I Got My Pandora

[Bosbeetle]

I got a pandora now with a working volume wheel.

Having had two pandoras I have to praise the PND system its soooo nice to just put in an SD card and have all programs with highscores preferences etc. back 23 thumbs up

 

[teppic]

Got it!
At work and charging (my pandora, not me), but it's sitting here and waiting for me

 

[donnyhopkins]

After lurking for a loooong time I thought I'd drop my two penneth in since my Pandora turned up yesterday!

I'm your basic basic end user. I know nothing of linux or such things and the thought of cracking the case open terrifies me. I just love retro games and messing around with stuff I don't really understand. I used to have a GP32 until my flat was broken into and it got stolen, since then I've avoided upgrading to a GP2X in the (long) wait for the pandora.

So, it really is pretty. Case looks great. Sleek, simple and a great size. Anyone following the production closely knew that it wasn't going to be 100% perfect, here's the niggles with my unit:

• A noticable gap when the lid is closed (more gap on the left hand side, making it look a bit warped from certain angles), but not too off putting.

• The shoulder buttons. The right is so low down that it barely registers a click, the left one seems normal but requires such a hefty click that it's quite uncomfortable to use. They both 'work' in a fashion but I think I'll be avoiding prolonged use. Maybe it just needs a whack.

• The volume control has a chunk missing out of it when turned to full volume, but it's only cosmetic.

Generally, the nubs caused me lots of frustation and huffing and puffing (much to the annoyance of my missus). The left one really does seem to have a mind of its own. Followed all the advice I could find, but what seemed to solve it is lots of circular motions until they calm down and get their bearings. Now and again they just go mad and refuse to move in the direction I want, resulting in more circular actions. But when they work, they're fantastic to use.

It's a joy to play though, a bit fiddly getting the emulators to work, but that's half the fun. Dpad and buttons are a joy to use!

Screen is hmmm 'spongeyer' that I was expecting. Put me off a bit at first, but now I'm used to it I'm very happy. Nice and responsive.

Can't get the wifi to connect to my home network, but I think that's me being a dumbass. It finds it, but doesn't connect.

Anyway, well done Team, was worth the wait. Thrashed through some 3wonders on Mame on my bus ride to work today. Very satisfying!

 

[Prometheus]

Hi and welcome, YOULOVEBADMEAT. Two thoughts for you, if I may.

1: Have you read about the magical nub-calibration raindance? If not, what you have to do is this: Centre the nubs before powering the unit on, then push them up, let them return to the centre, push them down, let them return to the centre, push them left, let them return to the centre, push them right, and let them return to the centre. It works every time - they're designed to be always-on, but with the sleep mode not quite there yet, this means that they need calibrating at boot-up, for now.

2: You may want to post about your WiFi issue in the "I need help" section with a bit more detail (i.e., exactly what happens, what you've tried, what sort of router you're using), and see if someone can suggest anything.

Also, squee, Three Wonders is excellent - you have good taste! But now the burning question: Midnight Wanderers, Chariot, or Don't Pull?

 

[donnyhopkins]

Cheers Prometheus, yeah I tried the magic calibration dance, didn't seem to help. The circular motions get it there in the end though.

Wifi, I need to sit down with it for a while before I start bothering people! Pretty sure it's me

And Chariot!!

Tried Total Carnage too, but it's a bit slow sadly.

 

[todd]

Hellollo!

Posting from my Pandora. It is a thing of beauty. Many thanks to the team: this is just what I'd hoped for when I placed my order back in the day: it's hard to believe it's finally here!

Now I need to learn to use all the extra buttons to speed up navigation.

But first: Pandora Panic!

--Todd

 

[chame]

got it yerterday. first impressions:

- rock solid and silent
- hinge: there are two positions where it holds itself, closed and completely open (0º and 180º). it is difficult to mantain at 90º (working on the table like a laptop). it moves easily forward and backwars, it suppose a problem for me.
- OS: boots FAST. opening an application like web browser takes few seconds. it detects SD cards flawesly. I tried USB WD 1.5TB HD (selfpowered) and it worked like a charm. plugging an USB mouse didnt work (will try plug in before booting)
- weights more than it looks for the size, but as I said, it transmits a feeling of safety. you are dealing with quality technical equipment, not a cheap toy.
- inside the battery place, there is a stick with "Pandora First Batch" label
- Beware: PND should be placed in SD/pandora/desktop
- emus: only tried picodrive, works perfect, even limiting CPU at 300Mhz, it gave me full speed with sound. drawback there is not hardware scaling to fullscreen and filters (I suppose most emus will lack this feature)
- At the begining, coudnt find an mp3 player. gnome-mplayer didnt appear in the minimenu. but from the terminal it worked, a window with the player appeared and then... magicallly, it appeared in the minimenu-multimedia :0
I noticed it has problems to open files in the SD or USB drives, maybe access permits, solved when using "sudo gnome-mplayer".
- installed hotfix 2 and codec pack, but gnome-mplayer couldnt open my avi files (not sure if divx or xvid, not h264). I will investigate this cause mplayer is 30% of the use of my pandora.
- Dpad is awesome. nubs works well. game buttons are painted, so they make weird sound. about the keypad, the feeling pushing the keys is good, very responsive. But it looks like the painting with the letters will be taken off in a couple of months.
- CPU power seems to be great. at least emulation and app handling is fast. the OS is very responsive. looking for install Quake3 and see what this little beast can do.

