Open Pandora Handheld - Official Thread
What is Pandora?
Pandora is an open-source handheld gaming pocket PC running Angstrom Linux (phew, what a mouthful). It was designed and developed by members of the gp32x community who were dissatisfied with certain aspects of the most popular linux-based handheld video game consoles at the time, the GP32 and GP2X (mainly their controls).
What can it do?
You can think of Pandora as a little computer built with video gamers in mind, therefore much attention and effort has been dedicated to its control options:
-dual analog nubs
-D-pad, shoulder buttons & 4 face buttons
-touchscreen
-full QWERTY keyboard
That's not to say that the rest of the hardware is not impressive, but for brevity I just cover the most important bullet points here, you can find all of the dirty details in the Pandora wiki:
http://pandorawiki.org/Pandora
-The heart of the system is Texas Instruments' OMAP 3530 System-on-a-Chip or SOC. The same as in the the Palm Pre and the Nokia N900 (and very similar to the iPhone in raw specs), but in contrast to those devices Pandora is only running a minimal operating system, leaving more resources free for games and applications.
-800x480 4.3' touchscreen LCD and TV-out (S-video and composite)
-10+ hours battery life (less with Wifi on all the time, probably ~6)
-WiFi & Bluetooth
However, the real star of Pandora is not its hardware. It is the community of capable and enthusiastic developers who are investing their free time to provide Pandora users with software. This is made easy, because Pandora is as open as can be and thus everyone can write software for it without laboriously having to hack their device. At the moment there are mainly ports of emulators and interpreters (like ScummVM) since Pandora was just released, but this will change over time to include a hopefully large library of homebrew games.
Disclaimer: Emulation is a touchy subject, especially here on NeoGAF. To make this crystal clear: I do not support piracy at all. Depending on the laws of your country you are only allowed to play games on an emulator/interpreter that you own. In some countries you must even have have ripped the game data yourself (no download of copyrighted material allowed). In some countries not even that is allowed (circumvention of copy protection forbidden), so keep this in mind when posting.
Source ports/Interpreters:
-ScummVM, port by DJWillis
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?p=33102#33102
-Wolfenstein 3D, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbfZk44K-J4
-Doom, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z1mnQs3lyU
-Quake 1, 2 & 3, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5qtvD-MJ9E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F34GxKdIE6s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsclXxxjxVg
-Descent 1&2, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaZdxd1bGiU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWzP5VxLYTE
-Marathon, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zQ7Fbwhb5I
-Heroes of Might & Magic 2, port by Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63QftOyxEYI
Emulation projects that are already playable:
-Gameboy Color/Advance
-SNES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsLCECZvBac
-Playstation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkbFdJG5xuY
-MAME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRcCz7RWid4
-Amiga
-DOSBox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY_6I3kMXko
3D engines (for developers)
-Irrlicht
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF42uQwtQ_U
-PowerVR SGX demos (OpenGL ES 2.0 demos)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnr4HCIoFlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnr4HCIoFlk
High profile Emulation projects that are currently being worked on:
-Nintendo 64 (will very probably reach fullspeed and good compatibility on Pandora)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPYDDFwyG0U
-Dreamcast (will probably not reach fullspeed on Pandora, but is important groundwork for Pandora's successor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gYfwtj7Mok
-Playstation Portable (too early to make assumptions about compatibility and speed)
Non-gaming projects:
-Web-Browsing with Firefox & Fennec
-Media Playback with Mplayer
-Word Processing with Abiword
Reality check, aka "what can it not do?"
-Pandora uses an ARM processor, so Microsoft Windows and Windows applications cannot run directly on Pandora. WINE will not help, either. DOS can be emulated through DOSBOX with ~486 performance (~5000 cycles in DOSBOX estimated).
-There is no mobile phone capability, but for internet access it is possible to use bluetooth tethering with a real phone or use a USB stick, as long as linux drivers exist for it.
-Pandora has no accelerometer or built in camera. Oldskool controls only.
-Emulation of Gamecube, PS2 and XBox is not possible!
-I doubt we will see commercial games on the level of PSP and Nintendo DS on Pandora. While there will be an app store, Pandora is (currently) a niche product and its user base is expected to be tens of thousands and not millions like PSP and Nintendo DS. Thanks to its open nature we might see some cool Ports of commercial iPhone and android/maemo software, though.
How can I get one?
Pandora is produced in small batches of 4000. Openpandora.org are not Nintendo or Sony who can afford to pay for a production run first and sell the devices later. What does that mean for you? It means that you will have to pay for the device and wait for it to be produced and delivered to you which can take weeks or months depending on part lead times.
If that does not scare you and you would like to support this kind of community effort, contact:
Frequently asked questions:
Q: ok this looks pretty cool but as I am a nobody to homebrew, why should I as a gamer be excited about this?
A: To summarize:
1. Good controls for any type of game imaginable (dual analogs, shoulder buttons, touchscreen, keyboard)
2. Very good Emulation of Atari, Amiga, DOS (~486 performance), Game Boy Color/Advance, NES, SNES, SEGA Genesis, Playstation will already be available at launch. Emulation of Nintendo 64, PSP and Dreamcast is being worked on, but may not be fullspeed/playable (well, N64 looks like it will very probably achieve fullspeed).
3. Source ports of the following games are already available at launch: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Descent 1&2, Quake 1,2&3 and all ScummVM games (that's quite a
list). Of course you need to already own the respective games to play these, but you can get most of them legally at
Good old Games and
Steam.
4. Lots of Homebrew developers are interested in developing for Pandora. Quality of Homebrew games varies, but there are some fantastic games among them. Since interest is so big, there will be lots of quality games to choose from.
5. There will be an AppStore that may attract commercial developers, so you may see larger, commercial games, but they will not be free.
6. Pandora has pretty good 3D capabilities (better than PSP for example), so if developers use those capabilities we could get some very good-looking games.
Links and Information:
Official site: http://www.open-pandora.org/
Unofficial Blog: http://pandorapress.net/
Forum Discussion: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showforum=61
Pandora FAQ: http://pandorawiki.org/FAQ
Wikipedia page about Pandora: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29
I'd like to have it ready to go within a week or two. So, no great hurry. In the end I can only pick one, but I don't want anyone's effort to go to waste, so I hope we can find other uses for them too. Pandorapress will be due for an updated header soon, for example. 
