New Happy Instant Pandora User has questions

[SoniX]

Hello all,


I finally got my Pandora and its amazing. Im playing with it without end.


My impressions:


The Pandora is built tough. It is easy to hold and feels


real good. The screen stops at all positions strong enough


and Wi-Fi also works without problem (I had ~150kB/sec so far.. not as bad).


The Pandora is a top part and I will not give it away anymore





PSX Emulator works just fine, only a few sound glitches.


SNES, Genesis work all like a charm


Even Chrome and Claws are working just fine.


What has struck (?) me:


I had to rub the touch pen a little bit on paper, as he previously had little scratched.


I had to format my SDHC card (Kingston 8GB) since it didnt recognize the pnds on the card. But now everything works great.


My questions:


Freeze in standby:


To me it now happened 2 times that I had the Pandora in standby and on AC overnight and then next morning it was freezed completly.


I have the to take out the AC Adapter and the Accu and insert it again.


Is this a known bug?


Mupen64:


I have testet about 10 games so far but cant play one of them.


Sometimes I can see the intro of the game but then it freezes. Most of the time it freezes befor Intro.


Only one game (Tetris64) I can start, but there are so many graphical errors that this is not


playable. If the emulator simply not ready or I did something wrong? What are your experiences?


What can I do if an applications freezes? I know about the Pandora button, but most of the time this does not work.


Can I press some Magic keys in?


I will probably ask more questions soon but enough for now


Edit:


mupen64plus-new.pnd


Pandora Firmware 5 RC1 Zaxxon

 

[Anihil8ion2199]

I've recently got my Pandora too and its awesome! Sometimes the emulators do get stuck, usually Mupen, and the way I found to exit out is to just reset the unit. Do this by holding the pandora button and flicking the power switch. I'm sure that might not be the best way to do it, but I've never had a problem with reseting that way.

 

[mhadf]

On Mupen check the game rating.... 0 stars = most likely not going to work, or major glitches like Tetrisphere


It is a beta emulator


Not had those random freezes so I can't comment sorry.

 

[SoniX]

I've recently got my Pandora too and its awesome! Sometimes the emulators do get stuck, usually Mupen, and the way I found to exit out is to just reset the unit. Do this by holding the pandora button and flicking the power switch. I'm sure that might not be the best way to do it, but I've never had a problem with reseting that way.

Yes, this works. But I dont know if it is the best way to kill the process. Two times my nubs didnt work anymore after resetting. I had to reset the nubs then.

On Mupen check the game rating.... 0 stars = most likely not going to work, or major glitches like Tetrisphere


It is a beta emulator


Not had those random freezes so I can't comment sorry.

Ah thanks. Yes they have 0 stars. I will look at this from now on

 

[SoniX]

Today morning I have a freezed Pandora again.


The red Power LED is now off, It was on yesterday evening. Only the green right LED is still on.


Its impossible to start or reset my Pandora now. :-(


I had it on 500MHz yesterday, so it cant be freezed because overclocking. I also unmounted the SD card yesterday.


Has nobody else this bug?

 

[WizardStan]

The red Power LED is now off, It was on yesterday evening. Only the green right LED is still on.


Its impossible to start or reset my Pandora now. :-(


I had it on 500MHz yesterday, so it cant be freezed because overclocking. I also unmounted the SD card yesterday.


Has nobody else this bug?

Hmm... the red LED is the charge light. The charge circuit is supposed to shut off when it reaches 100% (though it varies from Pandora to Pandora and some of them need some tweaking) so that could be why you don't see the red LED in the morning: that much could be normal. I'm working on a better LED indicator for when it reaches full charge.


However the freezing is strange. When this freeze happens, what exactly is it? The screen remains off? Or is it black but the backlight is on? Or do you actually get an image but the nubs and stylus and keys don't do anything? What kind of freeze is it?

 

[SoniX]

The red Power LED is now off, It was on yesterday evening. Only the green right LED is still on.


Its impossible to start or reset my Pandora now. :-(


I had it on 500MHz yesterday, so it cant be freezed because overclocking. I also unmounted the SD card yesterday.


Has nobody else this bug?

Hmm... the red LED is the charge light. The charge circuit is supposed to shut off when it reaches 100% (though it varies from Pandora to Pandora and some of them need some tweaking) so that could be why you don't see the red LED in the morning: that much could be normal. I'm working on a better LED indicator for when it reaches full charge.


However the freezing is strange. When this freeze happens, what exactly is it? The screen remains off? Or is it black but the backlight is on? Or do you actually get an image but the nubs and stylus and keys don't do anything? What kind of freeze is it?

Good morning


I didnt know that this is a charge light, since it is on even if my Pandora has 100%. I thought its an AC light. Just to know that the AC Adapter gives Power. (the second right red LED)


But now I remember: The AC (charging) LED is really off some times. But not every time my Pandora has 100%.


When it freezes the screen background LED is off. Completely dark. Cant see an image.


(Its possible that the screen makes a picture but only backlight is off. I will look at this next time)


Only the right green LED is on, but its dimmed (like in low Power Mode).


Power on does not help then. Also holding the Power button for a long time will do nothing.


Also re-plugging AC Adapter does nothing. I have to put battery and AC Adapter out.


Maybe there is a log file that I can look? Maybe there I can see whats going crazy during night.


Excuse my possible weird sentences, i still slept 10 min ago.

 

[SoniX]

Ok. Now a new error.


This time I had my Pandora in low power mode with Wifi off for about 5 hours.


