Help Running Emulators?

[Reldar]

I'm sure there have probably been 8 million topics on this but I couldn't find the help I needed with search


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So I received my Pandora yesterday and I'm very pleased with it so far! Except I feel like a complete idiot because I cannot figure out how to get any emulators to work :blink:


I have good knowledge of windows but zero on linux so this is all very new and confusing to me.


I am most interested in playing NES, Mega Drive (Genesis) and Nintendo 64 games.


I have the emulators (gpfce, PicoDrive, Mupen64Plus) and ROM's but I can't get them to run.


I know it's asking a lot, but if somebody could give me a step by step guide I would love them forever lol :lol:

 

[Blue Protoman]

Run each PND once. This will create the necessary appdata folders. Then drop the ROMs into the appdata folders. Simple. No Linux stuff required.


Also;


http://pandorawiki.org/Introduction_to_PNDs

 

[craigix]

I'm sure there have probably been 8 million topics on this but I couldn't find the help I needed with search


---------------


So I received my Pandora yesterday and I'm very pleased with it so far! Except I feel like a complete idiot because I cannot figure out how to get any emulators to work :blink:


I have good knowledge of windows but zero on linux so this is all very new and confusing to me.


I am most interested in playing NES, Mega Drive (Genesis) and Nintendo 64 games.


I have the emulators (gpfce, PicoDrive, Mupen64Plus) and ROM's but I can't get them to run.


I know it's asking a lot, but if somebody could give me a step by step guide I would love them forever lol :lol:

If you're not already I highly recommend switching to the 'simple/mini' gui called minimenu.

 

[Reldar]

Ok I've figured it out now. I didn't realise I needed to put the PND files into the pandora/apps/ folder... :lol:


Thanks.

 

[craigix]

Ok I've figured it out now. I didn't realise I needed to put the PND files into the pandora/apps/ folder... :lol:


Thanks.

If it helps I think that set up is a bit weird too. I want to change it.

 

[EvilDragon]

Ok I've figured it out now. I didn't realise I needed to put the PND files into the pandora/apps/ folder... :lol:


Thanks.

If it helps I think that set up is a bit weird too. I want to change it.

Well, there was a reason we did that setup


As PNDs are auto-discovered, we need a path where to put them. If you have roms, Music, Videos, etc. in the same directory (or a subdirectory) where PNDs can be, the system would have to crawl through thousands of files to find PNDs. Takes a lot of time, so it won't work.


As users want PNDs on the desktop, in the menu or some in both, we needed a different directories to put them so the system knows where they should appear.


And thus, we have three different directories for PNDs, and that's it. You can put them in any subdirectory to those if you want.


Anyone with a better working idea is welcome to tell us.


The only way I think we could do better is a setup SD-Card tool which also helps you doing your first steps or some kind of tutorial

 

[craigix]

Ok I've figured it out now. I didn't realise I needed to put the PND files into the pandora/apps/ folder... :lol:


Thanks.

If it helps I think that set up is a bit weird too. I want to change it.

Well, there was a reason we did that setup


As PNDs are auto-discovered, we need a path where to put them. If you have roms, Music, Videos, etc. in the same directory (or a subdirectory) where PNDs can be, the system would have to crawl through thousands of files to find PNDs. Takes a lot of time, so it won't work.


As users want PNDs on the desktop, in the menu or some in both, we needed a different directories to put them so the system knows where they should appear.


And thus, we have three different directories for PNDs, and that's it. You can put them in any subdirectory to those if you want.


Anyone with a better working idea is welcome to tell us.


The only way I think we could do better is a setup SD-Card tool which also helps you doing your first steps or some kind of tutorial

No. We're not using floppy disks here. We're using SD cards. A dir scan would take at most maybe 2 seconds, a date check to see what's changed would be so fast it would be instant.


I've already PM'ed Jeff to start talking about fixing this up so it's more user friendly.


I am disturbed that this aspect of the OS takes a step backwards in user friendliness.

 

[Scntrblob]

Nevertheless, wouldn't a directory - independent system have to crawl through all my 13 GB of PSX - games for pxmls? Or do you want to make the system fileendingspecific?


Still, I like how it is done now and find it friendly.


Maybe ship the pandora with a tiny little document on the desktop "How to use your new console"?

 

[EvilDragon]

No. We're not using floppy disks here. We're using SD cards. A dir scan would take at most maybe 2 seconds, a date check to see what's changed would be so fast it would be instant.


I've already PM'ed Jeff to start talking about fixing this up so it's more user friendly.


I am disturbed that this aspect of the OS takes a step backwards in user friendliness.

Well, we tried. I had a directory of 30.000 roms and crawling for PNDs did take about 1 minute then, compared to 3 seconds if that dir was not included in the search path.


Maybe it could be optimized, no idea.


BTW: The search path is setup in a config file, so you could change it easily to crawl through the whole SD Card for a test.

