Have I digested this correctly?

[scoobydoo]

Approximately 3-4 years ago this free source emulator, mini Linux PC device became available.


About 1-2 years before that, the specs were conceived and created by 2 people who previously worked for GamePark Holdings. One from Germany , the other from the UK. they developed and repaired various devices for the company. they are the owners.


From the 'get go' the OP company has been behind ,producing this incredible device, both monetarily and physically.


There have been a significant amount of returns to further delay in production, for various hardware problems. This also has hurt the bottom $$ line. Also the fact that technology has much progressed since the Pandora's conception, has decreased the 'cutting edge' factor.


The company has been through three production companies ; one in Korea due to LCD screen overlay problems, an American company due to slow and inaccurate production problems and now in the process of using a highly anticipated company in Germany.There are potential legal issues with the American company.


OP is now asking for potential investors, either in these forums or otherwise. This is proving successful thus far.


Some people who ordered their units 2-3 years ago are still waiting. The price was 350 USD.


Those people who bought at the original price were the main ones waiting. That price was raised and the Pandora was labeled a 'premium' and older orderers could upgrade and receive their units within 7 days rather than continue to wait months. The premium price became 500 USD.


This idea did not fair well with many and has ceased since. However, the policy of receiving in 7 days did attract many to buy.


Due to the some of the above situations, Pandora production temporarily had ceased but has recently rebounded. Now as a 10 eur deposit and a 490 eur price, the Pandora can be received by Jan-Feb 2012.


Executive responsibility have been altered//divided. All Pandora matters are now in charge by the German fellow whereas all icontrolpad issues are with the UK fellow. This has stirred much speculation and controversy in the OP community.


Customer service remains an issue with many people both for cancellations, RMA'S and pre orders. Again, an issue with waiting for the product and correspondence.


There are approximately 3000-4000 units sold.


There are parts,accessories and incomplete Pandoras currently for sale.


I do apologize if this is inaccurate.


I did not mention anything abut the incontrolpad for I know less about it than I know about the Pandora history. :wacko:


I do love my Pandoras [have 2] and think they are a unique, quality made, 'swiss pocket army knife' type invention. Albeit the camera


This was not mean't to slander or degrade. I just wanted to know if these are correct facts for I have the ambition to write a book about this. I am also participating with writing about the demise of the TAPWAVE ZODIAC, which was a machine ahead of it's time with many internal problems too long to mention [yes I own a tapwave zod 2]. I have been corresponding with one of the Tapwave developers for a few years.


Cheers,


scoobydoo newbie.

 

[MarioPandio]

A few issues are possibly incorrect, or a product of mistranslation and forum whispers. Again i cant claim to know the proper story either, so bear with me.


During the GP2x days and pre-WIZ/Dingoo/Caanoo etc a chap called Craig Rothwell posited the idea for a new OS handheld in a forum thread. The Craiginator was born and based upon community input and suggestions but was planned as a pocketable Amiga 500 capable device, sporting more control options than the current trends for touchscreen only devices. Craig and ED already ran import and sale businesses for various other devices, if they didnt also have bigger roles with GPH.


From the community MWeston stepped up with the expertise to design the PCB, and DaveC with case creation skills and brilliant D-Pad design from his prior Gp2x mods of fame. I am uncertain of Fatih role early on but he helped manage the Chinese relations and was himself also a main seller of the original pre-ordered units on a smaller scale in Turkey and elsewhere in the EU.


The original idea was to create this device almost debt free, with no bank loans or investors that would wish to basically scrap its design and go with the trends if they had any input over its creation via the money that was provided. As a result the OP team ensured they were solvent themselves and basically asked the community to


front the actual Bill of Materials costs themselves in the form of pre-orders for the full value of each unit to be produced. This allowed all the components to be secured in advance and some money for production. In addition Craig certainly sank many 100k+ of his own money into this, as did probably ED and the others. So their houses etc were still on the line if this went bust.


Case production was planned in China, along with PCB's and LCD cables, with Texas Instrument based chips being planned for PCB board population by a TI recommended company CircuitCo who had handled the beagleboard and were equipped to do fairly complicated board production that the Pandora requires.


The Nubs were designed/manufactured elsewhere and the first company that made them went bust, which cost OP about 30k and was among the first problems.


The Case company made great LCD cables on time but once they were installed in units, it became apparent that they were prone to weakness and PTOD issues, so these required a re-make by another specialist company that deals with larger Laptop companies products/brands and the newer cables were used in later Pandora units, or are swapped over if in the event of failure. This again will have incurred extra costs.


The Case company was also due to produce the TV out cables and working prototypes were made and ED has one and it works fine. These were available during the pre-order process but sadly required a minimum order of about 10k of cables and the go ahead to make those has never occurred. Most recently the orders for the actual connectors did occur and OP have thousands of the EXT connectors for this purpose. ED's new plan, includes for getting the TV Out cables built promptly once the investments are all in place.


