Music On Pandora


Fzero

Advanced Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2010
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Greetz, i've just signed up as seems the place to be for some knowledge on this.

A long time after first seeing pandora, I've recently found myself thirsty for one,
was looking at buying a dingoo as mainly I'm looking to play my old fav games,
now I'm thinking put that money aside and part with some more of my hard earned and
invest in a pandora instead, for the obvious better gaming experience it offers

iv seen lots of vids on YouTube, from craig and evil dragon mostly, and really loving the look of it,
I just have a few questions if anyone can shed some light please..

I've not seen a vid of the boot up, is it fairly quick from when you open it to say start firefox?

My experience of Linux stretches only to installing YDL on my ps3 and adding the snes emulator using readme files, will
the pandora version of Linux be similar, in terms of actually getting firefox or a snes emu installed, or is it less
GUI than YDL?

Finally, music.
I'm guessing that there are music making programs for Linux, and I'm guessing that the
pandora is powerful enough to run them.
Am I right in guessing this, it would be good to have something like that.

I'm just shifting my old psp and ds to go toward the pandora funds,
I don't think I will regret it from what I seen of the videos so far
 
Hello, welcome to the forums.
1. Booting up the Pandora can take a minute or two if I remember correctly, but I think it starts up near instantly from sleep mode or hibernate or whatever.
2. It should be pretty simple to install software, just copy it to your SD card and it should work.
3. Not sure about music making programs, Audacity should work but that's more of a sound/music editing program.
Have a nice day.
 
Fzero said:
I've not seen a vid of the boot up, is it fairly quick from when you open it to say start firefox?

The idea is to treat the Pandora like your Cellphone. You turn it on, and leave it on. The only time you'll need to watch the boot sequence is 1) When you first buy it. 2) When you do a kernel update. So, the answer is... why would you do that? Instead, it's only a matter of seconds between opening the lid, clicking Firefox (The default is Midori now) and surfing.

My experience of Linux stretches only to installing YDL on my ps3 and adding the snes emulator using readme files, will
the pandora version of Linux be similar, in terms of actually getting firefox or a snes emu installed, or is it less
GUI than YDL?
Very GUI, very little "must do" in terminal action going on here. It will be a little sharp around the edges at first, but will get better with age. BUT! Installing games and applications is as simple as downloading the PND file and dropping it in one of three locations on your SD card depending on if you want the icon to appear in your menu, desktop, or both. There is no installing of anything. The download and drop step can be done entirely on the Pandora, of course, no PC required. It's all done automatically.

Finally, music.
I'm guessing that there are music making programs for Linux, and I'm guessing that the
pandora is powerful enough to run them.
Am I right in guessing this, it would be good to have something like that.

I'm just shifting my old psp and ds to go toward the pandora funds,
I don't think I will regret it from what I seen of the videos so far
Rejoice! The music scene for the Pandora is really excited. There will be plenty of great applications for listening to and creating music.
 
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Cheers guys, that was some quick fire responses, and great news for me.

I didn't realise it could be left on hibernation, perfect.

Good news all round there then
 
Fzero said:
Finally, music.
I'm guessing that there are music making programs for Linux, and I'm guessing that the
pandora is powerful enough to run them.
Am I right in guessing this, it would be good to have something like that.

A few months ago I was wondering this too, and got linked to this:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/49917-csoundpd-pro-audio/page__p__762440&#entry762440

Looks like us music-makers have enough to look forward to :D
 
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It just gets better B)
Cheers for that link, I will have to keep track on torpor's work there, it all sounds great to me
 
IT boots up pretty fast imho, but yeah, generally you can just..

1) Close the lid; thus turns off the screen, but leaves cpu at current (so you can play music etc); this cuts power usage down by probably half (vimacs and so on have real numbers if anyone cares)
2) Hit thw power button to toggle low and high power mode; in low power mode the CPU is down to 15mhz or something like that, the screen is off, wifi and BT are unloaded; when you toggle back to high power mode, it returns to where you were (cpu goes up, lcd back on, wifi and BT loaded if they were before.) So this doesn't shut anythign off, just turns everything way down.

