Pandora takes well over 5 minutes to boot up and other problems

[Miner49er]

Two issues:


1. Does anyone know why (or how to find out) why my unit takes well over 5 minutes to boot up?


It started happening after I re-flashed with Hotfix7 alpha. It all went well but boot took longer than I expected. I read that after a re-flash it could take longer to boot up but after checking recently, I find it does it every time. Very annoying.


and:


2. I have also recently discovered that even with the supplied mini-usb-wifi-stick (built in wifi was beyond useless) - the speed of transfer of files is inordinately slow. For example an 80Meg file takes about a minute from my server to my netbook but with the Pandora, it took well over 5 minutes before I gave up on it.


So, basically my Pandora is not usuable for wifi activity (one of the main reasons I wanted it...which is nice). I wanted to try and get MythTV working on it but as I can't stream (even low quality) videos from my server, I'm doomed.


So, any ideas? Or is the hardware knackered?

 

[birdswithskirts]

maybe the nand is maxed.


my answer for 1.

 

[Miner49er]

"maybe the nand is maxed."


By that you mean, it's screwed? I must admit I haven't done a fschk on it - I thought I would ask here first.


EDIT: Hang on, do you perhaps mean that it is full - i.e. no space left? I have to say, I hadn't even considered that. Will check tonight

 

[StreaK]

There are major flaws in wifi as far as im concern: pandora will not work properly on every wifi router.


for example: with some linksys routers works excellent


for example: with routers like: ZTE ZXV10 or LiveBox routers [very popular in Poland] wifi signal is dropped on Pandora when other computer uses extensively internet connection [which is strange since it's only occurs on OP].


I would love to see a little test from other users:


01. Connect OP to wifi router.. download some file.. keep wifi connection


02. Connect Laptop / PC to the wifi router.. start downloading a big file [for example from Youtube]


03. Wait 3 minutes and try to surf on Your open Pandora using wifi connection [while your pc is downloading a file]..


The connection will be dropped, bt OP indicates that wifi connection is still ON but it will not connect anywhere [tried all: ping / traceroute / webborwser / ftp /wget..]

 

[Miner49er]

@Streak : I too have found this problem. I can connect to my mums router (cannot remember what make/model) and surf in a reasonably useable way but downloading files just fails after a short while. Essentially useless. Back home, my 'router' is actually an always-on PC running Debian and using an Atheros based wifi-card set to master-mode. I have not had a single problem with ANY other device in the 8 years it's been running (several phones, iPad, several different netbooks, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo WII, Amazon kindle and more!). However, the pandora connects and get's a measly 1mb/s, sometimes shows perhaps the Google logo then nothing after that. COMPLETELY useless! I complained about this and gratefully recieved a USB wifi stick. This connects and works much better but it's still too slow to stream video (Even though it claims it's connected at 50mb/s)


This really saddens me. My 'router' is also a server with my entire game collection on, so would be a great way of 'testing-out' games/roms before sticking them on an SD-Card for portable use (not to mention my goal of running MythTV...)

 

[StreaK]

It would be nice if ED could explain a little bit, what could cause it, because my wifi connection in OP isnt really usable. Maybe theres a problem in OP software?

 

[EvilDragon]

Did you wait until the first boot was completed?


Directly after flashing, the system autoconfigures itself during the first boot. This can take up to 10 minutes.


If you reset it before that's finished (you know it's finished when the first boot wizard appears), all kind of weird things will happen.

 

[EvilDragon]

It would be nice if ED could explain a little bit, what could cause it, because my wifi connection in OP isnt really usable. Maybe theres a problem in OP software?

Nope, it's the wlan module.


If you check threads about the N900 (using the same module), you can see that it also won't go higher than 500 - 600 kB/s and doesn't like all routers.


Rev6d (the prototype run in Germany) had some additional tesing circuits for the WiFi module which Michael could use for some tweaks, but nothing could be made better.


