Moving Forward!

[sebt3]

Hardware Production

We were really pleased with the last 100 boards! Only a few failed for different reasons, but the nubs were working fine! So it seems the mechanical testing is a fine solution until the next batch of nubs will be produced with added accuracy.
170 more boards are already on the way to UK, so expect more units to be delivered soon.

Hopefully, now that the nub problem seems to be sold, the production will speed soon! As usual, we're working on getting there!
The next 4000 cases should also be ready soon - all of them have been produced and most of them are already painted. They should just arrive in time when we are passing the first 1000 units mark!


Software updates

Softwarewise, some nice things have happened: With Ginge (which should be ready for release soon), you can play GP2X games (even commercial games like Payback and Wind & Water) on the Pandora! While it still is work in progress, it already has pretty good compatibility. Thanks to notaz for that incredible piece of software work.

Also, Hotfix 4 Beta 1 is out. Thanks to the guys that tried it, I already fixed a few errors and will release a Beta 2 within the next days.
The biggest improvement is probably that HF4 is using IPKs for the update: This is the first major step to properly upgrade the system, via a package manager.
Another test I did worked fine: I installed the very first OS version on my Pandora, changed the config files to use our feeds and upgraded the system using opkg update and opkg upgrade - and 10 minutes later, I had a working up-to-date OS on my system!

Soon you will be able to update your unit by either downloading the latest HotFix and running it or by directly update the Pandora while connected to the internet.
The brave ones among you will also be able to use unstable feeds to get the latest changes to the system a few minutes after they have been committed! Of course, bug reports are welcome.



Help us improve the unit!


So, all in all, while things are not going perfect, we're still moving forward and getting there.
Basically, I could be happy with that - but there is one thing that makes me sad: And that is the current mood on the boards. There are some people who seem to try to bash the unit for whatever reason.
This is really demotivating and won't help anyone get anywhere - since it's no constructive criticism.

Yes, we know there have been some problems with the first produced units like shoulder buttons, nubs, LCD cables. And we are working hard to get them all fixed (and most seem already be fixed).
Yes, we know there have been slowdowns in the production - mainly because we had problems with the nubs (we couldn't magically fix them, this takes some time).

Please don't forget: We are not a big company, we are just some guys trying to achieve something. Something major - and I think we didn't do too bad so far.
We are NOT trying to cover or deny any faults, but are trying to fix and prevent them in the future.
According to most people we talked to who already received the unit: They love it and think it's the best device they ever owned.

So far, we only had about 50 RMAs out of 700 - while the boards currently make it sound as if almost EVERY unit is unusable.
Some people do claim that there are more broken units but the users do not want to ship it back to us since they are waiting for production to speed up.

I can imagine this might be true for some people, but not for all.

Please: Even if you do not want to return your unit right now, let us know if you have any serious issues like a dead nub or a failed LCD cable or anything else.
Why? Well, we're trying to fix all problems and prevent them from happening. But if we DON'T KNOW about these issues, we can't fix them. Telling us what fails will help us to improve the quality and increase the production speed.

Also, of course, if you have a Pandora and like it - spread the word! Show it to friends, colleagues, post on boards. Tell them the story behind it, that it's a device made by a small company, not by Sony, etc.

One thing you can be sure about:
If you encounter any real problems with your unit, we'll fix it for you! AND use the information to improve further produced units!

Let's all work together to improve the mood at the boards again. We all do share something: The love for niche products. Be it for gaming, for hacking, for coding - we all gathered to make the Pandora happen. For some, the Pandora is already reality - and for the rest, this reality is coming closer and closer!

Thanks to all guys that do support us - it's never been easy, but you keep us going!

 

[maplesugarlover]

Will the package manager only contain hot fixes or will also contain updates for pnds ?

 

[quartercast]

So far, we only had about 50 RMAs out of 700 - while the boards currently make it sound as if almost EVERY unit is unusable.

Nice propaganda there.