 

[craigix]

No. We're not using floppy disks here. We're using SD cards. A dir scan would take at most maybe 2 seconds, a date check to see what's changed would be so fast it would be instant.


I've already PM'ed Jeff to start talking about fixing this up so it's more user friendly.


I am disturbed that this aspect of the OS takes a step backwards in user friendliness.

Well, we tried. I had a directory of 30.000 roms and crawling for PNDs did take about 1 minute then, compared to 3 seconds if that dir was not included in the search path.


Maybe it could be optimized, no idea.

Why is it even looking at roms? Why not just .pnd? Actually why not totally ignore dirs with 30,000 files?

 

[double7]

Actually why not totally ignore dirs with 30,000 files?

As far as i know it is doing that already, if you hold your rom folder outside of the /pandora directory on the SD card. I don't see any other solution which is as easy as the actual file-to-folder configuration for casual users.


Is it possible that the file scan triggers 30.000 file open/close functions? Depending on the file system it could be possible to read the hole FAT sectors into the memory an do the scan in there. But i think that will not be that easy for file systems with non centralized fats nor easy at all.

Maybe ship the pandora with a tiny little document on the desktop "How to use your new console"?

the PND basics are not mentioned in the manual. I know most users come here to the forums, but i still think some additional info should go in the box.

Good idea, but save the trees, no quickly outdated paper please. I would like to vote for the "First steps with your pandora" or "Pandora Tutorial" icon on the desktop. I think that would be a good place for a PND introduction.

 

[EvilDragon]

Why is it even looking at roms? Why not just .pnd? Actually why not totally ignore dirs with 30,000 files?

It's not looking at rom files, but it needs to make a directory listing to figure out if PNDs are in there, and that takes a while.


The problem is that you don't have all roms in one dir, there might be 4000 SNES, 1000 Genesis, etc., so it just adds up.


You might also have thousands of MP3s, all sorted into subdirectories (artists + albums) which needed to be crawled through, so a limit wouldn't help.


It's not that easy - we thought about that for a few weeks. But as it should be flexible, we made it configurable through a config file. We could set it to crawl through the whole SD card without any code change, I could even make a dialogue in the OS where you can set and change that setting... I think a small optional tutorial after the first run wizard might be the better solution.


I'm pretty sure if I simply change the config to browse through the full SD card with the next OS update, I'll get bug reports that the PND system has slowed down..

 

[levi]

I quite like the idea of the system checking for a pandora folder when it mounts a card, and creating it and subdirectories if it's not present. My phone does that - in fact it creates about a dozen folders which is a little annoying, but creating just one folder (with subfolders) that could be easily deleted doesn't sound too bad.


Another idea is maybe adding the root of each SD card to the search path if a pandora folder isn't present, so beginners can just drop PNDs on and it works. I guess it should default to putting them on the desktop.


But we still need a way to migrate people over to the more flexible pandora folder approach. I think having a 'readme first' file on the desktop would be a good idea.

 

[craigix]

Why is it even looking at roms? Why not just .pnd? Actually why not totally ignore dirs with 30,000 files?

It's not looking at rom files, but it needs to make a directory listing to figure out if PNDs are in there, and that takes a while.

No. I scanned complete DIRs with the MP3 player I wrote on the gp2x, it takes seconds to find out if a PND file is in every DIR on a card, and then you need only check for date changes.


I'm just going to speak to Jeff and make this happen, the arguments are not relevant against because this won't effect any current Pandora user in any way but will make using the PNDs far far easier for new users who might just put them in the root of an SD card and then be very confused.


Actually, why does it NOT scan the root folder? That seems like a pretty obvious flaw, and there would likely never be too much in there.


I also want this false rumour that scanning contents of DIRs takes lots of time, it does not, opening and checking the contents of lots of FILES is what takes time, but there should be none of that going on here, that's surely why extensions were invented?

 

[EvilDragon]

No. I scanned complete DIRs with the MP3 player I wrote on the gp2x, it takes seconds to find out if a PND file is in every DIR on a card, and then you need only check for date changes.


I'm just going to speak to Jeff and make this happen, the arguments are not relevant against because this won't effect any current Pandora user in any way but will make using the PNDs far far easier for new users who might just put them in the root of an SD card and then be very confused.


Actually, why does it NOT scan the root folder? That seems like a pretty obvious flaw, and there would likely never be too much in there.


I also want this false rumour that scanning contents of DIRs takes lots of time, it does not, opening and checking the contents of lots of FILES is what takes time, but there should be none of that going on here, that's surely why extensions were invented?

I know I went back and forth with pickle and his launcher to improve the loading speed of his directories. First he was using standard routines and it took ages, but then he optimized it and it now takes about a second to scan a dir with about 2000 files. But it WILL add up. 10 dirs each with 2000 files in it will suddenly be 10 seconds additional scanning... and yes, it will affect current Pandora users if inserting an SD Card and scanning will take 15 seconds instead of 2. As scanning also happens when you start the unit, it increases the boot time as well.


