New Blog Post

[MonkeyChops]

We were all kinds of excited when my friend got his Pentium 60 with a 9600 baud modem.

We literally waited 4 days for Heritic to finish downloading. That didn't really seem fast even back then but it was free damn it! We got it from AOL chat rooms.

ahh, memories...

 

[urjaman]

If ALSA broke, I'm pretty sure I could fix it. If pulseaudio broke, I might need to go without sound for a while. <_<

Also, alsamixer isn't working??? If ALSA works, then that should too. Right?

well... I've once (tried) to write a sound driver and forgot the mixer. No alsamixer for me then :/. And i think we're talking about mixing multiple audio sources in software (the pandora's sound hw doesnt support that, AFAIK), not just adjusting the single output volume (which should be possible in hardware, for which alsamixer should work if drivers are 100%).

 

[Nova]

Yeah, definitely want silkscreening on mine.

 

[borgqueenx]

Mlre delay. Silkscreening picture will took longer then exptected i can tell you right now.
Second, im glad you forget about silkscreening if it doesnt look good.

I still expect many delays.

Im a year into the pandora scene now.
And in one and a half month i preordered 365 days ago....
and in 19 days, i have grown a year older...i hope i got my pandora then.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

Thats all i can tell about the project now...

 

[WizardStan]

Also, alsamixer isn't working??? If ALSA works, then that should too. Right?

Alsamixer is just volume control.
The problem (as I understand it) is what happens when you have two audio sources that want to output at the same time. It's an "easy" problem (just add the two sources together) with a lot of difficult quirks that can get in the way. I would wager it's one of those problems that is easy to solve just as soon as someone with the right skill set sits down and looks at it for a couple of hours, but finding a person with the time to do so is probably not easy right now.

 

[mindlord]

Also, alsamixer isn't working??? If ALSA works, then that should too. Right?

Alsamixer is just volume control.
The problem (as I understand it) is what happens when you have two audio sources that want to output at the same time. It's an "easy" problem (just add the two sources together) with a lot of difficult quirks that can get in the way. I would wager it's one of those problems that is easy to solve just as soon as someone with the right skill set sits down and looks at it for a couple of hours, but finding a person with the time to do so is probably not easy right now.

This problem is why PulseAudio exists in the first place. To my knowledge ALSA doesn't support source mixing. Once an application has control of the sound system it's it up to that program to play nice and do the mixing itself. Most games and applications do not do this, and thus hog the soundsystem.

PulseAudio plays the intermediary and allows programs not to have to worry about playing nice.

 

[droneb]

OMG, how many times this issue has been talked.

my opinion is just send em all with silkscreen if you dont like it wipe it off!

more people of the comunity would be happy.

if you dont like it just wipe it off.

btw i want mine with silkscreen. please?

 

[intense_mc]

Are there any plans to implement a disable option for WiFI for when I don't want it on?

Anybody?

 

[WizardStan]

PulseAudio plays the intermediary and allows programs not to have to worry about playing nice.

Yes, but Pulse also brought a lot more to the table. It solves the one problem and then creates a giant mess of it's own. They (whomever it was that came up with Pulse) should have come out with some sort of Pulse compatible "miniPulse", something that does nothing but act as the intermediary, but is still input-compatible with Pulse. That would be swell.

 

[quote]

What? OP are thinking of cancelling the silk screening?
Damn, I feel sorry for you guys!

 

[roberthoward45]

as long as i get my pandora soon silkscreen wont make a huge difference either way

 

[kingoddball]

@ ED and OS Devs:

Why is there no hardware acceleration for movies?
You have had the device (dev boards, etc) for what.... Two years?


You said it works - but it's just odd that two years on and you have not got the hardware working for media (movies).
It's the DaVinci chip?

WIFI is more understandable, but the media side of things is a big seller.

 

[lulzfish]

I thought ALSA ran something called dmix that did mixing automatically?
To be honest, I don't know jack about their APIs but I've always had mixing on my ALSA setups.

