Release Picodrive Released

[emil10001]

- the way it interacts with the OS (it currently has forced vsync, that needs fixing).

Could the DSP be utilized for this?

I am really not that concerned about the current sluggishness of the OS. There have been a very small number of eyes on this issue, and only in the last couple weeks has it started going out to people. One of the reasons that I jumped at the chance to buy this device was what I had seen happen with the n800. I had a really positive experience with that device/platform as a result of the ability of the community to contribute and fix problems as they came up. The n800 got more and more useful over the first year that I had it, and that was mostly due to community effort. We already know that there are certain things that will be included in an upcoming release, like DSP support. Yes, there are things that could be stripped down from the OS, and I'm sure that that will happen as well. Perhaps minimenu could not run a lot of the tasks superfluous to gaming by default and XFCE would load more of them. Maybe we'll find a better network manager to use, or fix the one that we have to behave nicer.

Solutions will come, and in the meantime, I'm very happy with how playable the emu's are, especially picodrive.

 

[DaveC]

Don't we need sync though anyway?

If it is disabled won't we get screen tearing.

 

[Gaeryc]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4p7HTWSCVY

Guys, do any of you remember how good the first genesis emulator on the gp2x was? people were bitching about why is it worse than the gp32x one, remember?

 

[renegadechic]

i'm disappointed that people seem to be getting their rage on so much with only a few hundred pandoras in the wild for a short number of weeks with the OS still in its infancy worked on by very few people in their spare time and the ports of emulators being fairly rough and ready. give it a chance already! these things take time and to be in the hands of many people and we will see results.

in terms of OS related things, i remember dflemster (apologies if i have spelled that incorrectly) talking about very low overhead mini-menus and related things he was doing, would something like that be worthwhile looking into to see what could be achieved

 

[cosam]

I'm not surprised they ran with the full desktop OS to start with; this was after all one of the unique selling points of the Pandora.

How are runlevels used on the existing OS? A really simple way of shutting down superfluous processes would be to switch runlevels before starting an application. One could even remember the original level and switch back afterwards. If one wanted to go the whole hog, a possible approach would be to regard everything running (OS daemons, applications, emulators, whatever) as a service. Then have each service depend on other services, or explicitly specify that undesirable services be shut down before starting. If something like that could be worked into the PND system, you'd have a very flexible environment which could be tuned to applications as required.

 

[fusion_power]

I've also had worries about that the Pandora may don't have the same per-MHz-power than the GP2X. Turns to be out it's true at the Moment. BUT I'm sure there can be alot of optimizing in the future, I don't plan to play Sonic 1 at 600MHz. :lol:

I can assure you it has MORE Mhz to Mhz power than the GP2X. The GP2x had years of software optimisation. As always, patience is required.

Yupp, that's why I wrote "at the moment".
And Yes, I try to be patient, since 3 Years or so, no worries.

I guess, when devs start to make good usage of all these OMAP (marketing) features, and things like the SGX and the DSP, we can see some serious stuff out of the Pandora. ^^

I love to watch how software matures and becomes better and better. I know how poor the GP2X Software story started and I know what was possible at the end onto this little Machine.
Same like commercial Consoles. Here, the first Neo Geo Game "NAM 1975"

"Slightly" difference to the last official NeoGeo Game: "Samurai Showdon V Special"

 

[Gaeryc]

We have a fullspeed working sonic cd at launch, sweet B)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F53QEyPKvQI

 

[Ze_ro]

i'm disappointed that people seem to be getting their rage on so much with only a few hundred pandoras in the wild for a short number of weeks with the OS still in its infancy worked on by very few people in their spare time and the ports of emulators being fairly rough and ready.

I think a lot of people expect that quick ports from the GP2X will run amazing because the hardware is somewhat similar, and that the Pandora will be able to immediately benefit from the years of optimizations that have been put into the GP2X versions. Doesn't quite work like that though.

--Zero

 

[Loonie]

Christ, the sodding thing is barely out the door, and people are already complaining that the software isn't the most super-optimal amazing thing in the whole history of everything ever?

