News from the meeting at GC

[mclien]

I will be 40 by the end of this year.
That's horrible.

Nope in only 2 Years you'll know all the answers (from someone being 32 in base 16 already).
BTW: people being as aktive and creative as you(we) will stay younger anyway (in mind and otherwise)

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

@EvilDragon: Is everything ordered now?

Just... WOW.

 

[PowerGod]

He ordered even a pizza

 

[Bokkertoff]

Yesterday my phone (it's maybe a year old now) starting feeling really long in the tooth so I started researching upgrades.

At the end of about 2 hours my options dwindled and it dawned on me that basically no matter what I chose it would be expensive and run a limited OS I really didn't care for. Very few options for expansion and mostly locked down OS that is out of my control.

So no, I don't really CARE that the Pyra processor is old when the only reason I'd want a newer SOC would be for games I don't play, or a small almost imperceptible bump in performance that means nothing for the bulk of my interactions with the device. I'm tired of the smartphone/android/iOS/blahblahblah treadmill. My Pandora still has more functionality than a top of the line smartphone in most cases; the suite of emulators my Pandy uses enjoy better performance and utility than most android ones I try. I can code python on the go with it. SSH into my office machines and fix things, manage external drives with the USB port. No adapters or dongles required. Thats hard to beat with any modern smartphone.

I want a device with a real keyboard, a real OS, and a real set of expansion and IO. I can handle having an older SOC if it means I can actually do things with it. Code, compile, fool around, use peripherals etc. Whatever I choose. It's worth a premium to me, its worth not having the most up to date silicon. I can deal with that.

I got my Nokia N900 in 2010. It was a fantastic device for me, but it was hampered with too little RAM for the bloat they bestowed upon it. (256MB)
I would have been very happy if I could replace it with another phone like that, but which had more RAM and a more linux friendly keyboard.
Sadly nobody ever made something like that again. It's successor (Nokia N9) was a big disappointment. That is a good example of a device that had more RAM and faster processor, but less functionality.
It took me six years to come to the realization that the "phone" I was looking for will never exist.

I had the eureka moment when I realized that phones and hand held computers always were separate things. There was a brief moment in time where a phone and a hand held computer came together in the same device and that was the Nokia N900.
Phones went on to evolve into something that appeals to the masses ( phone/PDA functionality ).

I made my peace with the idea that it will never be one device again.
The next day I ordered a run of the mill Android phone which I only use as a phone with crap battery life.
I also pre-ordered a Pyra the next day for which I wait in great anticipation and visit the forum on a daily basis in the hope of some more news.

BTW I know about the Neo900, but decided a Pyra will be a better fit.

 

[levi]

The Nokia E7 was the natural migration path from a N900 surely? That ran Symbian Belle though, opposed to Maemo (or whatever that got renamed into in the end), so was less hackable, but at least it had a physical keyboard unlike the N9.

 

[sulu]

I got my Nokia N900 in 2010. It was a fantastic device for me, but it was hampered with too little RAM for the bloat they bestowed upon it. (256MB)

I'm still using my N900, actually two of my three. It's barely useable for anything else but feature phone scenarios anymore, but it's still better than a dumb phone and I simply refuse to give in to any of the data kraken that would be the alternative.

I would have been very happy if I could replace it with another phone like that, but which had more RAM and a more linux friendly keyboard.

Yes, the keypad is horrible, especially in those localisations where they sacrificed two of the cursor keys for obscure characters like äöüß. I ordered a proper US keypad in week one.
But it's still much better than any on-screen keyboard.

Sadly nobody ever made something like that again. It's successor (Nokia N9) was a big disappointment. That is a good example of a device that had more RAM and faster processor, but less functionality.

Well, there was the N950, basically an N9 with a keypad. But it was only produced in numbers of a few hundred and didn't actually leave prototyping phase. Once in a while there is one to be sold somewhere 2nd (or 3rd) hand for 1000 Euros or so.

BTW I know about the Neo900, but decided a Pyra will be a better fit.

I'm in for both. If it can be used as a phone, the Pyra would be the better fit for me too, but my pocket would disagree.

 

[Bosbeetle]

It's offtopic but I'm really happy with my blackberry priv. Ik has a nice keyboard, it does run android so indeed I will go for the two devices option when the pyra is out. In the mean time the priv will do.

 

[kabaiakh]

Nope in only 2 Years you'll know all the answers (from someone being 32 in base 16 already).

Turned 42 recently. It did not bring any answer to me ...
All my questionings tend to lead to even more questionings.

Has any member its seventh bit to one ?

 

[mclien]

Yeah taht's the final answer: 42 (It's teh 2-Dimensional representation: Yes, no answers.)

 

[levi]

Has any member its seventh bit to one ?

Not that I know of. I suspect most of us encountered home computers during our formative years and are trying to reclaim some of that. I don't know of anyone who really wants to be able to carry a IBM S/360 in their pocket.

 

[Grench]

Not that I know of. I suspect most of us encountered home computers during our formative years and are trying to reclaim some of that. I don't know of anyone who really wants to be able to carry a IBM S/360 in their pocket.

