Pandora Review by Gamester81


Well, I just setup a card for press reviews, with everything properly working.


I could send you one as well to safe time.
 
What mame emulator are you using? There are several options.


MAME4All is very fast but uses an older romset.


PanMAME is more recent, has nice scalers but is based on a newer mame version so it is a bit slower.


If you have the old mame 0.11x port it will be very slow as the mameguys revised the renderingcode since 0.107 to be more accurate but a lot slower.


MAME4All needs a romset for mame 0.37b or something, can't remember right now.


PanMAME uses a 0.106 romset.


You can also use fba which supports recent mame romsets and supports newer systems like cps3 but doesn't play some older systems.
 
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keep in mind that gamester 81's technical skills are limited
 
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Well, you need to know a bit about romfiles if you want to use certain emulators.


There is no way around it without providing the romfiles yourself what would be illegal.
 
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Thanks for all of your feedback guys.  I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much a tech guy, but more of a gamer at heart.  I'm not sure why when I formatted my SD card it took so much space. I tried following the instructions I got here in the forums and I even tried it several times with the same results.  I haven't posted this review to YouTube yet, but I will make some annotations based on your feedback to make it a little bit more clear to the viewers. Thanks for watching. 
I format on PC using the standard right click and format menu (default settings)

Then for how to set your card up watch EDs excellent video here:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZApSODcxouk?feature=oembed
 
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Or you just use the "Create Pandora SD Card" utility to create the directories for you.

XFCE Startmenu -> System-> Create Pandora SD Card

 
 
Well I appreciate all of your guys' advice. To be honest I haven't been home the last couple of weeks, but when I have a chance I'm going to redownload some emulators and see if that fixes the problems. I'm still very confused on how to get any Lynx or Jag emulator to work on it.  My MAME emulator I could only get a few games to work and they were extremely laggy and the sound kept repeating itself.  Any suggestion is greatly appreciated. 
Be sure to get them from the right place, i.e. http://repo.openpandora.org , nothing else. Also, I think that the Jaguar emu is a bit of a lost cause or something (correct me if I'm wrong, people) - It is if I remember correctly more or less at a "proof of concept"-state, much like Saturn and Dreamcast. 

MAME is difficult. The dizzying combinations of different romsets, different mame versions and whatnots makes my head hurt.
 
Feck me, just listened to the latest podcast.

Words fail me.
 
http://www.allgengamers.com/

Basically Pandora is too hard to use & too expensive.

AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

People are so bloody lazy, they want everything handed to them on a plate.

RTFF (Read The Flipping Forums)

I'm mad as hell, there is NOTHING out there to compare to the Pandora and yet people still don't get it.

Don't all devices require some setting up to use emulators and roms?  Be that PC or handheld.

Oh well that's me un-subscribed from this podcast and youtube feed.
 
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Saw a good review (one of the most honest I've seen to date) by some tweeter28 or something like that.

Its not a favorable review, but he hits all my personal +'s and -'s almost to a t. I feel all his points are extremely true, only problem with it was the overall negativity and disappointment with the device and the Pandora experience.

When I get home I'll see if I can't link the YouTube for it.
 
Saw a good review (one of the most honest I've seen to date) by some tweeter28 or something like that. Its not a favorable review, but he hits all my personal +'s and -'s almost to a t. I feel all his points are extremely true, only problem with it was the overall negativity and disappointment with the device and the Pandora experience. When I get home I'll see if I can't link the YouTube for it.
Do you mean this one, if so I think it's posted somewhere on the forum already:

http://tweetermanreviews.com/2012/11/pandora-handheld-console-review/
 
My first negative impression was that the emulators used different button conventions for operation - but then I remembered that all my emulators on the PC also use different keys.


It would probably help if PNDManager were installed by default.
 