 

[EvilDragon]

Well... the simple fix for now is simply running the Startupmanager and disabling WiFi on boot.
No more frameskips, hangs or jumps. Saves a lot more battery power, too.
And when you need WiFi - use Toggle WiFi and that's it.

 

[Prometheus]

I just did that about half an hour ago, ED, and gave High Seas Havoc a spin in PicoDrive - that works great, thankyou.

 

[silver]

Looks like notaz has rolled a quick PND to cut down on the OS backfround tasks... from another thread:

Boot into minimenu mode and run
http://notaz.gp2x.de/misc/pnd/background_killer.pnd

this will get you closer.

Presumably kills netman etc...

Source: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54022-do-any-of-you-have-regrets/page__view__findpost__p__868845

 

[WizardStan]

Well... the simple fix for now is simply running the Startupmanager and disabling WiFi on boot.

I think the correct way to do this is the way the PSP and NDS do it: there is no scanning; no reconnect attempts; the wifi is off at start. If an application comes along and attempts to network, only then is the wifi enabled, a scan ensues, a connection, and away you go. That's how everyone uses their laptops anyway, right? When you want to use the wifi, you click the little icon in the lower right corner, select "connect to network", choose the right one, and then start going.
So disable the wifi at start, put a wifi icon into the task bar so that only when you select it does it activate the wifi. If the connection is lost for any reason, it should then disable the wifi (or maybe this should be optional) until the user then clicks that wifi icon again to reconnect.
This solves two problems: the wifi is no longer constantly scanning, and requires human interaction to turn on; and the wifi disconnect problem where network manager can't automatically reconnect becomes transparent as it also requires human interaction to turn the wifi back on.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well... the simple fix for now is simply running the Startupmanager and disabling WiFi on boot.

I think the correct way to do this is the way the PSP and NDS do it: there is no scanning; no reconnect attempts; the wifi is off at start. If an application comes along and attempts to network, only then is the wifi enabled, a scan ensues, a connection, and away you go. That's how everyone uses their laptops anyway, right? When you want to use the wifi, you click the little icon in the lower right corner, select "connect to network", choose the right one, and then start going.
So disable the wifi at start, put a wifi icon into the task bar so that only when you select it does it activate the wifi. If the connection is lost for any reason, it should then disable the wifi (or maybe this should be optional) until the user then clicks that wifi icon again to reconnect.
This solves two problems: the wifi is no longer constantly scanning, and requires human interaction to turn on; and the wifi disconnect problem where network manager can't automatically reconnect becomes transparent as it also requires human interaction to turn the wifi back on.

Errmm... well, that is exactly what that little sentence I wrote does...?

 

[WizardStan]

Errmm... well, that is exactly what that little sentence I wrote does...?

Your sentence implies that the user should do it, and leaves it at that.
My paragraph suggests that it should be like that by default, and further explains how and why that would be good.

 

[noisome]

I hate to sound like a newbie, but I can't even get PicoDrive beta 2 to run. It flickers black for a second and then goes back to the main screen.

I have downloaded the beta 1 from apps.open-pandora.org and beta 2 from the first post and I can get other emulators and programs to work, just not this.

Did I miss a message somewhere to get this running? Its in /media/mmcblk0p1/pandora/apps/Emulators/Genesis/.

Thanks for any help.

Edit:
Running with pnd_run the last message I receive is "Running with x, not disowning!"

It asks me for my password, and I give it, then I run it again, and same thing, just without the password.

I run "sudo picodrive.pnd" and it runs. Strange.

 

[Prometheus]

You have two unnecessary directories there - you need to just drop the PND straight into "apps".

 

[WizardStan]

I run "sudo picodrive.pnd" and it runs. Strange.

Very strange. Did you have any problems with first boot?

You have two unnecessary directories there - you need to just drop the PND straight into "apps".

Unnecessary but not necessarily incorrect. The PND system searches monitors nested directories, if people really want to keep them organized.

 

[Prometheus]

Oh, ok - I wasn't aware of that. My bad.

 

[noisome]

I run "sudo picodrive.pnd" and it runs. Strange.

Very strange. Did you have any problems with first boot?

I did have problems with first boot and had to create another user. Is this an issue and should I use the first user created?