total, and +400 gazillion pages active ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Silicone keys for the keyboard?

That actually sounds pretty bad.... :unsure:

I really hope that there would be some other options for us about the keys, because soft keys for games are not so good...... And the letters will be vanished very quickly on them either :(
 
Silicone keys for the keyboard?

That actually sounds pretty bad.... :unsure:

I really hope that there would be some other options for us about the keys, because soft keys for games are not so good...... And the letters will be vanished very quickly on them either :(
Eh? It's the same as on the Pandora (just improved the tactile feedback a bit)... and for games? Every proper Joypad I know uses rubber / silicon mats...?
 
Silicone keys for the keyboard?


That actually sounds pretty bad.... :unsure:


I really hope that there would be some other options for us about the keys, because soft keys for games are not so good...... And the letters will be vanished very quickly on them either :(
Eh? It's the same as on the Pandora (just improved the tactile feedback a bit)... and for games? Every proper Joypad I know uses rubber / silicon mats...?
To be honest, I never have seen an Open Pandora in real. So I dont know exactly how it feels :(


With your blog post, I thought you meant that the keys are "rubber only"...

Does it feels like the Nokia N900 keyboard?
 
The keys will have a plastic cap, they are not rubber only.


The N900 has a tiny clicky keyboard (like most phones), the Pyra keyboard will feel softer, without a clip, but also with hard key tops.
 
I hope we can get a clicky keyboard on the P3.

Edit:  I have to wait to find out how the Pyra keyboard will feel, but if it feels right, and especially if it doesn't, a clicky sound might help some of us.  How difficult would it be to have something running that plays a clicky sound everytime a key is pressed?

I doub't I will be typing close to the speeds that I do on a full size keyboard, so I guess I could just look at what I am typing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
How difficult would it be to have something running that plays a clicky sound everytime a key is pressed?

I doub't I will be typing close to the speeds that I do on a full size keyboard, so I guess I could just look at what I am typing.
Not difficult. Just a simple little script which caches a sound in memory and holds open a connection to the audio mixer (to minimize latency) and has enough permissions to listen to all keypresses via /dev/input/event_whatever (if you always want keypress sounds) or X11 (if you don't mind global hotkeys and typing in password dialogs being invisible to it and, thus, silent).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Then we can have typing sounds like in those cool haxx0r movies!
There are other palmtops that play key clicks to help with typing.  I feel like I remember seeing it as an option in some version of Windows, too.  I think the reason they add the sound of keyboards in movies is to make it clear they are typing.  Punches don't really sound like they do in movies either.  Gunshots and other things are sometimes wrong as well (I was watching something earlier and was surprised that when they fired actually sounded correct for the weapon and area it was fired in from the perspective of the camera/characters, not super loud (although it probably is loud, but not quite as loud when you aren't right there...nevermind), and it caught my attention more because it was so quiet.  It is probably because of TV and movies that some people don't notice when shots are fired that are audible, but not right next to them.  No clue what my point was with all that.).

When I type it is very noisy, and I have frequently gotten comments.  Some people just don't like clicky keyboards.  I feel so sorry for them.
 
I like the idea of playing an optional custom sound with key presses... but I would have to play around with it to find a sound that is subtle enough. I like *some* auditory feedback, but for me it must be barely noticeable, and the volume must be adjustable.
 
true... as long as the task is not IO intensive
For some reason my ext4 + SMB + VirtIO-LAN setup seems to be about twice as fast as a native Windows on NTFS when handling a lot of small files, though, but that might just as well be a quite extreme superiority of ext4 over NTFS.
Everything is twice as fast as NTFS for lots of small files and directories, even FAT. NTFS is apparently designed for a handful of directories with lots of large files only (not surprising if you look at the layout of a windows installation). The detailed security descriptors and their inheritance seem to be the problem.
 
Tactile feedback is enough for me, auditory feedback is not important then.

On a touch screen 'keyboard', it's nice to have auditory or rumble feedback because there is no tactile feedback.

But if the keys give enough tactile feedback to be able to feel whether the action has registered, then an additional sound is completely redundant: the latency of my ears is higher than that of my tactile sensors, and noises tend to annoy other people.
 
Back
Top