Pandora Owners: Any Other Hardware Issues?

[Shaun]

@aTc: Ouch.

 

[craigix]

These problems are with the case manufacturer, but luckily the shoulder issue only crops up in about 1 in 100 units. We check for it now.

Screw issue again is that some of the screws are very slightly longer than the rest.

Again we check for it now.

 

[Mithrildor]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

 

[bce23w]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

Well, you're the expert. After all, Craig's just some jerk on the internet who hasn't been intimately involved in every state of the process, including physical assembly, so what would he know? :rolleyes:

 

[Monk]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

Well, you're the expert. After all, Craig's just some jerk on the internet who hasn't been intimately involved in every state of the process, including physical assembly, so what would he know? :rolleyes:

Well, in fairness, haven't both Craig and ED reported that they are drilling out those holes because they are too small, what with the paint layer and all?

Of course, if the cases were produced perfectly at the factory then they wouldn't NEED to be drilled, so it can probably be argued in any direction one fancies.

 

[mvickers03]

Setting it at 600 is definitely fine

The CPU frequency changer provided with the Pandora doesn't change the voltage so there is little harm that can be done.

Wow, I didn't know that. mine OC's perfect till roughly 880. So I could get more with a CPU OV too! I may be tempted when I see future versions of Mupen64

BTW my shoulder buttons are spot on, OP will probably send some new ones out if you ask nice enough, Craig said there are spares if needed and it looks pretty easy to get the back panel off

 

[Dead1nside]

Can't fault Craig's response here. They're really tightening up the processes involved in assembly.

 

[Sphinxter]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

Well, you're the expert. After all, Craig's just some jerk on the internet who hasn't been intimately involved in every state of the process, including physical assembly, so what would he know? :rolleyes:

Hard to understand the point you're trying to make when you have your tongue slid down the back of his trousers like that.

 

[Mithrildor]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

Well, you're the expert. After all, Craig's just some jerk on the internet who hasn't been intimately involved in every state of the process, including physical assembly, so what would he know? :rolleyes:

You can clearly see its the drilling on this pic:

http://wreck.k-n-p.org/pnd/pnd-13.jpeg

 

[CPS]

My right shoulder button 'pops out' when I press on it and it looks uneven compared to the left one, but after the initial pop out, it works alright. I can push up against it to return it to it's place, but it 'pops out' again. Is there anything I can do to fix this?

That was one of the first units then, we had to deal with those L/R buttons and not all did work out perfectly.
The best option is to replace the R-Button, if it's so annoying.

Edit: Also, sometimes I have crackling sound regardless of low/high quality headphones at higher volumes. Not sure if this is hardware related, but I can 'fix' it for mp3's by switching the output from als to mod or w/e. Once I switch that though, other songs have the crackling...

If that fixes it, it's no hardware but a software problem. Alsa could still need a bit more of optimization.
I tried to make a setting so that the buffer is not too high (otherwise games have a bit of delay) and sound quality is good.
It worked for me - but maybe it depends on the Bitrate of the MP3, too, as the crackling usually appears when the CPU is in heavy use.

I also have crackling sound. This happens at any volume setting on most of my MP3's and also when using other Pandora software (SNES emulator/Quake 2). At first I thought it was a loose connection to the speaker but it's the same through headphones. How do you edit the sound buffer or can it be fixed some other way?

Another minor issue regarding hardware. My WIFI LED is never on? It did come on once... very strange.

 

[EvilDragon]

I also have crackling sound. This happens at any volume setting on most of my MP3's and also when using other Pandora software (SNES emulator/Quake 2). At first I thought it was a loose connection to the speaker but it's the same through headphones. How do you edit the sound buffer or can it be fixed some other way?

There's a file in your home-directory (hidden) called .asoundrc
You can edit the Alsa settings in there.

Another minor issue regarding hardware. My WIFI LED is never on? It did come on once... very strange.

That's software - the devs are still working on implementing that properly
It rarely works.

 

[hobbyman II]

the crackling means your internal volume setting is too high, you can turn the volume all the way up to 11 in Linux h34r: , but the electronics usually protest in this way, change it to about 80% of max, should stop the crackling (this is the internal bus sound out setting, not your speaker setting, tho that might work too), according to EDs post there is no wizard for that yet (also, if you can't record from line in, this file will prolly be the culprit), so you need to edit the settings file.

as for WiFi led, that's a driver/config setting, on my Aspire I had to add two commands to startup assigning values to LED "pins", works now, might need more patching on Pandora before it works.