next steps: I am not sure about how to install applications properly. dont want to use ipkg and install on the flash, but install and use directly from the SD. So I need to investigate a bit about the different possibilities, there are discussions in the forum about this. And I will download the deb kits to compile ARM and make my own PND and upload to app.openpandora. I know there are many PNDs running out there that are not in the app web, please upload!

Appz I look for (as soon as I learn how to install to SD properly):

Openoffice 3.
Firefox: I want to use ff + greasemonkey + totem player in order to play youtube and other flash videos.
GPS: there is a thread about it in the forums. this is a must for everyone with a bluetooth GPS dongle
Aircrack: I need to try it. not sure if madwifi works with our wifi chip
Wikipedia: I am a Palm guy and I have the wikipedia downloaded and it was one of the main uses of the device (plus mp3 player and GPS). So this is also a must.

 

[tyicepaws]

YEA i got my pandora will do some review an a vid soon thought people with allergy be careful i got a with of the air from the box and couldn't stop sneezing. guess I'm not use to euro pollen. anyway i got a one nubber and thankfully the right numb works great don't know why thought was broken, had a funny little note have to show in teh vid WOOOO

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

<snip>
it transmits a feeling of safety. you are dealing with quality technical equipment, not a cheap toy
</snip>

Everyone I've showed it to treats it with that sort of respect.

'Is it a Ds XL?'
'No.'
'Wow - it's heavy'

*edit* Spelling

 

[Prometheus]

Firefox: I want to use ff + greasemonkey + totem player in order to play youtube and other flash videos.

Here - to use it, and any other PND files you download, create a directory called pandora in the root of your SD Card, and inside of that directory create desktop, menu, apps, and appdata. PNDs placed in "desktop" appear on the desktop, PNDs placed in "menu" appear in the menus in Xfce, and PNDs placed in "apps" appear in both places. The "appdata" directory is where most applications will save their settings and suchlike.

Due to a strange issue with the Firefox PND, it was discovered by Pleng that before use, you must run Fennec first, and possibly also keep the PND for it on your SD Card. If you don't do this, Firefox for some reason will not work.

Aircrack: I need to try it. not sure if madwifi works with our wifi chip

I don't believe this is supposed to be talked about on this forum. I seem to recall that threads have been closed due to this, before.

Wikipedia: I am a Palm guy and I have the wikipedia downloaded and it was one of the main uses of the device (plus mp3 player and GPS). So this is also a must.

You may want to read through and follow this thread. The guy who's working on this, atomicthumbs, recently received his Pandora.

 

[authoreyes]

I received my pandora today.

It is better than I could have ever imagined. It is a bit bittersweet getting it under the circumstances, and it's hard to truly appreciate it fully right now. I started making a review/video, but my mind has been elsewhere...

I had my biopsy 2 days ago and await the pathology on Tuesday. The biopsy was a painful affair. I am a nervous wreck, and this is helping keep my mind off those thoughts, but it's hard to truly focus on anything....I will have a review soon though, Mali, I promise

 

[Pinballwzd]

I just received my Pandora Today !! Happy Happy Joy Joy !!
Anyone else in B.C. Canada get their Pandora yet ?

The unit is currently charging but so far, I am very glad with my decision to stick with the Pandora.
Thank you to the whole Pandora Team !.

Now I just have to figure out the file system / PND organization. I know there is a manual online but a few how to set up tutorials would be very helpful.

- Eisner

 

[RubiX]

I just received my Pandora Today !! Happy Happy Joy Joy !!
Anyone else in B.C. Canada get their Pandora yet ?

The unit is currently charging but so far, I am very glad with my decision to stick with the Pandora.
Thank you to the whole Pandora Team !.

Now I just have to figure out the file system / PND organization. I know there is a manual online but a few how to set up tutorials would be very helpful.

- Eisner

grats
I was hoping to be the first in BC to get one, dammmit lol. You are probably the first.
I ordered in June 2009, so im around 1800 in queue I believe.

edit: oh hey, did you end up paying any extra taxes etc from customs?