The module just doesn't go higher, so there is nothing we can do unfortunately.

This connects and works much better but it's still too slow to stream video (Even though it claims it's connected at 50mb/s)

Are you sure it's too slow to stream video or are you trying to play videos that are too complex for the Pandora?


h.264 barely works, as the Pandora decodes it using a software decoder.


The most recent PanPlayer uses the omap-fb for hardware-accellerated scaling, but if it doesn't have enough CPU power to DECODE, then that won't help.


TI offers h.264 gstreamer hardware codecs, but these are not yet used.

 

[Miner49er]

Did you wait until the first boot was completed?


Directly after flashing, the system autoconfigures itself during the first boot. This can take up to 10 minutes.


If you reset it before that's finished (you know it's finished when the first boot wizard appears), all kind of weird things will happen.

I did indeed wait yes. I even flashed back to the previous version and waited. Same problem I'm afraid :-(

This connects and works much better but it's still too slow to stream video (Even though it claims it's connected at 50mb/s)

Are you sure it's too slow to stream video or are you trying to play videos that are too complex for the Pandora?


h.264 barely works, as the Pandora decodes it using a software decoder.


The most recent PanPlayer uses the omap-fb for hardware-accellerated scaling, but if it doesn't have enough CPU power to DECODE, then that won't help.


TI offers h.264 gstreamer hardware codecs, but these are not yet used.

Certain. I considered this myself but If I copy the same file to an SD Card it plays just fine.


I rarely deal with hi-def video and I tested videos I created using a Pentium III (600Mhz) many many moons ago!


The one thing I have yet to test is using the wifi stick on another machine in order to rule a problem out with that...xubuntu didn't pick it up straight away (my OS of choice on the 3 netbooks in the house)

Two issues:


1. Does anyone know why (or how to find out) why my unit takes well over 5 minutes to boot up?

post dmesg output here please


recently i found out my sd card was going through errors, a chkdsk solved the issue

I considered this but it does exactly the same without any SD card inserted. I will post my dmesg out when I get home - nothing jumped out at me when I looked though (shame there aren't timestamps - or are there?)

Nope, it's the wlan module.


If you check threads about the N900 (using the same module), you can see that it also won't go higher than 500 - 600 kB/s and doesn't like all routers.

Oh, funny you say that - my pal has an N900 - his automatically connects to my router whenever he comes over. Next time he comes, I will see if we can copy files over (though I have no idea how to setup nfs mounts on an N900!)


EDIT: Another interesting fact about my Pandora is that the previous one I had (it was very faulty) could connect to my mobile phone via the USB-tethering function and access the internet perfectly. This one fails to do so - this leads me to believe that the USB port or something along those lines is not working correctly - as this _could_ explain the fact that the USB wifi stick doesn't work correctly.

 

[birdswithskirts]

"maybe the nand is maxed."


By that you mean, it's screwed? I must admit I haven't done a fschk on it - I thought I would ask here first.


EDIT: Hang on, do you perhaps mean that it is full - i.e. no space left? I have to say, I hadn't even considered that. Will check tonight

I mean no space left.

 

[ImmaculateChimp]

Nope, it's the wlan module.


If you check threads about the N900 (using the same module), you can see that it also won't go higher than 500 - 600 kB/s and doesn't like all routers.


Rev6d (the prototype run in Germany) had some additional tesing circuits for the WiFi module which Michael could use for some tweaks, but nothing could be made better.


The module just doesn't go higher, so there is nothing we can do unfortunately.

That's a shame..(though I do understand that you are working very hard and doing your best, ED)..I guess then, that you either already have massive stock of that wlan module, or the board can't be set up for a better one, or a better one is just prohibitively expensive? Is there no chance the German-made Pandora's will come with a better wlan module? I haven't got my Pandora yet, so I'm wondering if I'll really have to acquire a good, quality usb wifi dongle/stick, which is fine, I suppose.

 

[Miner49er]

"maybe the nand is maxed."