 

[absolofdoom]

How would one go about upping the voltage? Voiding the warranty, I suppose, but I might do it anyway.

It needs to be turned on in the kernel. Rebuild the kernel and libs from source with the right options turned on. Don't ask me which those are, I forget exactly.

Oh, okay, that's a lot simpler than I was expecting actually. I thought I remembered someone saying that it would require some sort of hardware shenanigans to overvolt.
Thanks for the answer.

 

[juniorm33]

How would one go about upping the voltage? Voiding the warranty, I suppose, but I might do it anyway.

It needs to be turned on in the kernel. Rebuild the kernel and libs from source with the right options turned on. Don't ask me which those are, I forget exactly.

Oh, okay, that's a lot simpler than I was expecting actually. I thought I remembered someone saying that it would require some sort of hardware shenanigans to overvolt.
Thanks for the answer.

A custom firmware will become available either officially or unofficially that will allow it to run in OPP5 mode rather than OPP3, this isn't overvolting in terms of TI spec, but maybe for OPT.
Should give a very nice overclock boost

 

[DaveC]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

They shouldn't be painting the holes at the China factory. The case was never designed to be painted. Since they did decide to paint it things will show up. Paint adds another thickness which will throw things off.

They should be masking those holes off at the Chinese factory. That whole internal "knuckle" could be masked off.

 

[Drak]

That was one of the first units then, we had to deal with those L/R buttons and not all did work out perfectly.
The best option is to replace the R-Button, if it's so annoying.

If that fixes it, it's no hardware but a software problem. Alsa could still need a bit more of optimization.
I tried to make a setting so that the buffer is not too high (otherwise games have a bit of delay) and sound quality is good.
It worked for me - but maybe it depends on the Bitrate of the MP3, too, as the crackling usually appears when the CPU is in heavy use.

Looks like I'll wait to buy a new R-button, I don't think I really need it now anyway

The sound is kind of weird, most of my music is 320kbps mp3 and it only happens to a few of the songs... Good to know it's software.

 

[EvilDragon]

the crackling means your internal volume setting is too high, you can turn the volume all the way up to 11 in Linux h34r: , but the electronics usually protest in this way, change it to about 80% of max, should stop the crackling (this is the internal bus sound out setting, not your speaker setting, tho that might work too), according to EDs post there is no wizard for that yet

Oh, yeah, right, might be an internal overdrive. Then you simply need to open the Volume Mixer in XFCE4 and turn it down

 

[Monk]

They shouldn't be painting the holes at the China factory. The case was never designed to be painted. Since they did decide to paint it things will show up. Paint adds another thickness which will throw things off.

This was one of the issues which concerned customers last year (IIRC) when painting was presented as a way to imrpove the look of the case. IIRC we were assurred that the painting would be done in such a way as to not cause tolerance problems - it would appear that the factory needs to be informed of areas where they need to be more careful (or did someone say that they might simply not paint the shoulder buttons in future? Will that result in them looking slightly out-of-place/not the same style as the main case?).

Masking sounds like a better idea, personally.

 

[conso]

No Craig, the L and R are a problem as of the result of the bad drilling

They shouldn't be painting the holes at the China factory. The case was never designed to be painted. Since they did decide to paint it things will show up. Paint adds another thickness which will throw things off.

They should be masking those holes off at the Chinese factory. That whole internal "knuckle" could be masked off.

Yeah, I disassembled and sprayed my nephews bike last year, together with him. He now knows to mask off every hole before spraying and he's seven. SEVEN!
Shall I say it again? SEVEN.
Good idea to further integrate those guys into the assembly process. I'm sure that will save a lot of time.

 

[htl2001]

the crackling means your internal volume setting is too high, you can turn the volume all the way up to 11 in Linux h34r: , but the electronics usually protest in this way, change it to about 80% of max, should stop the crackling (this is the internal bus sound out setting, not your speaker setting, tho that might work too), according to EDs post there is no wizard for that yet

Oh, yeah, right, might be an internal overdrive. Then you simply need to open the Volume Mixer in XFCE4 and turn it down

Specifically, the thing you will want to turn down to about 80% or 75% should be called "PCM"
I have this problem on my laptop, and if its up to high even at low "Master" volume things are crackly