I Got My Pandora

[EvilDragon]

Just some things to note:

• I noticed some slight lag in the sound which would quickly recover that happened every once in a while in Picodrive and Snes9x4d4p. I believe this was caused by waiting for a read from the card.

• 
  
  No, it's WiFi scanning. Disable WiFi on startup in the Startup Manager and only toggle it on in the System menu when you need it.
  Saves tons of battery life, too.
  
  

  [*]The clock has to be set again any time you reset your Pandora

  
  Hmmm? Usually only when you remove the battery for a while...?
  Really when you reset?
  
  

  [*]Nubs as mouse will bother some people, because if you so much as tap the right nub, you might register a mouse click.

  
  You can change the deadzone in the nub settings That does help

 

[God Ginrai]

Just some things to note:

• I noticed some slight lag in the sound which would quickly recover that happened every once in a while in Picodrive and Snes9x4d4p. I believe this was caused by waiting for a read from the card.

No, it's WiFi scanning. Disable WiFi on startup in the Startup Manager and only toggle it on in the System menu when you need it.
Saves tons of battery life, too.

Ah, I'll have to look into that.

• The clock has to be set again any time you reset your Pandora

Hmmm? Usually only when you remove the battery for a while...?
Really when you reset?

Yea. When I hold the Pandora button and flick the power switch it will reboot like it should, but my clock will be hours and minutes behind.

• Nubs as mouse will bother some people, because if you so much as tap the right nub, you might register a mouse click.

You can change the deadzone in the nub settings That does help

Ah, that's good to hear. I'll look into that.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

Yea. When I hold the Pandora button and flick the power switch it will reboot like it should, but my clock will be hours and minutes behind.

You're doing the equivalent of hitting the reset button on your computer everytime you do that. Isn't it only meant for emergencies? If you want to reset or shut down normally, there's a menu option for that. Does it still screw with your clock when you use that?

 

[TitanUranus]

Glad to hear people satisfied with their Pandoras. Wish I could give another satisfied report, but till mine arrives I'll be a grumpy bugger.

 

[juniorm33]

That firetruck minigame in Pandora Panic is impossible to win.

No it's not. I got it first time, hehehe.

Anyhow, congrats, God Ginrai.

Take it it's a multi tasking game :lol:

 

[God Ginrai]

Yea. When I hold the Pandora button and flick the power switch it will reboot like it should, but my clock will be hours and minutes behind.

You're doing the equivalent of hitting the reset button on your computer everytime you do that. Isn't it only meant for emergencies? If you want to reset or shut down normally, there's a menu option for that. Does it still screw with your clock when you use that?

I realize that. The only time I have restarted my Pandora were when I pushed the limits and couldn't do anything else. (Messing with clockspeeds or exiting out of Mupen) I have yet to shut down my Pandora normally, so I will let you know when I do if the clock stays the same.

-God Ginrai

 

[urjaman]

have yet to shut down my Pandora normally, so I will let you know when I do if the clock stays the same.

Let me guess that after you once shut it down normally, your clock will be fine even over resets.
EDIT: (trimmed quote added "you" and added this):
I'm guessing that the current system clock is written to the hardware clock (RTC) only on shutdown. If you have never shut it down properly, it would lose clock time on reset. Same with if you change the time (with the date command,for example) and then reset it the clock would jump back to what it was before the change.

 

[wermy]

Congrats. Looking forward to hearing further thoughts about it.

 

[God Ginrai]

have yet to shut down my Pandora normally, so I will let you know when I do if the clock stays the same.

Let me guess that after you once shut it down normally, your clock will be fine even over resets.
EDIT: (trimmed quote added "you" and added this):
I'm guessing that the current system clock is written to the hardware clock (RTC) only on shutdown. If you have never shut it down properly, it would lose clock time on reset. Same with if you change the time (with the date command,for example) and then reset it the clock would jump back to what it was before the change.

That sounds plausible. When I reach that situation, if it is as you say, I will post that here.

-God Ginrai

 

[bce23w]

Yea. When I hold the Pandora button and flick the power switch it will reboot like it should, but my clock will be hours and minutes behind.

You're doing the equivalent of hitting the reset button on your computer everytime you do that. Isn't it only meant for emergencies? If you want to reset or shut down normally, there's a menu option for that. Does it still screw with your clock when you use that?

This is not what one would expect: my laptop crashes all the time, but it doesn't lose anything close to hours from its clock. And certainly consoles with time&date functions have been around since at least the Dreamcast, and it always knew what date it was, unless it stayed unplugged for a really long time.

 

[God Ginrai]

Yea. When I hold the Pandora button and flick the power switch it will reboot like it should, but my clock will be hours and minutes behind.

You're doing the equivalent of hitting the reset button on your computer everytime you do that. Isn't it only meant for emergencies? If you want to reset or shut down normally, there's a menu option for that. Does it still screw with your clock when you use that?

This is not what one would expect: my laptop crashes all the time, but it doesn't lose anything close to hours from its clock. And certainly consoles with time&date functions have been around since at least the Dreamcast, and it always knew what date it was, unless it stayed unplugged for a really long time.

True, but urjaman's theory sounds highly likely.

-God Ginrai

 

[urjaman]

This is not what one would expect: my laptop crashes all the time, but it doesn't lose anything close to hours from its clock. And certainly consoles with time&date functions have been around since at least the Dreamcast, and it always knew what date it was, unless it stayed unplugged for a really long time.