No, I don't really want an s/360 in my pocket, but conceptually it could be possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_(emulator)

 

[jontheramer2]

this is my zaurus
i hope to retire it when i receive the pyra
it is a good example of how cpu clock speed is not entirely important
400mhz and snes9x at almost full speed, negligibly less
indeed i got through zelda3 and chrono trigger iirc
f-zero is totally playable [and the music sounds killer]
[doublepost=1486287986,1486287673][/doublepost]

agree.
also, what i try to do
is use my various devices for what they are good for
desktop pc for almost everything
no laptop because there's too much overlap with desktop, but crappy keyboard = frustration
phone for phoning
pyra for scripty things, not c++ or hadoop

I use my Zaurus still too and my Zippit Z2 ; they all work fine for emulation and development of some things, but the Linux is too old and on those it is very very hard to update; I have a cross compiler chain but it is really hit and miss if an image works or not and if software from that image works or not. And I have quite a lot of Linux experience, including driver dev. I do actually use my Pandora for C/C++, C#, NodeJS and PHP dev. So don't dismiss that use case for the Pyra. The thing I miss the most is modern distro support; on all of these devices I use chroots of kind of modern distro's and that is not very convenient. The idea of having a passionate community would be to keep up with modern OSs/repositories; I think fundamentally ever choosing anything different than the most popular mainline distro's is a massive mistake (and it definitely was for the Pandora *in my opinion* because it was not needed at all; Debian supports minimal installs and aptitude installs on non root media so why the choice is before my time in this community but I really am surprised by the decision). I hope that the Pyra can just run on mainline Debian ARM repositories as it is a serious pain to miss that. Zaurus & Z2 are just hobbies of mine (they are timesinks though; doing anything *new* on them is a great pain) while the Pandora is a production system while on airplanes (I am a lot) or when I don't want to carry a full laptop.

The Pyra should (!) be enough for me to never need my laptop again; with a GeChic[0] battery powered monitor, a portable keyboard (MS foldable mobile keyboard is excellent and better than most laptop keyboards) and a mouse (I am one of those crazy i3wm[1] users, so I don't need a mouse, but he) you can mix and max your working environment but always have the same software, movies etc with you.

[0] https://www.gechic.com/en-portable-monitor-onlap1101f-overview.html
[1] https://i3wm.org

 

[TrashyMG]

Can you please explain to me: Why is that a bad question?
If that is not interesting for you, you are not very interested in the whole project.

Well it comes off as pretty rude.

As most of us follow this project closely, we already know the kind of work EvilDragon puts into everything from the Pyra project, the DragonBox shop and his real day job he has. Most of us trust he's doing everything he can in as much of a timely manner as he can deal with with all that going on.

 

[directive0]

People seem to be pretty protective of ED. I can understand that, they feel he's stretched pretty thin from all the work he puts in.

That being said I think ED can take care of himself and seems to handle angry comments and annoying questions pretty well. I'm actually pretty impressed. Most projects I've seen like the Pyra where there's one central project manager always seem to suffer from that persons personality quirks. A bad ego can totally turn a project sour, but ED seems very level and patient. Patience of a saint if you ask me. Some of the folks on this forum are friggen' RAVENOUS.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Because he already said in the newspost that he would let us know when there's more news.

We can't be asking him for constant updates, we need to give him time to work.

 

[bzar]

"Are we there yet?"

 

[levi]

To be fair to m@t, the OP is over a week old now, and the OP did make it sound like a few things were quite close to being ordered for the first 1000. Far be it for me to impose, but a new news post would be nice.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I'm sorry, I just like to let people work at their own pace. News will come when it comes, and I trust ED to keep the Pyra on track. I certainly don't want to rush him.

 

[bzar]

I'm sorry, I just like to let people work at their own pace. News will come when it comes, and I trust ED to keep the Pyra on track. I certainly don't want to rush him.

Exactly this. As is said in the first post in this thread:

So yeah... basically, I'm one guy with WAY too much work to handle alone, but until the Pyra is out and being delivered to everyone, I can't afford to hire some more help...
So please don't be disappointed if not everything happens right away - I'm doing the best I can.

News will come when they're available and ED has time to share them here.

 

[Grench]

News will come when they're available and ED has time to share them here.

Yes, this.

We do know quite a bit already. Hopefully we'll hear something soon after status changes on any of it. Maybe what is lacking is an idea of how long it should take for new news to develop.

A batch of new SoC boards has been ordered with power distribution optimized to as good as it gets. Those highly intricate multi-layer boards take weeks to produce. Those would be on a 6 weeks cycle for update on them existing. Once they exist, a pre-production test run should be done - which could take a few weeks to get scheduled. Those will then need to be X-rayed, gone over in detail and tested (2-3 weeks) prior to executing the main batch (2-3 weeks to get scheduled). So, probably 6 weeks for the next relevant event for SoC board news. Likely 10-12 weeks before a production SoC board batch based on the new design could exist.

There are a pile of batteries waiting for units to place them in. Nothing new to report there.
There are a pile of screens waiting for units to place them in. Nothing new to report there.

The plastics are near finalized. There are apparently enough of these in 'good enough' form to produce 1-5 units for developers.

The keymat is nearly final, but has some issues that may stem from the black-out paint on the sides of the keys. An unpainted version of the keymat has been requested. The turnaround on this is probably 2-3 weeks.

System main boards and LCD backlight boards have checked out and should be production ready. Current samples need to be tested with the revised SoC boards prior to mass producing these. Their turnaround time is MUCH shorter though. They can likely be produced in the time it takes to mass populate the SoC boards.

So, there likely isn't anything to 'report' on for a while.

Still, I would love to see some pictures or video of that most recently assembled prototype 'in action' doing something other than loading a message sideways.