Our New Machine, Pandora

[atomicthumbs]

I've not been on these boards for a while now and so I'm excited to see craiginator dev going full steam and causing two fat threads of excited speculation and suggestion with a possible release early next year! I've seen the wiki ( http://craiginator.bluwiki.com/ ) and I really like the sound of the design as it stands but the wiki doesn't answer two important questions I have

1 - What will be the CPU clock rate?

2 - (This is the REALLY important question, the make-or-break for me) The craiginator is set to feature a keyboard - great! - but is it going to be a clamshell design ala the Zaurus cxxxx / HTC Uni (which is the PERFECT style of design for a device like this) or is it going to yet another annoying slide-out UMPC waste of time? Everything I have heard about the c'nator sounds like a dream so far, but let me assure you that and I most of the other OESF members / Zaurus owners would be incredibly disappointed if you didn't adopt the massively neglected clamshell design, whose advantages include:

* Protects your screen

* Protects your keyboard

* Gives the keyboard and screen max surface area, no squashed up, half-assed keyboards (the Psion 5 keyboard is generally regarded as being the best PDA keyboard ever)

* Allows flexibility is screen positioning

* Makes it much more usable as a PDA / micro laptop

So basically, if you take the design of the Sharp Zaurus cxxxx but maybe increase the keyboard area to allow for a dpad + fire buttons, change the keyboard to one just near-as-damnit like the Psion 5s (maybe a different shape but same key type) whilst making sure it is easy to hold and you are onto a world dominating winner! There have been a whole host of PDA's released since the Zaurus c3000 in 2004, some featuring more powerful hardware but none have yet managed to cause any mass defection/ conversion of OESF members because of one or two recurrent reasons

a] They didn't have the clamshell design

b] didn't run Linux

Heed these words o' hardware devs!

(Sorry if these questions have already been covered but I don't have time to read the hundreds of pages in these c'nator threads)



We don't know the answer yet. As soon as I find out any information about it, I always add it to the Wiki. It's always updated, so you don't have to wade through threads. I plan to set up an RSS feed somehow soon.

 

[Squidge]

Are you asking for the clock rate the machine will be running at as default, the maximum official clock rate, or a guess at what the overclocked rate will be?

The last two are already available on the web. The first is as of yet undecided.

 

[kfuse]

Just goes back to people need to have some patience and wait.

 

[Squidge]

Whilst the clock speed may not be actually specified in plain text on a website (although I've not actually looked for myself) there is certain open source code on the web that configures the clock generator and allows you to therefore calculate the default clock...

 

[sam fisher]

The good news is you're probably going to see the design in the next 7 days.

Cool

 

[g8rpal]

My 2 cents:
CraigX - I am from USA and I would also be willing pay $500 for the product as described - so don't shortcut anything or use less than optimal parts to try to keep to a particular price point IN MY OPINION.

Yes, the US economy is not doing so well, but I would give up going to the movies and eating fast food for six months to get one if I had to. And for the record, Bush did not win by a landslide so understand that many of us did not vote for him and do not agree with him so making broad generalizations about Americans is not fair. Hopefully, the US economy will pick back up but until then everybody wants to kick you when you are down.

 

[Morwynd]

is it going to be a clamshell design

I'm a big fan of the clamshell design (Man do I ever miss my old Sharp Wizard OZ 770, why can't I get something with the same design and features today for the same or lower ~$100 price?).

That being said, I feel that many people would prefer to use the device for gaming in "tablet" mode (like a PSP) without the keyboard hanging down.

Because of that, I've often thought the pinnacle of handheld design is a swivel-clamshell, where the keyboard can pivot and fold up behind the screen. Kind've like a Sony Clie UX50, but obviously wider and with gaming controls to the sides of the screen. This also allows for the keyboard to take up the entire width of the device, without sacrificing space for gaming controls.

Of course, I imagine a pivoting hinge would add greatly to the complexity of the design, and likely isn't a reasonable expectation for this project.

 

[Ravnos]

I'd quite welcome a mini-GP2X next year, they could make it for around $80, it would be nicer than the JXD and have some very mature software ready to roll.

A mini2x would be awesome. It would replace my GB Micro as the device I take everywhere in case of a boredom emergency.