 

[CPUnltd]

for PND updates, I would suggest a more manual solution (if it can be done through the package manager, that's cool too, but as long as it runs somewhat like my idea)...


having the PND updater feature ask for the location of the pnd would be key (since some will drop it on NAND, some will use SD and others will use USB, the smartest way to do it would be by locating the previous pnd manually.


having the updater download the pnd in an rsync fashion, only updating the files that are newer and preserving the save files/personal files that are in the same folder(s) as the pnd (depending on pnd internal heirarchy)


admittedly, I don't really know the ins and outs of pnd's, but I think these points would make for smooth transition of pnd updates (if they are feasable/possible at this point) I know with my gp2x, when an updated package is released, I download it, extract it and only copy the new stuff into the old folder(s) and continue on playing my game. Or else I'll copy over savegame or hiscore info (depending on the game) to the newly extracted folder and delete the old one. It's manual, but it works. Even if I am totally left field with this, I hope it leads to some good ideas on how to streamline pnd updating...

 

[sebt3]

Will the package manager only contain hot fixes or will also contain updates for pnds ?

This is only for the base system (as a smmooth replacement for the hotfix (the hoxfix solution will still be available for non-connected pandora)

 

[joseluisjazz]

I like ED's posts, and that made me think that I'm amazed with all the core team in general. You are awesome like the A-Team.

Simplifying it much: We have the visionary and stubborn businessman that like a captain pushes things forward although sometimes he is not so well understood in the forums precisely because of the same traits that made the pandora possible; like Shackleton, he's the man that will take you safely to the other side of the adventure; a stronger character with all the pros and cons that entails, like the Pandora has them too, and in both cases the pros outweight by far. I love my pandora so in a way i suppose I love captain Sinclair too :lol: . We have also the beautiful mind of the designer of electronics, it's like a mage from whom we know little about, he always tries to be polite and helpful, and like Grissom he appears when needed, and then shares his insights very calmly and you can count on that he knows his stuff. And we have the man who definitely doesn't honor his nickname at all. He has a a deft touch with people, and knows how to pour oil into troubled water, helps making the Pandora more appealing with his proffesional video reviews, the work on the desktop, scripts, package maintainer, managing bug reports, and other dragon stuff. He remembers me of Tim Robbins' on Shawshank Redemption.

And there are also the secondary characters that are very important too but I need to continue sleeping now and really only wanted to check my mail then and saw this and got inspired. So I'm gonna leave it here. But not before saying a word about the devs working in the kernel and in the most advanced emu's, you appear before my eyes as arcane wizards!

It's the P-Team!!

 

[Roberto Gomez]

Simplifying it much: We have the visionary and stubborn businessman that like a captain pushes things forward although sometimes he is not so well understood in the forums precisely because of the same traits that made the pandora possible; like Shackleton, he's the man that will take you safely to the other side of the adventure; a stronger character with all the pros and cons that entails, like the Pandora has them too, and in both cases the pros outweight by far. I love my pandora so in a way i suppose I love captain Sinclair too :lol: . We have also the beautiful mind of the designer of electronics, it's like a mage from whom we know little about, he always tries to be polite and helpful, and like Grissom he appears when needed, and then shares his insights very calmly and you can count on that he knows his stuff. And we have the man who definitely doesn't honor his nickname at all. He has a a deft touch with people, and knows how to pour oil into troubled water, helps making the Pandora more appealing with his proffesional video reviews, the work on the desktop, scripts, package maintainer, managing bug reports, and other dragon stuff. He remembers me of Tim Robbins' on Shawshank Redemption.

Someone else is try to cast a movie of these characters at the dingoo-scene site:
http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/2010/08/stuff-of-dreams-or-why-you-should.html



Actually, is much good information in article, including how much moneys the Pandora company having.

 

[joseluisjazz]

Someone else is try to cast a movie of these characters at the dingoo-scene site:
http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/2010/08/stuff-of-dreams-or-why-you-should.html

Wow! Thanks for that link

 

[torpor]

I think the only solution to all the nay-sayers and negative people in the threads is to continue to strive for new software releases. Those of us who are into the Pandora and are supporting it with our development efforts have to realize that we need to be louder than the negative-nancy's when it comes to Pandora threads. If we want to do something really effective about these people who wish nothing but failure on the Pandora project, we should simply: succeed. Make new stuff, release it often, get a bit more excitement about the *power* of the device out there .. they'll shut up soon enough when there are a few hundred more threads about cool new stuff running on their Pandoras ..