By that you mean, it's screwed? I must admit I haven't done a fschk on it - I thought I would ask here first.


EDIT: Hang on, do you perhaps mean that it is full - i.e. no space left? I have to say, I hadn't even considered that. Will check tonight

I mean no space left.

Sadly, that was not the problem but happily, I found what the problem was!


It was getting stuck on trying to mount the nfs drives


...still have the slow wifi problem though :-(

 

[EvilDragon]

"maybe the nand is maxed."


By that you mean, it's screwed? I must admit I haven't done a fschk on it - I thought I would ask here first.


EDIT: Hang on, do you perhaps mean that it is full - i.e. no space left? I have to say, I hadn't even considered that. Will check tonight

I mean no space left.

Sadly, that was not the problem but happily, I found what the problem was!


It was getting stuck on trying to mount the nfs drives


...still have the slow wifi problem though :-(

Aaah, nfs drives, yeah


Happens on my desktop PC... remove the network cable and nfs will cause a 2min wait before timing out


Have you tried changing your router channel?

 

[gotwake424]

Ed do you know the chips designed data rate is? for wifi

 

[EvilDragon]

Ed do you know the chips designed data rate is? for wifi

According to the data sheet:


IEE802.11 data rates of 1, 2, 5.5, 11 Mbps


IEEE802.11g data rates of 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48, 54 Mbps

 

[gotwake424]

What about have a dedicated antennae with amp circuit? if there was room

 

[mcobit]

The reception of the signal is not the problem, as the range is quite good. It is only slow. Another antenna wouldn't change much here

 

[neko]

The wifi chip is basically two components, a radio transmitter/receiver, and a modulator/demodulator which is basically a hardware fast fourier transform (FFT).


To make a low-power chip like that in the pandora, you have to reduce the power of the transmitter, and/or reduce the power consumption of the FFT.


The radio transmitter seems to be limited to 100mW (which actually isn't that bad).  The legal limit in the USA is 1000 mW, but most laptops only do 100-500 mW (and this is the legal limit in some countries).


The second way to reduce power usage is to limit the power consumption of the FFT.  This is what uses most of the power when the radio is receiving data and not transmitting.  Generally this is done with a 'squelch' setting on the radio so that it ignores packets below a certain signal strength.  This is actually what the 'power management' setting does.  As many people have noticed, this doesn't work too well because it drops too many packets when power management is enabled.


Finally, it seems that the FFT is simply clocked slowly to reduce power usage, so that it can only process so many packets per second.  This seems to be what people are complaining about with the 'slow wifi', ie the data rate never goes above 500kB/s.  I don't know if it's possible to change some setting which will speed this up, but I doubt it.

 

[WizardStan]

500kB/s isn't slow. It's not great, but it is hardly slow. The chip is really only capable of 900kB/s under prime conditions, I seem to recall being discovered a couple of years ago, so about 2/3 of that by a guy who probably hasn't done much work with wifi is probably pretty good. I've only encountered a couple of people complaining that they should be getting 3MB/s because that's what their laptop can get (which is a physical impossibility with tcp/ip due to overhead, but I digress). Most of the people complaining of slowness are legitimately slow, sub 100kB/s, frequently as low as 30kB/s or slower, and a lot of lost connections. The small investigation I've been able to do through others is that they're getting MASSIVE dropped packets, especially with the power save off. If power save works by dropping packets below a certain signal strength so they just aren't processed, this suggests that these packets don't actually have enough strength, or that the measurement for that "certain signal strength" is wildly incorrect in some Pandoras, or some other thing I'm not seeing.

 

[superatarian]

I was able to sign on to my guest wifi (the Pandora would not sign on to my regular wireless one). I was able to get


a speed of 48mbs. I justrecently bought the Linksys 4200 E V2. This is much better than the 12mbs I was getting.


have a USB drive hooked upto the 4200, but I have not been able to access it with the Pandora. Anyone know if \


that is possible?