 

[OMars]

I guess you can't satisfy everybody...or make sentences that are clear enough for everyone to read, for that matter.

 

[StealthBagel]

Too bad GPH seems to only barely grasp that anyone plays games on their machines, even with their name being 'game park' holdings.... and they seem to be entirely detached from reality. So F800 or whatever will probably be a ridiculous mishmash of useless or incompatible features for a handheld, tiny screen for price reasons, with the case still big and with a hefty pricetag..... I mean ask yourself is $175ish still a reasonable price for so comparatively outdated a handheld as the gp2x (200 MHz main CPU, barely-useful coprocessor, no real GPU) when something with a top notch CPU, GPU, twice as much RAM and a superior display, also WiFi chipset, is only going to cost about $320....?

 

[DaveC]

Omars-- these are looking nicer but like in say, Windows Explorer I'd strongly prefer to be able to see a real details view .... vertical text listing, tiny icons (if any at all), size, type perhaps date created/etc. Big icons are just a lot of clutter for me so I'd prefer to be able to turn them off. Maybe some people w/ less stuff on their SD cards will be OK with an icon view but that should be an option, not mandatory, for people like me who pack their cards to the brim.... and with say, an 8gb card I'd be using the device as a game, music and PDA machine so there would be a freaking LOT OF DATA on there so try and see so little of it at any given time....

That is not really true about icons taking up more space. Take Gmenu for example, I have a matrix of 6 x 4 which gives me 24 icons on screen at once on a 320 x 240 screen. If you had a list only, you would probably only get 16-20 items. Then there is the fact that if you use the pad to select (it is easier sometimes than pulling out the stylus just to select a game) You need to go one-by one on a list which is much slower than navigating a matrix where you have X and Y . The trick is that the icons not be so huge. If you have the number of rows and columns configurable you can get as much if not more on screen and it is faster to select. Then you have the fact that icons are prettier than a boring list. But it should be selectable. I think a simple and fast launcher should be default like any PDA. If you want complex CPU and memory intensive windowed desktop environments, those could be added and set to autorun for those that want that.

 

[Vince2501]

On a scale of 1-10: How likely is PSP emulation?

 

[kfuse]

IMO: 0

Thats being completely realistic.

 

[imec]

I will begin work on the PSP emulator once I'm done with the Gamecube emulator. I'm almost done (from the future) but the Wind Waker doesn't seem to be working properly. Hmmm....

 

[Lazy8s]

Thanks in part to Intel's 45 nm manufacturing process, Menlow does deliver x86, for the first time, in hardware that suits the price, battery, size, and release date constraints of a device like this.

Also, it packs an SGX535 GPU, which should yield around 50% higher graphics performance.

 

[atomicthumbs]

On a scale of 1-10: How likely is PSP emulation?

Z out of orange.

 

[Vince2501]

I will begin work on the PSP emulator once I'm done with the Gamecube emulator. I'm almost done (from the future) but the Wind Waker doesn't seem to be working properly. Hmmm....

I don't like the sarcasm. Yet you guy's wonder why there's so few new people on these boards even when they're insulted by elitist nerds.

 

[icurafu]

The PSP is comparable in performance to the OMAP3430. It will not be a target for emulation.

The following is a list of things that will not be emulated to a playable speed. PS2, DC, GC, XBOX, XBOX360, PS3, Wii and PSP. Out of these, DC is the closest, but I'll choke-on-hat if someone can pull that one off.

The DS on the other hand is a possibility.

 

[earx]

psp will certainly not be a target for emulation (see also the bluwiki page). i think the omap3430 will be better than psp, actually (but not by a factor 10, which is required for emulation).

offtopic:
even though psp has quite advanced stuff like hardware acceleration for skeletons and such. sony placed the scratch pad on the wrong side of the bus. and a mips@300 isn't really anything spectacular for emulation purposes.

 

[atomicthumbs]

I will begin work on the PSP emulator once I'm done with the Gamecube emulator. I'm almost done (from the future) but the Wind Waker doesn't seem to be working properly. Hmmm....

I don't like the sarcasm. Yet you guy's wonder why there's so few new people on these boards even when they're insulted by elitist nerds.


Maybe we don't like being insulted by elistist non-nerds. :rolleyes: