My Mp Pandora

[Vlynndar]

First post.



The Pandora iz da sh1te!

ignore heavy netspeak please.



Wooot!
Pre-ordering within the next 5 minutes.

(yes I was a lurker >_>)

Welcome and good luck

 

[skyeyemachine]

First post.



The Pandora iz da sh1te!

ignore heavy netspeak please.



Wooot!
Pre-ordering within the next 5 minutes.

(yes I was a lurker >_>)

It seems all this recent excitement is drawing us lurkers out into the daylight! Welcome indeed!

 

[GreenDream]

First post.



The Pandora iz da sh1te!

ignore heavy netspeak please.



Wooot!
Pre-ordering within the next 5 minutes.

(yes I was a lurker >_>)

Welcome and good luck

Thanks man

 

[GreenDream]

About time I preorder after finding out about the Pandora last year already!
And to think I almost forgot about it!

Finally my StumbleUpon addiction pays off

 

[maddis]

@Craig, does your camcorder support component in? you could always get a head cam. That should do the trick!

Forget about Amiga Longplay, we can have Pandora Longplay!

Edit: Sometimes i don't make sense as i type to fast

 

[Alec]

Ed may well do a test with the wifi left on.

I'd expect it to drop to around 6 hours with it on, wifi is pretty hungry.

I assume the 6 hours is when playing games and having wifi on, right?

 

[MonkeyChops]

if your still taking requests..

+1 for dual analog action, psx, and n64

specific games...
psx:
FF7 (I know its been done, but not with a MP Pandora and I'm a freak about that game)
tenchu
tony hawk
n64:
Smash Bros
Mario Kart 64
Zelda - ocarina of time

Thanks for the teaser videos, they are very exciting.

 

[Elanzer]

In the process of reading this thread I think it grew 2 more pages, god damn

What I'd like to see (if at all possible) is the pandora playing a youtube video. I know there's no official flash support from adobe yet, but Gnash should work with youtube.

It's sort of funny that wireless would drain the battery life so much, but now that I actually think about it - the wireless module itself probably uses about 1-1.5w while the actual Cortex A8 SoC only uses something like 0.5w.

 

[WolfSpider]

I would like to see it connecting to wifi and searching for access points.

 

[borgqueenx]

Would be hard for craigix to make up a funny ending for the video. I also loved the beginning of the video:

naaaaa! Na! Na.

 

[skyeyemachine]

Perhaps it'd be worthwhile to post some footage of the USB and/or other hardware connectors in action? Connecting to a keyboard, or a webcam, maybe?

I think it's been mentioned already, but I'd like to briefly see how fast you can type on the finished keyboard too, if you wouldn't mind (and setting up the camera for that isn't too much of a struggle).

 

[bzar]

SNES Killer Instinct played well please

 

[WizardStan]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but what is it about the X86 that generates so much heat/uses so much power versus the ARM architecture? Does the X86 perform many more overhead calculations, or something to that effect? My initial encounter with the Pandora was really the first time I clued in to the different architectures, having only ever much thought about X86 and 64-bit PC chipsets as related to common PCs, and it's made me curious about what makes the different architectures unique (as well as what else is out there).

Imagine you've got a bunch of switches which push a bunch of other switches which push a bunch of other switches in a long line with the last bunch of switches being the output.
At the front, you push a bunch of the switches. It takes energy to push the switches, and each layer of switches increases the amount of energy you need to push on the first switch.
ARM is a simple architecture, there's only a few levels of switches. x86 is more complex, there are more layers of switches, so it takes more energy. More energy means more heat.
Basically. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that should be close enough.

 

[ZoxFox]

The factory are sending some more cases with the requested fixes.

so that means the cases are NOW on the way to mweston?

 

[bzar]

The factory are sending some more cases with the requested fixes.

so that means the cases are NOW on the way to mweston?

<insert fsjal>

 

[skyeyemachine]

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but what is it about the X86 that generates so much heat/uses so much power versus the ARM architecture? Does the X86 perform many more overhead calculations, or something to that effect? My initial encounter with the Pandora was really the first time I clued in to the different architectures, having only ever much thought about X86 and 64-bit PC chipsets as related to common PCs, and it's made me curious about what makes the different architectures unique (as well as what else is out there).

Imagine you've got a bunch of switches which push a bunch of other switches which push a bunch of other switches in a long line with the last bunch of switches being the output.
At the front, you push a bunch of the switches. It takes energy to push the switches, and each layer of switches increases the amount of energy you need to push on the first switch.
ARM is a simple architecture, there's only a few levels of switches. x86 is more complex, there are more layers of switches, so it takes more energy. More energy means more heat.
Basically. It's a lot more complicated than that, but that should be close enough.

Thanks; so, the key point is it uses lots more transistors then. I think I can grasp that much.

(...but I'll humbly take back the smiley if I misunderstood. )

 

[marshal]

Ed may well do a test with the wifi left on.

I'd expect it to drop to around 6 hours with it on, wifi is pretty hungry.

I know my nokia n800 can last for quite long with the wifi on. I heard the router also plays a big role because not all of them properly support proper power saving mode properly.
I guess the wifi (or wifi driver...) on the Pandora doesn't yet support power saving then ?

I was hopping to leave the device and wifi on all the time just as I do on my nokia Internet tablet.

 

[kingoddball]

If you want to post a video and make MANY crazy fans (like myself) happy, you could post a Vid of PSX emu playing Metal Gear Solid or Resident Evil!

 

[ZoxFox]

dungeon keeper + crusader (dosbox)

quake 3 online multiplayer

baldurs gate (when it´s already ported)

 

[laurencevde]

Firstly, There's more overhead and complexity mostly due to maintaining perfect compatibility for 25 years, and bolting on more and more stuff in the process.
But the biggest reason is simply that low power-consumption is not really a necessity for desktop-computers, and pure speed for as low a cost as possible is much more important for selling them. This means that AMD and intel focus far less on power-management than typical ARM-developers do. Furthermore, the X86-platform is highly modular, with lots of long-lasting standards that are also primarily designed for speed, and any power-management in those standards is typically only bolted on later on. After which devices need to implement those features, or it'll stay disabled... (f.ex afaik, pci-express only learned how to power off lanes in V2...). And all devices are separate parts, developed individually, and need to work together with a wide range of other parts.
Simply put, the whole platform is geared towards speed and cheapness, and doesn't really bother with power-consumption.