BTW, its normal to have this degree of negativity in a mob. Groupthink and mob dynamics being what they are, we shouldn't be surprised that there is an effort to kill this wonderful project through negativity. The only way past all this is to power on and get stuff done.

 

[mali]

^ I think you are completely on the wrong track There is the usual spiral of force and counterforce escalating in these discussions. Sometimes it's best to look at it from a further away perspective and try to understand the opposite viewpoint. Our very own Monk is gone unfortunately. He would have written some paragraphs to explain this stuff in proper English.

You are simply part of the spiral right now and fail to view it from further away. Think about if your mob analogy helps to solve the problem or makes it worse

 

[r00tw00t]

Honest and optimistic. Good post ED, thanks!

 

[torpor]

You are simply part of the spiral right now and fail to view it from further away. Think about if your mob analogy helps to solve the problem or makes it worse

I think anyone who wants to deal with a market, needs to understand the mob. It doesn't take much for the mob mind to rear its ugly head and turn any scene into a disaster of epic proportions; this is Sociology 101. People don't communicate much about positive things, mostly when you get a large group of people together the loudest voices are the ones with something negative to say, while the happy ones, who are having a good time, tend to be too quiet. We can see this everywhere, not just in the Pandora project, and it can quite often happen that the negative impact of a smaller group of individuals in the larger mob can be disastrous throughout. This requires a great deal of good control to avoid becoming an overwhelming fact: on any project, not just this one.

This is why I say, those of us who are happy, productive, and working on making the platform survive, *have to be louder and more communicative than those who seem to want to just spend their time talking about the negative stuff*. Otherwise, the project will collapse in on itself, an implosion borne on mob dynamics. By pointing this out, I only wish to make it more obvious to the group of people here, who are interested in the platform and want to make it work out for everyone, that they must push a little bit harder than those who don't.

 

[mali]

^ Wrapping it in more positive words instead of firing back at the "mob" which is in fact just a figment would be a better idea. You are in fact creating a mob that doesn't exist, it's pretty simple. I could follow all paths of the recent discussion back through its forks and would come to the conclusion that there is no mob. The mob is an imagination created out of fear, apparently.

 

[joseluisjazz]

Mali, I love your embracing of Tao

 

[torpor]

Oh hogwash, there is definitely a 'mob', it consists of all of us as individuals finding common cause, and especially lately that common cause has been "OPT suck, their hardware is defective, lets prove it to the world in order to make sure everyone knows it".

You may not understand the word to mean "any unruly group of individuals gathering around a semi-common cause" but this doesn't mean it doesn't exist, because it really does.

Here, I'll look it up for you: Do yourself a favour and learn about this concept. Please also have fun with the "See Also" links .. particularly "Spiral of Silence", which is definitely at play here ..

 

[mali]

^ I refuse to read random wikipedia entries, cause they don't have todo anything with this particular discussion. I accept facts and nothing else. As a sidenote, I don't know anything about Tao, I cooked that up in my own mind

I really hate arguing on the internet, but sometimes it has to be done if nobody else wants to step up.

Name the members of the mob by their username on these boards and I'll check what they wrote. Do _you_ read every single post? _I_ do. It reminds me of a discussion with DCGM back then who came a bit late to "the party" bashing Gerald.

 

[quartercast]

^ Wrapping it in more positive words instead of firing back at the "mob" which is in fact just a figment would be a better idea. You are in fact creating a mob that doesn't exist, it's pretty simple. I could follow all paths of the recent discussion back through its forks and would come to the conclusion that there is no mob. The mob is an imagination created out of fear, apparently.

I feel so sad reading some people's posts here, they trivialise what is quite a complex issue, at the same time attacking me and others. I initially approached the whole defect issue from a neutral stance, but I had no choice but to fight back after all the criticism and attacking. Mali, you are like a breath of fresh air, thank you.