 

[MWeston]

Some of you people need to stop shitting on the devs who have actually stuck around this project for two years taking time away from their wives, girlfriends and families to help out, not to mention any relaxation time away from their full time day jobs. All for free and for a few dev boards to play with...

There are accelerated media players in existence for OMAP3 already but I believe they use the DSP which is another major task of coding that hasn't been a priority. Once other things are stable and more customers who want to code get their units, perhaps these things will happen quickly.

 

[urjaman]

I thought ALSA ran something called dmix that did mixing automatically?
To be honest, I don't know jack about their APIs but I've always had mixing on my ALSA setups.

Yeah, but that doesnt come automagically == they need to setup dmix. Most recent PC audio hw can mix many sources of audio in hw, so that is rarely needed. I have a Gigabyte GA-6ZMA motherboard that has integrated audio that (a quirky one IMO) can mix two sources but no more, OTOH it has sliders PCM 1 and PCM 2 in alsamixer - allowing per-application tuning .

 

[Bosbeetle]

Some of you people need to stop shitting on the devs who have actually stuck around this project for two years taking time away from their wives, girlfriends and families to help out, not to mention any relaxation time away from their full time day jobs. All for free and for a few dev boards to play with...

^^ This

It is getting worse and worse here. I thought it was one of the nicest and politest forums around when I joined. And indeed people always seemed helpful and mostly ontopic. Now it seems to turn in to more and more into a race who can point out weaknesses of the project (nothing wrong with that) and then blaming somebody for it (really incredibly wrong from a community standpoint) Please stop blaming something, if you can help, offer it. If you can find sources that might be interesting please do. If you want to point fingers please point them at your self or at the off button of your PC.

It make me sad seeing this happening. And even more sad that I am probably part of it since I have nothing to contribute except a lot of interest in the project.

 

[Pleng]

I dont know who MWeston is referring to but, to be honest, OP Are a company providing a device. The owner of a device expects a working OS.

Nobody as far as I can see is ****ing on the community; they're ****ing on the OP team for simply expecting other people to develop the OS for them. Support in OS development in an OS system should always be appreciated, but not expected - especially if you are a commercial company.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I dont know who MWeston is referring to but, to be honest, OP Are a company providing a device. The owner of a device expects a working OS.

The OS is working and from day one it was mentioned that the OS was a work in progress. Have you seen the ED OS snippets did that look as not working. I think I talk for most of us as I say that we knew what we were buying and that stuff needs work.

And working hard is what they are doing! give these guys some credit.

 

[renegadechic]

good lord, i thought there were morons who havent paid attention on this board for a long time and this thread proves it. it has been stated pretty much forever that the OS would be something that needed tinkering and improving post release from the word go. when it was originally up for pre-order and all through the last year or so. i dont know where all these users who suddenly want 100% instant operability have come from because i recognise loads of the names and theyve been around long enough to know better. and i dare say they do know better they just choose to ignore it. you might as well be saying "well why doesnt it run windows" now because thats pretty much the level of off the shelf you are looking for. some people really had absolutely no idea what they were buying. i think they saw a lot of mHz got a geek hardon and put money down without thinking.

 

[Bosbeetle]

What does work:

* The desktop fully works. It's like a normal PC desktop. You have your file manager, your windows, your apps, etc.
* PND system is working. You can simply copy games onto your SD Card, put it into your Pandora - and PLAY!
* Apps: Installed apps do work fine so far. That includes Midori, Abiword, Orage, Pidgin, XChat, etc.
* Audio Playing: XMMS working fine.
* Movie Playing: Working... but has some issues (see below)
* USB Devices: You can connect USB Sticks, harddisks, mice, keyboard, etc. Normal things run out of the box.
* TV Out: The TV Out cable works fine, SVHS only for the moment though (see below)
* Power Saving Mode: Yep, it's included and does work. At the moment, it should last for about 50 hours, not too long, but there might be a lot more components which could be switched off to save more power. Good enough to leave your Pandora lying around for a few hours without having to reboot it.
* LED Warning (Blinking) on low battery with automatic shutdown when the battery status becomes critical.
* Keyboard, us nub as mouse, touchscreen, everything working.