It's arrived!!! Questions...

[jabz]

I just received my crossgrade 1GHz from ED.. Awesome thanks ED!

Craig when you start making some profit from iCP2, and have cleared your Pandora preorder queues, I'd like to see you pay Ed the $300 and me $399.
For now that $700 I've paid you for nothing in return as yet I've considered a loan.

 

[Kumaki]

I dunno if you will get any money back from Craig, I don't know if that was part of the cross-upgrade deal or not.

I suspect you will be waiting a while to get any refund from Craig.  He's got mountains of problems as I understand.

 

[EvilDragon]

The crossupdate usually doesn't include any refund.


It's not a temporary loan, it's a solution to give customers who are still waiting to receive their Pandora a chance to get it right away without anymore waiting time, without doing financial harm to OpenPandora GmbH.


It should help both OP Ltd. getting out of this mess and the customer to get a better unit right away.

 

[Kumaki]

I did not think so......

 

[EvilDragon]

Where did you get that information from?

 

[Kumaki]

Just my own impressions.  Nothing that was actually stated, anywhere.

Gernerally, not always...but when you upgrade from one model to another...you tend to not get refunded on the first item, because you got the second item cheaper.  that is usually how upgrades work.

 

[Znirk]

I'm getting the impression jabz "upgraded" from an already-upgraded-to-1GHz preorder at Craig's shop, and is asking for only the Craig-upgrade money to be refunded. No doubt it's an upgrade in itself to be Michael's rather than Craig's customer; but still it seems odd that Craig would get to keep the money for not only the original preorder (which is in fact the case, and agreed with Michael), but also the extra money from the first upgrade (apparently it's undefined what happens here).

Note that a clear statement on the matter is unlikely until OPLtd's finances improve. Craig can't really say "yes, you'll get a refund on the price to upgrade" because the money isn't readily available, but he can't really say "no" either because then all his remaining GHz preorderers (which must be somewhere between 50 and 100 people) will cancel, ask for a refund on the full price (for which the money is even less available), and go buy from Michael instead.

 

[Kumaki]

In the meantime, though, you can't blame Craig's customers for being royally ticked off. I know I would be.

Let's face it, we all know Craig has had problems, many of which were not of his making. Still, though, when you're standing on the outside looking in...you get to a point where you don't want to hear excuse A B or C...you just want your device or your money back.

Which is why I made the suggestion I did in a different thread...about people who might want a backup second Pandy...getting one for cheaper if they were willing to replace someone in the WAIT queue. The person who ordered thus...would get the advntage of a slightly lower price...with the understand they would have to wait and be placed at the end of the queue. Meanwhile, that money generated in...would fund the unit for a long-waiting person.

No, it does not SOLVE the problem at hand, but it does buy time...and recycles the queue...with people who haven;t been waiting so long.

Person A gets a slightly cheaper second Pandy - but only after everyone on pre-order got their FIRST one.

Person B, who has been waiting three years...gets a Pandy now...with the money Person A paid for his WAIT order.

Person A goes to the end of the queue...but he hasn't been waiting three years, like Person B has. So it alleviates the immediate problem.

You'd HAVE to do something like discounting the price for Person A to make this work though, because nobody would place a WAIT order for the same price as he could place a NOW order.

 

[batfastad]

To get back on topic to my original questions, I've just thought of another one.

I've got a shell script I would like to run on a schedule. Normally I would use cron by doing a crontab -e but it says command is not found.

Do I need to install cron? And if so, how?

Cheers, B

 

[TrashyMG]

Can try to install it from the repository..

Try:

sudo opkg update
sudo opkg install cron

 

[batfastad]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Just tried that and here's the output:


batfastad-openpandora:~$ sudo opkg update

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

Password:
Downloading http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/all/Packages.gz.
Downloading http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/armv7a/Packages.gz.
Inflating http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/armv7a/Packages.gz.
Updated list of available packages in /var/lib/opkg/pandora-armv7a.
Downloading http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/omap3-pandora/Packages.gz.
Inflating http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/omap3-pandora/Packages.gz.
Updated list of available packages in /var/lib/opkg/pandora-omap3-pandora.
Collected errors:
* opkg_download: Failed to download http://openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/all/Packages.gz, wget returned 1.
batfastad-openpandora:~$ sudo opkg install cron
Collected errors:
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package cron.
batfastad-openpandora:~$

Any ideas?

Cheers, B

 

[TrashyMG]

I think the Packages.gz file just didn't download properly.. which prevents the second command from working properly.

EDIT: However looking at the Packages list, cron isn't in the Pandora repository. You may be able to download this manually from the Angstrom repo and install it. I believe you will want to try one of the ARMV7A ipkg files.


sudo opkg install filename.ipk

Edit: fixed link and also h34r:

 

[freamon]

Well the bad news is, even if the Packages.gz downloaded properly, cron isn't available from our repo (you can see by pointing your browser at http://www.openpandora.org/feeds/unstable/armv7a/).