Linux maintains its system time internally (from the system timer interrupt), and the RTC ticks its own time. Let me demonstrate:

[root@phenom MythBusters]# hwclock --show
Wed 09 Jun 2010 01:37:21 AM EEST  -0.358549 seconds
[root@phenom MythBusters]# date
Wed Jun  9 01:37:21 EEST 2010

Above is time in my RTC, the second is time in Linuxs system clock (the one used generally)
... When I do this:

[root@phenom MythBusters]# date -s 02:00
Wed Jun  9 02:00:00 EEST 2010
[root@phenom MythBusters]# date
Wed Jun  9 02:00:02 EEST 2010
[root@phenom MythBusters]# hwclock --show
Wed 09 Jun 2010 01:41:13 AM EEST  -0.415251 seconds

The system clock changes time, but the hardware RTC is still running its own time. This is the situation on the pandora if it has just been booted with the wrong time, and the time has been set, but only the system clock is set.
Upon reset, this happens (done by the kernel, but get the idea):

[root@phenom MythBusters]# hwclock --hctosys
[root@phenom MythBusters]# date
Wed Jun  9 01:42:52 EEST 2010

And BTW, if you want to make sure (on an x86 box atleast, Im not 100% sure about pandora) that your current system clock is written to your RTC, you can do:

[root@phenom MythBusters]# hwclock --systohc

If your hardware clock is in UTC, add --utc to the hwclock invocations (dont know about the default in the pandora).
And yeah i was watching mythbusters with mplayer just before this

EDIT: To clarify, any decent linux distro should do hwclock --systohc (with --localtime or --utc depending on configuration) upon shutdown, so users shouldnt normally need to worry about all this stuff.

 

[God Ginrai]

Just some things to note:

• I noticed some slight lag in the sound which would quickly recover that happened every once in a while in Picodrive and Snes9x4d4p. I believe this was caused by waiting for a read from the card.

No, it's WiFi scanning. Disable WiFi on startup in the Startup Manager and only toggle it on in the System menu when you need it.
Saves tons of battery life, too.

Unless WiFi toggled off is not the same thing as disabled WiFi (system load-wise) then that is not the problem. I still get the audio stutter every once in a while. (tested in Picodrive) And it's only for a split second, which makes me think it is something that the emulator or OS needs to do only occasionally that is causing the problem.

EDIT: As expected, the clock is set right after a normal shut down. Only thing left to test now is what happens to the clock when I reset, which I will test the next time I have to reset my Pandora.

-God Ginrai

 

[bce23w]

True, but urjaman's theory sounds highly likely.
-God Ginrai

Agreed! I just didn't agree with what I saw as WizardStan's implied suggestion that it was somehow unsurprising that hard resets futz with the clock.

Thanks for the full explanation, Urjaman. So you feel it's something that can be fixed in the Pandora, even for unexpected crashes, etc?

 

[WizardStan]

Agreed! I just didn't agree with what I saw as WizardStan's implied suggestion that it was somehow unsurprising that hard resets futz with the clock.

But it does appear to be the hard reset that is causing problems with the clock.

 

[bce23w]

Agreed! I just didn't agree with what I saw as WizardStan's implied suggestion that it was somehow unsurprising that hard resets futz with the clock.

But it does appear to be the hard reset that is causing problems with the clock.

And that's unacceptable and soon to be fixed, right?

 

[urjaman]

Thanks for the full explanation, Urjaman. So you feel it's something that can be fixed in the Pandora, even for unexpected crashes, etc?

It should be fixable.
I dont know what is the way pandora's clock is set from the GUI, but as such an app will anyways need root privileges, we could just change the app so it executes hwclock (or the pandora equivalent) after setting the time. Also, you can workaround by shutting the pandora down properly after setting the time. Its not like the time you live changes very often.
EDIT:+set, quote fix

 

[Titcher]

And that's unacceptable and soon to be fixed, right?

Hard resets won't ruin the time on the hardware clock. So unless you make it a habit of keeping your OS clock different from your hardware clock, all should be well.

 

[God Ginrai]

Thanks for the full explanation, Urjaman. So you feel it's something that can be fixed in the Pandora, even for unexpected crashes, etc?

It should be fixable.
I dont know what is the way pandora's clock is set from the GUI, but as such an app will anyways need root privileges, we could just change the app so it executes hwclock (or the pandora equivalent) after setting the time. Also, you can workaround by shutting the pandora down properly after setting the time. Its not like the time you live changes very often.
EDIT:+set

Yea, I had to reset earlier and the time seemed fine. (I had already made a normal shutdown earlier as you suggested) I think the only time we will have to set our clock after a reset is when we had just changed it. I don't know why it doesn't update it immediately after you set it.

EDIT: urjaman, your quotes were really f'ed up. <.<

-God Ginrai

 

[Tom`]

Thanks for the full explanation, Urjaman. So you feel it's something that can be fixed in the Pandora, even for unexpected crashes, etc?

It should be fixable.
I dont know what is the way pandora's clock is set from the GUI, but as such an app will anyways need root privileges, we could just change the app so it executes hwclock (or the pandora equivalent) after setting the time. Also, you can workaround by shutting the pandora down properly after setting the time. Its not like the time you live changes very often.
EDIT:+set

Yea, I had to reset earlier and the time seemed fine. (I had already made a normal shutdown earlier as you suggested) I think the only time we will have to set our clock after a reset is when we had just changed it. I don't know why it doesn't update it immediately after you set it.

EDIT: urjaman, your quotes were really f'ed up. <.<

-God Ginrai

I don't know how you managed to do that, I would have thought the board software would have checked for unclosed HTML tags...