Staying with the Case company it is here that the planned Pre-orders of Sept 2008 being delivered by Christmas fell on their face.


Whilst the PCB's were made, the cases and moulding ran into significant delays and mis-communications from the Chinese company. The moulds needed many tweaks of tolerances etc and early test batches were not inspiring. Fatih got things going here. Eventually the production cases appeared but had a poor plastics discoluration finish and it was opted to have them painted, which also altered the tolerances and led to a slight bowing of the bottom of the LCD's bezel, hinges which were stiff and then lost stiffness with age (apparently common..cough) and for the painted finish to wear away on the D-Pad and to interfere with the seating of the face buttons, or hamper the shoulders somewhat. This led to the buttons all remaining unpainted in future batches.


So finally the Pandora units began to ship. Whilst a boat load of cases did likewise from China. Some of which got dumped at a garden centre near Craig's house and somewhere along the line his van caught fire whilst carrying parts, that were luckily not destroyed. Production of finished units had been planned to occur at CircuitCo but the eventual costs of doing this meant it was ruled out and it was decided to make Newcastle the home of Pandora production, with webcast manufacture. Except the hall had no wifi for a webcast and so Newcastle remains famous for purely Newcastle Brown Ale, in a somewhat better light than the Monks of Buckfast Abbey are know in Scotland to this day.


CC populated boards were initially fantastic with zero errors though and the first of us got a taste of Pandoras' magic.


Slowish wifi speed was noted however, which was strange given it was a well used Chip from the N900 range I believe. However the Nubs then decided to fail on some units. This halted production whilst the Nubs were re-designed by the same company (the new one as the first went bust) at no extra cost to OP. It took several months though, before it was confident that production could continue.


CC resumed production but this time with a few issues in some units. The volume wheels were sometimes scorched, the 2nd SD slots sometimes had mechanical issues and the shoulder buttons switches were ill positioned on some boards and required that Craig's team had to add internal padding to make the buttons feel right and work responsively. Some units would slip through and users would make those mods themselves.


The shoulder buttons issue was solved production wise but eventually some of the new units were caught around the Royal Wedding time (by a sharper eye than the one on Pippa's bum) to have faulty wifi chips. Production halted again.


During all this time, ti became apparent that CC had issues. They had been very slow all over anyway but despite being buggered by a forum member on ED's request, they only barely got their ACT together. They hired a new team leader who promised more contact and bought more machines to populate the boards and double speed. In light of this and the Volcanoe, the Chinese New Year, the car fire and other disasters, not to mention the manufactured bursting of the financial quakery bubble, deemed the 'Credit Crunch' to make quantitive easing with a jar of vaseline more palatable for breakfast, it became apparent that the cost of making a Pandora was now well above the pre-orders initial price. This meant a price hike was in order, so the premium units idea was born, to go with the CC promises of oodles of boards per week to be flying off to Newcastle and into Pandorians hands.


Epic fail on the production front from CC, meant no boards were available to meet the 7 day ideas after afew weeks and so the extra cost for more staff for production wasn't justifiable and things wound down once again. However the price point remains, as quite clearly the price of parts and making these things is well above the pre-order price. As a result ALL Pandoras will cost the premium price forevermore, until German production at a rate of knots means the price may eventually go down due to mass mass production, if the demand creates this possibility. The new premium price isnt 490 Euro though with a 10 Euro pre-order, its whatever the previous premium price was of 375 Euro or something. Its in ED's new pre-order posts.


During this more recent downtime, it became apparent that CC isnt playing ball at all. It also transpired that they had left the boards they had promised they had populated whilst waiting for the nubs to be re-designed, sat waiting and oxidising. Which is what led to the wifi issues. They now repair some boards a week but as it looks like they dont want to, Craig has re-offered the without wifi boards as Premium Units (because thats the only price that makes any sense, as thats what it costs) to be available again briefly.


In the meantime of several years on the forum, we've gone from vapourware/scam, to real units in a few peoples hands, to all the above isues and persistent praise and ill wishes being chucked at the OP team from everyone and their pet goat. Craig recently seems to have had enough and ED has chosen to take over the Pandora production, once again appeal to the community for investment in a stronger way and to get the job done in Germany.


We can of course wish nothing but success to ED and Craig and to the community to keep this project going. Its an awesome piece of kit and all it deserves is mass production, widestream ackowledgement and a growing software base/community and eventually massive support for a sequel machine to end all handheld needs once and for all.


Sorry to waffle and I'm probably wrong in various parts but thats some of my recollection of the Pandora Predicament Complex.

 

[scoobydoo]

Very well typed indeed MarioPandio.


This ads icing to my incomplete cake.


Would make excellent publication IMHO.

 

[Blue Protoman]

I'll gladly purchase a copy.

 

[Hoodoo]

You can edit posts.