The good news is you can get it from Angstrom instead:


sudo opkg install http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/unstable/ipk/glibc/armv7a/base/cron_3.0pl1-r8.6_armv7a.ipk
This'll work, because it doesn't need any more dependencies. I haven't tested how well the application itself works though.

 

[batfastad]

That does work. I'll give it a go over the next weeks/months and see how it runs.

 

[jorlinn]

I received my 1GHz upgraded Open Panda a couple of days ago.

I gave in to the charming Christmas offer by EvilDragon.

It's been a mixed bag for me so far.

It has great potential, running just about every pnd'ed app flawlessly.

Thank you all you developers providing the community with PND's of my favourite apps

Thank you EvilDragon and the rest of the staff for providing the much needed status updates so now and then.

If the updates would not have been there, I'm sure I would have asked for a refund long ago.

Controls:

The gaming controls are great, although 2R, 2L buttons would be highly appreciated in the next version of the Pandora.

The keyboard takes getting used to at the very least. While typing, I notice that some of my keypresses are not deep enough, but I am confident that I will get used to it.

I'd like to remap a lot of keys, it's a pity that the Fn-combinations can only be altered through a firmware hack. I have made some suggestions in the firmware thread about that. I don't feel comfartable hacking the firmware just yet.

Remapping the mouse buttons to the nub is highly unreliable and the nub as mouse control feels unnatural for now, lacking any precision with my current skills.

The touch screen feels incredibly unresponsive when trying to slide your stylus over the screen, making drag-and-drop operations nearly impossible. I have given up on that kind of control, opting for the more versatile terminal instead.

The only thing I use the touch screen for right now is to click on buttons,

SDXC:

Sadly my Class (10) 64GB SD-card does not seem to be compatible with it. I have made a GPT-table on the card, added a single Ext2-partition and sure enough, I can open it. Whenever I eject the card (after having properly unmounted it), the thing gets recognized, but the partition does not automount. If I try to mount it via sudo, it complains about bad superblocks. Mind you, the same card functions without a hitch on my PC and Mac. Even reading the thing in my Pandora seems to damge the FS. Whenever I have had it in my Pandora, my card won't mount on my PC anymore. It's almost as if the Pandora's drive is not fully SDXC compatible, because it's the exact same behaviour as after reading the card with a SDHC reader.

The card was not exactly cheap either. It is made in Japan, branded ICIDU. I'll search the Wiki for examples of cards that do work.

Not having man pages at my disposal feels a bit weird, but I understand that they could not fit into the NAND image.

Having lynx as a default documentation reader tends to be awkward when reading plain text files, forcing me to scroll horizontally from left to right and back in order to read the text. A plain text reader that imposes line breaks, such as less would be a better choice for plaintext manuals.

The battery life is fantastic, having the screen turned off when closing the lid is quite logical and saves the batteries.

I think my main contributions to this project will be UI suggestions and documentation; maybe some bash scripts as well to make some trivial tasks a little easier.

I have the source code of most of the first Humble Bundle games. Porting some of them to the OpenPandora seems plausible, yet quite hard.

I don't think the developers would mind a port if only the data files will be required to play the game, similar to the solution for OpenDune and DescentDX1 and DX2.

 

[Kumaki]

Well, I'm not entirely sure why you might be uncomfortable hacking the Firmware. As I understand it, this does not present any problem, because if you hopelessly mess it up, you simply re-flash. Keep a copy of the codecs pack and a copy of the latest firmware handy (latest is Super Zaxxon 1.52)

If you need to re-flash, ever, then you simply unzip the contents of the firmware zip to the SD Card you will have in slot 1. Then, when powering on, also hold the right shoulder button. Then you can re-flash...and it should fix anything you screw up.

 

[WizardStan]

The gaming controls are great, although 2R, 2L buttons would be highly appreciated in the next version of the Pandora.

They were specifically left out because it seemed like overkill at the time but the pads exist which you can easily solder your own switches too if you'd like. Someone had a thread on their experience adding them. The OS is already setup to recognize them and everything, you just need a button.
As for hacking the firmware, if you are at all worried then you can also run off of SD card and do your experiments there without any fear of breaking anything.

As for your SD card seeming incompatibility, I'd suggest first trying to format it to FAT32 with the SD official standard card formatter and see if it still misbehaves. This could be a software issue with the EXT2 module.

 

[Kumaki]

I honestly do not see WHY 2 R and 2 L shoulder buttons are desireable - I could see me pushing BOTH buttons at the same time with my fat fingers. What in the name of seven hells do you need with TWO of each shoulder button? Seriously...can someone tell me why this would be needed or desireable?

If I was ever in the market for a P2...if they ever come out...and it had 2R and 2L buttons standard...without an option of ONLY ONE of each...that would be a dealbreaker for me.

 

[Binky]

I'd love to have Fn and Alt mapped to them - Or use them for media playback controls

 

[WizardStan]

If I was ever in the market for a P2...if they ever come out...and it had 2R and 2L buttons standard...without an option of ONLY ONE of each...that would be a dealbreaker for me.

In such a situation you could simply disable the buttons, I don't see why it would be a straight out deal breaker.