After resuming System I had an error message "Systray connection lost" (aah.. i read it a min ago and didnt remember correctly).


The message came 3 times. The Wifi Symbol was completely gone. SD Card symbol also was not on desktop. So I wanted to restart my Pandora. But the Shutdown button was greyed out. Only Logoff was chooseable.


After I choosed logoff Im now at the logon screen. But I cant log in. Does not respond to anything.


I can swith to low power mode and back to login screen, but I cant reset it with power button.


Pressing Enter or something else has no effect.


*again putting battery out*


Anyways: I think the pandora soooo good that I am not interfere with crashes.


I just want to help to make the amazing Pandora rock stable.

 

[WizardStan]

Ok, sounds like your firmware may be corrupt. I suggest reflashing, maybe even going back to stock firmware with hot fix 4 rather than upgrading to hot fix 5 for now, just to be sure.


Also, next time it freezes, try pressing the Pandora button while you slide the power switch. This should engage a hard reset so you don't have to remove the battery.

 

[SoniX]

Ok, sounds like your firmware may be corrupt. I suggest reflashing, maybe even going back to stock firmware with hot fix 4 rather than upgrading to hot fix 5 for now, just to be sure.


Also, next time it freezes, try pressing the Pandora button while you slide the power switch. This should engage a hard reset so you don't have to remove the battery.

My stock firmware is Hotfix 5 RC1 ;-) (I got my pandora last week from ED).


But I will reflash it today.


Pandora button and Powerswitch is hard reset?


Nice to know. Thank you very much


Not only the pandora is amazing, also the community is helpfully and friendly. Thank you all!

 

[EvilDragon]

Ok, sounds like your firmware may be corrupt. I suggest reflashing, maybe even going back to stock firmware with hot fix 4 rather than upgrading to hot fix 5 for now, just to be sure.


Also, next time it freezes, try pressing the Pandora button while you slide the power switch. This should engage a hard reset so you don't have to remove the battery.

My stock firmware is Hotfix 5 RC1 ;-) (I got my pandora last week from ED).


But I will reflash it today.

Use RC2, as RC1 has a bug that freezes the unit when you go into low-power mode while being connected to a WiFi hotspot

 

[DavidBowman]

And here you have a perfect example of ED and WS being helpful and patient. It's really nice to be a Pandora owner with such a great community behind us!

 

[ZXDunny]

Hmm... the red LED is the charge light. The charge circuit is supposed to shut off when it reaches 100% (though it varies from Pandora to Pandora and some of them need some tweaking) so that could be why you don't see the red LED in the morning: that much could be normal. I'm working on a better LED indicator for when it reaches full charge.

Interesting. My red LED has never gone off when I've been connected to AC power. I assumed that this was because the battery was constantly discharging and recharging - how is it supposed to work? Is it supposed to actually run the pandora off AC power when it's connected?


D.

 

[WizardStan]

Interesting. My red LED has never gone off when I've been connected to AC power. I assumed that this was because the battery was constantly discharging and recharging - how is it supposed to work? Is it supposed to actually run the pandora off AC power when it's connected?

How it's supposed to work, according to the guy I talked to who specializes in batteries, is that it will charge the battery to 100%, stop charging, and then run off the battery to drain the power down about 10-20% before starting to charge again. The idea is that lipo batteries do not like being kept at 100%: with lithium ion, trickle charging to maintain 100% was not a major concern, but with lithium polymer it apparently is. Maintaining 100% in lipo results in puffing batteries. He said we could get away with a 95-100% cycle (as opposed to an 80%-100% cycle) for a few days at a time, so I'm implementing that in a test kernel.


How it doesn't work is that the end-of-charge detection may not be sensitive enough to guess when some batteries are full. Different batteries, slightly different resistances. I've also tweaked that sensitivity so that those like yourself with batteries that just don't ever seem to get "full" will finally trigger the end-of-charge feature.

 

[Asmo]

Rather than start a thread with a frightening title, and since my query more or less falls under SoniX's title too, could I just ask -


is it normal for a USB Flash stick to heat up on the Pandora? Within 10 minutes or so, just accessing games not even writing to it, I find that the USB stick I used (and the general area of the USB port) get pretty warm. I hesitate to say 'hot' (I didn't use it for longer than 15 minutes, can't say it wouldn't get there) but it's something I've never experienced using the same drive on any other computer.

 

[Prometheus]

^ If it's of any help, I've experienced that, too. However, I'm guessing it's normal, because I get exactly the same on both of my computers, as well.

 

[Asmo]

Odd, any USB sticks I've used (including this particular one) stay cool on my other computers, even under long write sessions. I wonder if the Pandora USB port (in contact with the metal plug of an attached device) might inadvertently be acting as a heat sink?

 

[007jaws]

Odd, any USB sticks I've used (including this particular one) stay cool on my other computers, even under long write sessions. I wonder if the Pandora USB port (in contact with the metal plug of an attached device) might inadvertently be acting as a heat sink?

I Had a similar problem, heats up quite a bit, some of my plastic is melted like around the usb power port odd this?

 

[Asmo]

I Had a similar problem, heats up quite a bit, some of my plastic is melted like around the usb power port odd this?

Now that can't be right. I wonder if heat expansion in the case around that spot could also increase the likelihood of the old 'Usb crack' problem.


Is it just USB sticks, anyone using something like a broadband dongle or HD notice this phenomenon?

 

[EvilDragon]

Some sticks get REALLY hot if you transfer a lot of data in high speed!


I got a metal stick and nearly burnt my fingers after I copied 5GB data onto it from my desktop PC...