Official Blog- Hellolo Hotfix!

[Qwertyuiop]

Hellolo Hotfix!


Hi!

As said, I will write a couple more lines today.
I got some more Pandora infos for you. Software only, as I didn't follow anything else out here.

I think I never told you what will be included in Hotfix 4... here is a small preview. You will get the beta for testing in the following week.

Just yesterday I was working on the pnd_run-Script. sebt3 cleaned it up a bit and added a first support for the clockspeed settings of PND files. I enhanced the clockspeed stuff.
Now, if you run a PND which has a recommended speed setting, the system will first check if your current clock speed is higher or lower than the recommended one. If it's higher or equal, it will simply run the game. If it's lower, it will ask you if you want to change the clockspeed to a recommended one, to a custom one or if it should stay the way it is.
After you finish the game, the clockspeed is set back to the value it was before.

Now, here is a brief list of Hotfix 4:

* Kernel: Added Bluetooth patch by urjaman. PAN (bluetooth internet connections) work fine now.
* Nub Mousebuttons: Moving down is now middle mousebuttons. Recognition of mouseclicks with the nub has been enhanced (patch by urjaman)
* Pandora-Scripts: The internal scripts (CPU-Speed, Startup-Manager, etc.) have icons now.
* Lid: Opening / Closing will not affect the powersave mode anymore.
* Powersave mode: Won't clock down the CPU... didn't really save much power.
* pnd_run: Cleaned up, added support for clockspeed setting
* libpnd: Finally support spaces in pathnames and PND-Names.
* Updated to a more recent XFCE4-Version

This is what's already done. The following is what we're planning to do (not sure if it will make it into Hotfix 4):

* Include configuration editor in MiniMenu (by skeezix)
* Add LCD off to Lid and Powersave-script (need to check if that's safe first). This would increase the powersave time from 18 hours to 30 hours!
* Enhance CPU-Speed selector (include quick speed presets)
* Allow setting custom CPU speed on startup. If the system crashes, the system will set the clockspeed back to normal on next boot.
* Include a first version of the TV-Out-Enable-Script
* Update some more programs to more recent versions

Turned out to be quite a big list

Ah, and I just read the comments on pandorapress.net... while I'm not visiting the boards for a few days (as most people suggested), I follow the newssites.

I did NOT want to attack anyone with the "so what"... I guess this is another one of those examples where the english words don't fit. I really meant it in a relaxing way, nothing else.
Sorry for that.
While my English is good, there will always be some phrases which won't fit properly. If you stumble across them - please simply ignore them. Thanks

Oh, and I took another picture for you today. I found some nice chocolate!

http://openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=191%3Ahellolo-hotfix&catid=2%3Ablog&Itemid=2&lang=en

ED gives some nice details on the upcoming hotfix.

 

[Prometheus]

Great to hear some more about Hotfix 4.

Not so great to hear that some folks out there have a difficult time remembering that not everyone is a native English-speaker, and seemingly end up substituting their own meanings for others' words.

Also, ED has good taste - those Hello Panda biscuits are fab. (Many oriental supermarkets carry them, here.)

 

[Ratfink]

*wonders what the point of this thread is*

 

[Prometheus]

*wonders what the point of this thread is*

To let folks know that the official blog has been updated, I'm assuming.

 

[Qwertyuiop]

*wonders what the point of this thread is*

To let folks know that the official blog has been updated, I'm assuming.

^This. Not everyone uses the Stalker/Pandora Log/Toolbar, so I made the thread to inform people about the latest blog post.

 

[Mjlink]

*wonders what the point of this thread is*

Makes perfect sense to me. Look forward to HotFix 4, ED, enjoy your holiday!
Pandoras are in the wild, so these posts have value to those looking to have a better operating system.

Peace & Pandora,

Link

 

[urjaman]

I shouldnt mention standby hours _I_ get when I post stuff, it seems. Only turning LCD off will increase standby time to about 22 hours, not 30. Here's to hoping they'll turn on Tickless system in the kernel too (And that it wont cause problems, just because it works for me it might not work for all...)...

 

[banjeed]

ED = sole reason I'm sticking with the wait.

 

[SomeGuy99]

I feel the love here right now. I fucking well do.

 

[DaMummy]

ED = sole reason I'm sticking with the wait.

are you going to make love to him with your mouth as well...?

 

[Karel Jansens]

I don't understand how the Pandora can only manage 22-30 hours on standby. My antediluvian Nokia N800 manages, even with an almost 2 years old battery, 10 days standby on a full charge!

