Happily ordered one but a few questions...

[Delirious17]

Love the site love the Pandora!

I am reading things that there are a few first batch of Pandoras left...Is there a difference between the first and second batch? If there are some of the first batch remaining couldn't I just ask for a first batch model and get it more quickly?

I also live in the US so when are you all saying it could arrive at my doorstep?

I want to have 2 32GB SD cards for this but which ones are ideal? Can I get away with Class 4 SDHC cards whilst running games like Quake 3 and other emulators/applications or do I really need class 6 to get by? Should they be formatted to FAT32 or NTFS?

Also I saw the original Unreal Tournament and Tribes 2 being on Linux...is it possible to run those games on the Pandora?

 

[Tor]

No differences between the first batch and the rest. The division into batches is just a part of the production setup.

Arrival date? Who knows.. but things seem to be moving steady, although slowly forward.

Cards: I would say it depends on the price. You can probably get quite far with Class 4 cards. For cards up to 8, or maybe 16GB, I look for Class 6, because they are not expensive. But the last time I looked the 32GB cards are still a bit pricey for the fastest cards. My guess is that it's possible to get away with Class 4 cards for most of the stuff you would want to do. At least that's my experience with the Nokia tablets (although they're a bit slower to start with. They too can use the speed of Class 6 cards though, so the comparision isn't totally invalid.)

Formatting: FAT32 is the generic answer. Some of us will want to format them as EXT2, which is Linux only and not out-of-the-box SD card formatting. Oh, and cards you buy will normally already be FAT32 formatted and can be used straight out of the box (well, when you've finally managed to break the card out of the insanely unbrakeable plastic they envelope them in, these days).

Games: No idea. But the generic answer is that it's not enough that it says 'Linux' somewhere, because that generally refers to x86 Linux. Pandora is ARM, so there must either be a version for Linux on ARM , or source must be available so that someone can recompile or port it to ARM.

 

[Delirious17]

1. I hear there are some of the first batch remaining...couldn't I just get one of those much quicker? (Sure there's nothing different from the two batches)

2. What difference would it make between class 4 and class 6 with everything I'd use the SD cards for?

 

[Znirk]

How did you place your order? If it's by emailing that sales address on the openpandora.org page, then I expect you are already getting a first batch machine if there are any left*. I don't think anyone is accepting second batch oders yet.

*Yes, I know the page says there are; but they update their website something like once a year. To be fair, they ARE kind of busy, what with actually getting the pandora out the door ...

 

[WizardStan]

The first batch that are still available are extras that they're building. They got orders for about 3800, but are building 4000. Not "building". Yet to be built. You've ordered from the first batch, they're still constructing them. It's taking longer than originally anticipated because these guys didn't really know what they were getting into. It's been a learning process for them. But it should be soon now. Just two more months

 

[GhostChaserUK]

i have just reordered after the last time i left it 11 month. and him still in the first batch but do you think we will see the Pandora this year ?

 

[WizardStan]

The case has been signed off and the final mould has gone into construction. That means in about 30 days (with an upward limit of 45, unless the factory explodes) they'll be able to start making cases, which is the final step required. If I had to guess, based on the information the dev team has given us, we are now looking at an October delivery, but I've made wrong guesses before.

 

[ninjamonkey]

So there is no real difference between the first and second?

 

[Delirious17]

Thank you just one last question...

2. What difference would it make between class 4 and class 6 with everything I'd use the SD cards for?

 

[WizardStan]

2. What difference would it make between class 4 and class 6 with everything I'd use the SD cards for?

What do you intend to use it for? For example, even the slowest Class 2 is fast enough to load every audio and video format in existence in real time, and it would take less than a second to load an average SNES ROM into memory, or as much as 2 seconds for the really big ones. The bottleneck would be when doing simple file operations like copying: a 1.5 hour movie in a 600 meg file would take about 5 minutes to copy with a Class 2, 2.5 minutes with a Class 4, and about 1.6 minutes on a Class 6.
Unless your plans involve regularly moving gigs of data around, the Class won't make any appreciable difference.

 

[DRED]

Delirious17, did you contact pandora to see if they can even sell you one for the first batch?

Do you know when the 2nd batch will go into production?

 

[Poem58]

Thank you just one last question...

2. What difference would it make between class 4 and class 6 with everything I'd use the SD cards for?

I asked Chip this question and he told me that since the Pandora will move things into RAM before execution, and that the supported Audio/Video wouldn't exceed the read speed that a class 4 card would be plenty fast enough for any use. Some people however prefer the class 6 cards due to time saved copying files to the card for large amounts of files.

So it's your choice and either is fine. Unless posed with a similar price, I suspect I will be getting class 4 cards myself.

Hope that helps!

 

[phrawzt]

Delirious17, did you contact pandora to see if they can even sell you one for the first batch?

Do you know when the 2nd batch will go into production?

I haven't heard anything about the second batch, but I recently contacted them about the first batch and was told that there are still some that are available for pre-order.