You can also try that on any OS: If you search for "*.zip" using MacOS, Linux or Windows, it will take ages if you search that on your whole harddisk, but be way faster if you only search your Documents-Directories.


Unless you have an indexing daemon enabled.


BTW: Extensions were developed on DOS / Windows to quickly find out what filetype a file is. It is not used on Linux systems - and it will not speed up a directory listing, as a simply listing doesn't care about the filetype.


So unless you have some crazy fast algorithm that make a directory scan of dirs without 50.000 files within 1 - 2 seconds, it will slow down stuff.


Such algorithm might exist, I have no idea, but then neither pickle, skeezix, DJWillis nor notaz know that.


Adding ONLY the root-directory of an SD Card without browsing for subdirectories sounds like a good idea though.

 

[Twiitcher]

The system as is seems to work well IMHO. All that's needed is the tidbit of information that .pnd files need to be placed in the proper folder.


Along with ZERO delay being caused by scanning folders not in that speific location (i.e. even the supposed few seconds necessary to check if there are any .pnd files amongst my thousands of roms, mp3, .txt, ect seems an unecessary delay) 32 gig of data take SOME time even to check file extensions. The current system also provides standardization of where .pnd files should be located. Far easier to assist people when they all follow a standard protocol as to where to place specific files. Also how to distinguish where the shortcut goes.. desktop, menu ect.... the current systems addresses that also.


Other problems avoided by the current system is .pnd files scattered around the system being accidently deleted, with no standardization it's easy to lose track of where you might have placed them. The current systems works fine as the only files in my pandora/menu or pandora/desktop folder are all .pnds, and there are no pnds scattered about on my sd card...


Sorry, but it seems like a fix is being initiated for a non existant problem. A few customers were missing a pertinent piece of information, i.e the specific proper location to place .pnd files) the only fix necessary seems to me is to provide clearer information dissemination, as suggested by Alerno (sp?).


Twiitcher


I had nothing to do with it.

 

[skeezix]

Actually.. we haev thoguht about it endlessly, and tweakign such things is hard to 'get right for everyone' -- sensible defaults, good going forward excperience, getting folks to a uniform standard to avoid messy troubles later, etc. We've gabbed it all, but some things never got nailed down until we gather user experience. You gotta see how it goes. (We're pros here, we don't just throw messes around


2*64GB SDs, filled full to the brim with mp3s, scanning the dir is _not_ fast.


Likewise, jacking an external hdd in on USB (USB ports are there for a reason, right?) can be multi-minute scan affairs.


The thoguht I've had for a year or two about it is to have root of SD scanned, but not subdirs of it; ie: current system + root-only, which woudl add no time, but catch 'noobie mistakes' to help them in easier. libpnd is all driven from config files, so its easy to change where it looks (even SD root), but to make it have a 'look here, but dont' do subdir scan' isn't in the code yet, so I coudl add that.


But where it does thigns is all configurable.. I hard code nothing, so that its all user hackable. (It even lets you override system confs by copying them onto the SD in magic places, so that if you screw it up just eject the SD and it'll use the NAND default configs again. Its super awesome, and no one but a handful of us know how to do any of that )


Couple PMs to Craig, and IRC for ED.


I/folks can change things, just a matter of getting public opinion on it.


jeff

 

[skeezix]

Example .. get your 32 or 64GB SD, _full_ with mp3s, and then on your pandora pull up Terminal and cd /media/MYSD and do "ls -lR > /tmp/foop.out" and time it. You'd be surprised .. depends on class of SD and number of files, depth of directory tree, symlinsk etc, type of filesystem (FAT32 vs NTFS vs ext2 vs ext3, etc) ..


But you may well find secodns to _minutes_, just on SD.


jeff

 

[skeezix]

FWIW, see the conf file in question -- /etc/pandora/conf/desktop


http://git.openpandora.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=pandora-libraries.git;a=blob;f=deployment/etc/pandora/conf/desktop;h=cd7b987a4eac3b0417513e2679b3a106f111d98e;hb=cb47a82b7a9e761e47a8a267082befe018ccdc9d


Notice the two searchopath lines..


5 [desktop]


6 searchpath /media/*/pandora/desktop:/media/*/pandora/apps # path to depth-search for PXMLs and pnd-files


and


10 [menu]


11 searchpath /media/*/pandora/menu:/media/*/pandora/apps:/usr/pandora/apps # path to depth-search for PXMLs and pnd-files


Could easily add a chunk or replace a chunk..


/media/* or /media/*/ should do it.


currently it would descend all subdirs recursively, but I can add an option so could do something like:


"/media/*",norecurse or something that would allow customization even more.


jeff

 

[ChaosWarmech]

Watching ED and Craigh go back and forth was pretty awesome :lol:


I don't think anything should be changed though. Is it really that hard to put PNDs in specific folders?


I suppose a setup wizard might be useful for newbs, but is a random thread asking for help once a month or so that big of a deal?