@ torpor, I think you're barking up the wrong tree mate

 

[EvilDragon]

So far, we only had about 50 RMAs out of 700 - while the boards currently make it sound as if almost EVERY unit is unusable.

Nice propaganda there.
[/quote]

No, it's a true fact. So far, that's all what we got back.
But what you are doing here is negative propaganda, by just ripping that sentence, leaving out the important part of that passage:

Some people do claim that there are more broken units but the users do not want to ship it back to us since they are waiting for production to speed up.
I can imagine this might be true for some people, but not for all.
Please: Even if you do not want to return your unit right now, let us know if you have any serious issues like a dead nub or a failed LCD cable or anything else.
Why? Well, we're trying to fix all problems and prevent them from happening. But if we DON'T KNOW about these issues, we can't fix them. Telling us what fails will help us to improve the quality and increase the production speed.

Yeah, we WANT to find out where we need to get better.

We are not like Apple who try to tell you there is no problem and then start to post videos of devices which also have faults, instead of trying to fix the current ones.

We are striving to fix all flaws for future units and also repair / replace what's broken on the units we delivered.

We worked on and hopefully fixed the LCD cable problem (though we are still working on it making it more sturdy for the next generation of cables being produced).
The manufacturer worked on the nubs and seems to have fixed the problem. Some seem to stick after a while - but those were about 10 so far.
But for us, even those 10 are too many. It's a flaw we want to get rid of. Therefore, the manufacturer is trying to improve the build quality with the next batch. So even if you got a first batch unit, if the nubs break somehow in a year or so, you can be sure you get more sturdy ones.

We can't improve the shoulder buttons much more nor the bezel at the moment - they are working, but some people don't like them.
This could only improve with a mould change, which would take a while.
But we already ordered the cases for batch 1 and 2, all of them should be there in September. That does mean: After that, we got time until the end of the year to make any fixes on the moulds, to flat out the minor flaws we have there, too.
Since we will also offer replacement parts, you can basically upgrade your unit yourself if you have any problems.

So yeah, there are some flaws with the current units, that's undeniable.
However, it is also a fact that we only got 50 RMAs so far. It might be unbelievable for some, especially if they have a unit which seems to be completely unusable for them, but it's the truth.

I'm quite happy that it is only 50 RMAs so far - because they do cost quite a lot, are time consuming and stall the building process, as we need to check WHAT'S wrong in order to prevent it.
The people who got working Pandoras love their device. Sometimes it goes so far that they don't want to send it for an RMA because they don't want to part with it.

So I think we are on the right way - and to make it succeed, we need the support of everyone who wants to make it succeed.
Too many negative and bashing comments and complaining just demotivates everyone - and might prevent new customers from even dive further into the project. Without customers, there will be no Pandora.

I'm not trying to tell you not to report any problems or give constructive criticismn. But it would be nice if any senseless bashing or problems that have been discussed over and over again (and which are already fixed on recent units) could stop here.

See the Pandora as the device it is: A small niche device, with a lot of horsepower under the hood. Even the unoptimized C++-Emulator ports run faster than the WIZ versions (I compared the new PSX and the new SNES). This has a LOT of potential. It is FULLY OpenSource - even the menu or any other custom changes we made. It's way more convenient to code on than on any other gaming handheld.
It's a device that can do wonderful things - but as it's niche and from a small company, there will be flaws.
However, good things still outweight the negative ones in my opinion.

Don't you think?

 

[torpor]

The Mob is inescapable. It is a human failing, and we are all subject to its whims. When you get a small group being vocal about an issue in a negative way, it has an impact on the rest of the group in a major way. This is a fact of life.

If you don't want to educate yourself on the dynamics of this phenomenon, fine, but don't pretend your ignorance trumps enlightenment about the issue. The fact is, any negative thread anyone cares to start about the Pandora right now, *WILL* attract a mob which propels the issue further and has an impact on the larger group.

 

[Bosbeetle]

And now for something completely different

Focus on the smile of the toast!

(drawn on the pandora by a friend of me using mtpaint)

Happychair! again focus on the smile

and the slightly retarded son of happychair