On low power mode, you'll get (currently) what, 2.5 days life on a battery, but probbaly can tweek another half or full day some more out of that .. a few things were still going when we did that test.

The battery is beefy -- I just let mine sit on all day today (like 8 or 9 hours), with some usage, and killed about 3/4 of it .. it really is about 12 hours or so of not-heavy usage, or like 7+ hours of heavy usage :)

Boot up duration really depends on which environment you pick, too; if you go wiht a lighter env like pmenu or minimenu, you're up in half the time as full desktop, but full desktop lets you do a lot more (and eats more RAM away from you :)

jeff
 
advance search the forum, there have been a few threads about music production software. one chap was planning on creating a bootable os (from sd card) with TONS of ported and compiled music apps preinstalled
 
b1llygo4t said:
advance search the forum, there have been a few threads about music production software. one chap was planning on creating a bootable os (from sd card) with TONS of ported and compiled music apps preinstalled
I'd like to broker a deal between you and Fzero. If he starts searching for threads, you have to start reading them.

:p
 
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If you can still jump from one interface to another I imagine myself starting at the most minimal for just gaming which should only take a few seconds then if I need to do something more computery them jump to full on computer mode which should be less time than starting up from a dead stop since it's already (at least partially right?) running Linux by that point.
 
I remember reading that in "LOW" power mode, the Pandora could idle away for like a week?
I'm sure it was something like +5 months ago reading that.

Has Vimacs come back to the Pandora scene, yet or still a sad and sore subject? :(
 
kingoddball said:
Has Vimacs come back to the Pandora scene, yet or still a sad and sore subject? :(
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52165-libpnd-and-pnd-file-the-position-i-can-add-drama-too/page__view__findpost__p__819634
 
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I'm sure it was something like +5 months ago reading that.

i wish you are right, because if we have to recharge the battery every day, to avoid the 1 or 2 minutes of booting....... :( :(
 
Even if the boot time is literally two minutes, that really is not worth pooing the bed about. Power up, go and make yourself a steaming cup of joe and come back to it.
 
mali said:
kingoddball said:
Has Vimacs come back to the Pandora scene, yet or still a sad and sore subject? :(
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52165-libpnd-and-pnd-file-the-position-i-can-add-drama-too/page__view__findpost__p__819634
ah. good. warn craig to be more cautious please.
 
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Sugar_Kane said:
Even if the boot time is literally two minutes, that really is not worth pooing the bed about. Power up, go and make yourself a steaming cup of joe and come back to it.

<in my day rant>

I remember loading BBC Micro games from tape - the worst being Scrabble which would take 45 minutes. It was the sort of thing you set going before having tea (and returned to again afterwards). And sometimes... the load would fail right near the end.

</rant>
 
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ashdjones said:
Sugar_Kane said:
Even if the boot time is literally two minutes, that really is not worth pooing the bed about. Power up, go and make yourself a steaming cup of joe and come back to it.

<in my day rant>

I remember loading BBC Micro games from tape - the worst being Scrabble which would take 45 minutes. It was the sort of thing you set going before having tea (and returned to again afterwards). And sometimes... the load would fail right near the end.

</rant>
I remember spending more time waiting for games to load, than actually playing them. I can almost but not quite get my CoCo to initialize a CLOAD by imitating the screech using my voice. Kids these days... don't appreciate how we suffered to make their lives easier. :)
 
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Yeah i used to load up XENON, JETPAC or BOMBJACK on my old Speccy, then go have my dinner whilst keeping my eye on the strobing psychadelic loading screens, and usually finished cleaning my plate just in time to catch the end of the load.
 
I remember being quite patient with my C64 and its loading times (I was a patient kid :p), though there were two games that stood out for very different reasons.

One was a scrolling space shooter, the name of which I don't remember (it was given away on a cover-tape, though, that much I do remember), which took well over an hour to load, and which I only attempted to load twice because even I didn't have the patience to wait THAT long for a game to load.

The other was The NewZealand Story. What a surprise I got the first time I loaded it, and heard Ocean Loader 5 (look it up here)! :D That tune is still burned into my memory even today.
 
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