Mario, that's a great story, should probably be in the wiki and linked to it 'Why Pandora is the way it is' thread!

 

[scoobydoo]

You can edit posts.


Mario, that's a great story, should probably be in the wiki and linked to it 'Why Pandora is the way it is' thread!

I agree.

 

[Neelix]

The Case company made great LCD cables on time but once they were installed in units, it became apparent that they were prone to weakness and PTOD issues, so these required a re-make by another specialist company that deals with larger Laptop companies products/brands and the newer cables were used in later Pandora units, or are swapped over if in the event of failure. This again will have incurred extra costs.

It may be pointed out here that the LCD cables issues were actually caused by the additional shielding that needed to be added to pass the CE testing. The additional shielding was prone to crimping and interfered mechanically with the LCD cables themselves. As I understand it the new cables incorporate the necessary shielding into the cable itself, effectively eliminating the cause of the problem.


-Neelix


EDIT: erm... how did I manage to post to the middle of the thread?

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

@MarioPandio : awesome post. The story so far

 

[gruso]

Yes, a pretty good summary!

 

[Thorium]

Due to the some of the above situations, Pandora production temporarily had ceased but has recently rebounded. Now as a 10 eur deposit and a 490 eur price, the Pandora can be received by Jan-Feb 2012.

490 EUR? I think you mean USD.

 

[FRZ]

Don't why this thread made me thought of Star Wars, "A long, long time ago in the future past, an evolutionary device..."

 

[Orion4874]

Very cool, I'll definitely be purchasing both of those books. Coincidentally, there's a guy over on the Gizmondo Forums writing about that handheld as well.

 

[Darkknight512]

The Case company made great LCD cables on time but once they were installed in units, it became apparent that they were prone to weakness and PTOD issues, so these required a re-make by another specialist company that deals with larger Laptop companies products/brands and the newer cables were used in later Pandora units, or are swapped over if in the event of failure. This again will have incurred extra costs.

It may be pointed out here that the LCD cables issues were actually caused by the additional shielding that needed to be added to pass the CE testing. The additional shielding was prone to crimping and interfered mechanically with the LCD cables themselves. As I understand it the new cables incorporate the necessary shielding into the cable itself, effectively eliminating the cause of the problem.


-Neelix


EDIT: erm... how did I manage to post to the middle of the thread?

I think the additional sheilding only accelerated the breaking proccess, because mine has no sheilding and I THINK the cable is going out, I just lost right speaker.


ED said the cables break because they were too stiff and resisted bending too much, so they eventually had their traces broken.

 

[bzar]

I think the project should have a timeline page in the pandora wiki

 

[craigix]

The LCD cables were actually made by ChinaFastPrint, not the moulding company.


They are now made by a laptop manufacturer in Taiwan.

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

@Craigix - how many of those companies had your order number?

 

[Cilph]

The Beagleboard has been on my wishlist of goodies for a while but with CircuitCo handling their customers this way I've decided to not order one out of some sort of protest. Hope the production in Germany goes well so I can have my Pandora already :unsure: , It's been three years.

 

[marovada]

Great post Mario. You may want to add:


- initial wifi problems before mass production where the wifi chip was too slow to be of any use. At that time I think OP were going to offer Pandoras with USB wifi sticks but the issue was eventually resolved. At one stage it wasn't clear whether it was a hardware or software issue. I think it ended up being a hardware issue. Wifi to this day isn't super fast or reliable IMHO but YMMV


- the credit card issue: substantial pre-orders were made with credit cards but the banks wouldn't make payments to OP, I think because of a policy with pre-orders (and the GFC??). Accordingly, all credit card payments had to be refunded and there was a time limit in which pre-orders could be reinstated with bank transfers. At the time there was argument about whether places in the queue would be maintained and also about exchange rate gains and losses causing the pre-orders to be more or less expensive. The requirement to re-pre-order didn't apply to Amex cards for some reason - some people with these cards asked their banks not to honour the payments so that they could re-pre-order, otherwise OP didn't get any money for the sale.


This is something people forget when being negative about OP. OP were prepared to send a Pandora to people with Amex cards even though OP wasn't paid a cent by Amex. OP gave Pandoras away for free to honour pre-orders!!

 

[Prometheus]

The requirement to re-pre-order didn't apply to Amex cards for some reason - some people with these cards asked their banks not to honour the payments so that they could re-pre-order, otherwise OP didn't get any money for the sale.


This is something people forget when being negative about OP. OP were prepared to send a Pandora to people with Amex cards even though OP wasn't paid a cent by Amex. OP gave Pandoras away for free to honour pre-orders!!

I just want to add a bit of clarification to the best of my recollection, here: Amex wasn't at the root of that issue, and I seem to recall that it wasn't them who withheld those funds. That was to do with Craig's bank, if memory serves.

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Its quite a meal actually.Calorific baby.