 

[mcqfesijiba]

Pandora 'arrived' yesterday. I put that in quotes because no one was home to sign for it
Anyways, I received my shipping email on the 18th making it an only 8 day delivery for me in airmail to SE Michigan (USA) from the UK. Not too bad at all. USPS redelivery is scheduled for Monday.

 

[Pinballwzd]

I just received my Pandora Today !! Happy Happy Joy Joy !!
Anyone else in B.C. Canada get their Pandora yet ?

The unit is currently charging but so far, I am very glad with my decision to stick with the Pandora.
Thank you to the whole Pandora Team !.

Now I just have to figure out the file system / PND organization. I know there is a manual online but a few how to set up tutorials would be very helpful.

- Eisner

grats
I was hoping to be the first in BC to get one, dammmit lol. You are probably the first.
I ordered in June 2009, so im around 1800 in queue I believe.

edit: oh hey, did you end up paying any extra taxes etc from customs?

You are going to have to pay around $47.00. Sadly we have to pay Handling Fee, GST and PST.

David...

 

[VRAndy]

Wifi, I need to sit down with it for a while before I start bothering people! Pretty sure it's me

There are two bugs in wifi. Make sure you have the latest hotfix. That fixes one of them.

The other is that it will only connect once per reboot for some reason. This seems to INCLUDE connections where you got the password wrong so it immediately disconnects again.

 

[Pinballwzd]

Hello All,

Well, it has been a few days since I got my Pandora and I felt a post was in order.

Overall, I have found the Pandora to be an very nice piece of engineering. As a proud father wants to show off his baby boy/girl, I had to take my Pandora to the streets.. Once comment was quite interesting and I am sure quite common. I went to buy a screen protector at a local store and when we looked at a slightly over sized sheet that I could cut down. He said after looking at the Pandora, "Oh, you want one for a DS". You should have seen his face when I opened it up. Needless to say it was priceless ! His final words to me when I left was, " Let me know if you want to sell it".

The Pandora feels very nice to hold. The controls are comfortable and the keyboard, easy to type. I have a problem with the "A" Button not clicking, more spongy actually. I understand that a few others have the same problem. I could fix it by opening the unit up but I will just deal with it for now. My nubs are working perfectly and I have no further issues with the other controls. The volume wheel is a bit stiff but that is better than been loose. The hinge on mine only really has 2 position that it locks, closed or fully opened. It is slightly stiff in it's movement but not as tight and resistant as I have seen in prev. videos during it's development.

The screen is very responsive and the picture amazing.. I was watching Zombieland on it yesterday and it looked great. The size is actually quite viewable and the sound, sharp. ( I have updated to the newest firmware so the crackling issue must have been resolved ).

The case is very, very nice.. Well worth the countless revisions.. I know there were issues with the slight upwards lifting of lid when looking at from the front as well as the bowing of the screen bevel so I was not surprised to find my unit has these problems.

The software, as prev. mentioned, is in it's early stages so I have no problems that not all aspects of the OS are working completely. I am also a newbie with Linux so a huge learning curve awaits my future!. I have had a few issues with the unmounting of my SD cards. I initially removed my SD card without unmounting ( big mistake ) After reinserting, programs on the card worked partially but I had several problems with my emulators. I then received errors when trying to unmount the same SD card. I ended up re-flashing my Pandora and all problems have been resolved.

The support I have received via the Forum and directly from OpenPandora has been nothing short of exceptional. I would like to thank everyone involved in the project, for their countless hours, patience during the difficult times, understanding of the public's frustration but most of all for putting out a final product without loosing their focus on the dream.

For thoes who do not have their Pandora yet, all I can say is that the wait is worth it! and you will be happy one day - as I was.

Here are some pics..

Pic1
Pic2

I was thinking of doing some sort of open box video but really I kinda think they are a bit silly and there are already a lot out there
If there was something specific you guys want to see, I can try to put together a video for you.


- Eisner

 

[Ivo]

Wohoo got my Pandora today! It got here so fast that i haven't bought any sd-cards yet so the first order of business (besides calling in sick...) is to get me a pair of 16gb cards.

 

[mrdremel]

OMG! OMG!.....

I got my Pandora today. A one-nubber.

Why oh why did I have it delivered at work. It is only 9:04 AM!!!!

Have to wait till 17:00 to go home and then I can use it.

 

[joost]

Wohoo got my Pandora today! It got here so fast that i haven't bought any sd-cards yet so the first order of business (besides calling in sick...) is to get me a pair of 16gb cards.

I bought a 16GB SD card for my Pandora two years ago already, LOL