Taken into account the Pandora's massive juice box and its more efficient CPU, the Panda should manage at least a full month on standby. What gives here?

 

[WizardStan]

I don't understand how the Pandora can only manage 22-30 hours on standby. My antediluvian Nokia N800 manages, even with an almost 2 years old battery, 10 days standby on a full charge!

Taken into account the Pandora's massive juice box and its more efficient CPU, the Panda should manage at least a full month on standby. What gives here?

Probably because, when the N800 goes into standby, it actually goes into standby. The system effectively shuts down.
The Pandora doesn't have a real standby yet, just really low power mode. The screen and wifi shut off, but the CPU is still active, the whole thing is basically still on and running.

 

[mali]

^ The N800 doesn't shut down, it just has got a fully implemented standby mode(standby as in still active, not suspend to RAM or the like).

 

[Karel Jansens]

I don't understand how the Pandora can only manage 22-30 hours on standby. My antediluvian Nokia N800 manages, even with an almost 2 years old battery, 10 days standby on a full charge!

Taken into account the Pandora's massive juice box and its more efficient CPU, the Panda should manage at least a full month on standby. What gives here?

Probably because, when the N800 goes into standby, it actually goes into standby. The system effectively shuts down.
The Pandora doesn't have a real standby yet, just really low power mode. The screen and wifi shut off, but the CPU is still active, the whole thing is basically still on and running.

No it doesn't. The N800's softpoweroff mode is well documented. In theory it does the same thing as what you described for the Pandora (albeit that it throttles back the CPU's clock speed to basically zero, something I seem to miss in the announcements of the Panda's standby mode), but running programs remain active and nothing is copied to RAM or flash.

Something seems to be seriously flawed in the Panda's standby state. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a look at the Advanced Power Monitor daemon a developer contributed to Maemo. More information should be here:

APM

I know it's written for Maemo and not for general Linux, but the daemon should be easily portable at least and the rest is just a Python frontend (and, incidentally, an apparently leaky one at that). It might give the team ideas on what's going wrong.

 

[WizardStan]

No it doesn't. The N800's softpoweroff mode is well documented. In theory it does the same thing as what you described for the Pandora (albeit that it throttles back the CPU's clock speed to basically zero, something I seem to miss in the announcements of the Panda's standby mode), but running programs remain active and nothing is copied to RAM or flash.

Yeah, I was just guessing at the reason for it being so efficient.
The Pandora currently throttles down to 14 mhz, the slowest it can go, but it was found not to save any power in doing so, and actually causes even more problems. Hotfix 4 is removing that throttling. What it needs to do is not only throttle it down, but actually reduce the voltage level. Some demos of this have been done by some members in the hacking sub forums, but even that only brought the power consumption down to give about 30-40 hours of run time.
I've got no idea how the N800 is able to keep its CPU powered at all and still use so very little power when the Pandora (a seemingly more efficient CPU) can't do the same.

 

[mali]

^ I suppose that most of the savings come from suspending other parts of the system and not necessarily the processor.

edit:
Some infos about N8x0 power management
http://www.slideshare.net/igor_stoppa_nokia/power-management-for-the-nokia-internet-tablets

 

[mali]

Just finished the biggest step for the upcoming hotfix: Switching to IPKs instead of manual hacking. Great

 

[tsh]

I've got no idea how the N800 is able to keep its CPU powered at all and still use so very little power when the Pandora (a seemingly more efficient CPU) can't do the same.

It comes down to lots of little things, probably. The nubs take power, that can be turned off in standby. the N800 probably doesn't need to worry about this. Do you know that the N800 keeps the cpu powered all the time, or does it have the baseband wake up the CPU at periodic intervals? Clearly, if my 1Gz snapdragon phone can manage >20 hours (at least with the screen off), the pandora hardware should manage several times that when it is also doing very little. Did you want fully optimised software, or released product?

 

[WizardStan]

Did you want fully optimised software, or released product?

Honestly, the Pandora is already better than what I was hoping for. Seriously, too many fixes have happened. I was expecting the Pandora to still need all kinds of fixes and I was all "YEAH! Hacking around to actually makes stuff work gives me a serious sense of accomplishment!" at least for a little while. Eventually I expected it to be much more finished, but I expected to be part of the process of fixing it. But so much has happened in the two months since I haven't gotten my Pandora, all that's really left is wifi and power management: they've got an expert on the wifi thing (which I hope turns out better than the last one) and I was never very good with power management stuff. No more haxxoring left for me

 

[sebt3]

No more haxxoring left for me

Don't worry, there is still so many things to do