To expand on Wrath of Khans´ reply, it should be noted that the original tv out cable company wanted huge orders, then more recently were happy to go ahead again, until when Evil Dragon actually offered the money.
By this point :
OPT in the past had already bought thousands of the required connectors.
The community sought to get hold of these connectors itself via OPT or third parties.
The connectors themselves required large volume ordering.
OPT wouldn´t part with its connectors but was very polite about it all.
Wizardstan the battery life guru, eventually organised a promised whip round to fund a large order.
He duly went ahead and obtained a ton of them. Posting them out, repleat with Panda stamps, to all those who had promised to pay up. (He may still have spare stock)
OPT around about now, actually got delivery of their shipment of them aswell.
Peca, a Brazillian forum member iirc, self designed and had made, a set of tiny bobs. Sheets of small circuit boards to match the pin outs of the TV OUT connectors small pin structure, to ease soldering them. Eventually these were produced and delivered to him, like a gift to a god.
He then sold the tiny bobs ( some stock possibly still exists with ithic.com of forum member Links), before offering to make custom length and connection option cables for people on the forum.
He duly made and tested prototype materials and produced a large number of custom cables or community members who pledged to pay.
There was the odd issue here and there but Peca made great cables for a number of folk, roping his kids into the production line to speed things up at one point iirc.
Thereafter Peca has rarely been seen upon the forums and I am unaware of if all his intended labour was ever completed.
Other forum members have also self made cables from the connectors or from tiny bobs aswell and aside from the prototype examples that Evil Dragon used to make his Tv Out Pandora Wideos series with, there are few others in existence.
The ReBirth of Pandora production in Germany under ED´s cunning plan (to avoid the Pandora project going bankrupt and all still waiting preorderers never receiving a Pandora), saw the community investments save the project and with it the possibilty for TV Out cables to be produced professionally again.
Here we are full circle, as ED approached the original TV Out cable company and they said they would do it, until he offered to pay and then they weren´t interested.
I believe they were the Chinese company involved not with the cases but perhaps the batteries and thus (like a now happy man with a WiiBrain), BLAME CHINA.
ED has moved Pandora production to Germany via Global Components who frown upon Moustaches or BeastieBoy-esque Sabotage, corporate or otherwise and Pandorae are getting there far faster, with just a few months left before hopefully the end of the early pre-orders is finally a Pompeii disaster of distant relatives concern.
ED is looking to German companies to make the TV Out cables now. So it shouldn´t be long before we´re all docking our Pandorae at home, to replace our laptops at the least, with a pocketable full desktop computer when we´re on the move.
The Rasberry Pii needs more lego than a pocket can hold, plus controllers etc, so despite the lack of HDMI or even TV Out for now, the Pandora still covers more bases in more flexible ways than the Saudi Bin Ladens groups concrete, or any other UMPC on Earth. For now.
As Pandora 2 is in the wings.....
p:s :
posted from Firefox default browser of SLACKWARE 13.37-3 for Pandora by Linux_Swat for the Rebirth Competition. Very nice too