Saw a good review (one of the most honest I've seen to date) by some tweeter28 or something like that. Its not a favorable review, but he hits all my personal +'s and -'s almost to a t. I feel all his points are extremely true, only problem with it was the overall negativity and disappointment with the device and the Pandora experience. When I get home I'll see if I can't link the YouTube for it.
Are you kidding ? That was the worst review I have ever seen - that guy did not even try to have an open approach, he was basically just whining about the fact that the Pandora was no Google Nexus 7" Tablet
 
take away the negative attitude he had, and that he was sad it wasn't a nexus 7... which I snarked at myself

just stick to the things he said about the pandora specifically and the project. I find them to be dead on point with my inital experience.

Frustration with getting emulators to work, sliding battery, broken left shoulder button, boot times, inconsistencies with the software.

difference between me and him is I didn't give up on this after a couple days of use, I have since learned to work around those quirks to get it to do what I want. Not harder to use than say jailbreaking a psp and learning that whole scene, but intuitive and user friendly it is not.

EDIT: 

original thread seems to have been taken over by nonsense and by mods none the less (guessing they did not approve)

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/10717-pandora-review-on-tweetermanreviews/
 
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Isn't there an image you can download with all the latest emulators already configed and working?
 
It is not about the emulators but finding and using the right roms is already something people seem to be too lazy to even attempt.


If it doesn't work on first try, it's shit...
 
take away the negative attitude he had, and that he was sad it wasn't a nexus 7...
And there is nothing left of his review. Every complaint about usability he had was in direct comparison to other devices. He didn't make any attempt to recognize that it wasn't a Nintendo, Sony, or Samsung device with their budget and decades of experience, but still held it to their standards. He made no effort to understand why someone might want it over a keyboardless tablet, for example, he simply did a blanket "not good for anyone". When I pointed out in the comments that he wasn't being fair to expect the first device a tiny company produces to be flawless, that it has many good points which are not reproduced in any other device and is perfect for someone who is looking for those exact features, I got banned.A good review is balanced, tries to figure out the the target audience, steers the non-target away while encouraging those that might find it useful to look into it. So no, tweeterman did not give a good review, he gave a good rant.
 
I probably shouldn't have said "good review" I should have said "accurate to my initial impressions" review rather ;) It's not a fair review sure... esp when you consider where the pandora is comming from... I'll definitely give you that.

I'm more than willing to accept all the points you made, and as a hacker/enthusiast device, this is rock solid, on point, no competition, hands down, best your money can buy. Extremely well rounded for it's multitude of purposes.

however, and it's a big however... from the point of view he is making. Paying what amounts to being a premium dollar amount for what should be (at that price) a finalized polished end user focused device ... as a "homebrew/emulator game console".. it leaves a tad bit to be desired in terms of out of box/hit the ground running for a casual gamer. 

I'm not going to lie, I initially got the pandora for one single purpose... SNES emulation.... I'm a purist in that respect and want the absolute best & accurate to original performance experience as possible. I was hard pressed at the time of purchase to find anything better or even in the same realm (dingoo a320 just got released) and still to this day, nothing that I know of does specifically SNES emulation as perfectly as the pandora. Some are acceptable quality, (audio&input lag/controller wonkyness) but none are at the same level or better than the pandora. The GCW does have me a excited though... it might be the best user friendly performing handheld yet. I'll hold my excitement till I see it first hand.

I regress though... I remember having this next point in discussion multiple times here. For these "common folk" (ie lazy gamers) an android firmware on pandora would probably suit their needs better than angstrom (and I don't mean running android inside of angstrom that is available). I honestly feel this tweeterman would agree as well, he even says so "I don't remember having these problems with android" It really is easier to just jump into and go, and less convoluted when it comes to setting up emulators and downloading games and "just playing" I know even the mention of an android only flashable firmware is like nails on a chalkboard to some. But it would go a long way to shut half these people up. "here, just use this, and go away" It's more limited in it's capabilities, but it's more suited for polish and user friendliness IMHO. I can honestly say I have seen less amount of "how do I get this damn thing to work" type of posts on the android gaming system forums than I do on this one. And the questions I get are just usually stuff that the manufacturer screwed up on. (bundled software/partition naming etc) not the question of "where do my roms go" & "I can't find a romset that works" "my emulator won't load/crashes etc" those are some points this guy made. I've seen those specific topics more than once on here.
 
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