Preparing for a Prototype


@EvilDragon @ToastBucket
Whew. So I stumbled on an actual issue? Here I thought it might be -me-. And that pesky left shoulder shift thing I was noting was even a solid clue.

Glad the issue is found. Let me know when you have a re-rolled OS flasher program and I'll switch to that.

What about the other discrepancies I saw between the eMMC install and the SD card install? The boot partition as ext2 vs ext4 for example? Should the two versions be 'closer'?
 
The boot partition as ext2 vs ext4 for example?
ext4 is ext2 with a "few" features added. Nothing stop anyone to mount an ext4 filesystem as ext2 : that would be compatible. (even if the next mount of that FS as ext4 might be funky).
And with that 256MB size, these additionnals features make only few sense. That's not realy an issue per see.
 
@EvilDragon @ToastBucket
Whew. So I stumbled on an actual issue? Here I thought it might be -me-. And that pesky left shoulder shift thing I was noting was even a solid clue.

Glad the issue is found. Let me know when you have a re-rolled OS flasher program and I'll switch to that.

What about the other discrepancies I saw between the eMMC install and the SD card install? The boot partition as ext2 vs ext4 for example? Should the two versions be 'closer'?
Yep, that's a software issue. There will probably be a lot more.
Don't forget: So far we mostly tested that the hardware works fine, the software is in an early state (the Pandora OS was like that as well when I made the first Pandora videos on my prototype :))

The software will begin to mature faster when delivery starts, as more users will be able to test and even provide fixes :)
 
Nothing stop anyone to mount an ext4 filesystem as ext2 : that would be compatible.
Actually, there are several reasons why that would not work. The ext4 driver is backward-compatible and able to mount ext2 and ext3 filesystems, but the filesystem itself is not. There are just too many changes and new features that are completely incompatible with older filesystem drivers.
 
Actually, there are several reasons why that would not work. The ext4 driver is backward-compatible and able to mount ext2 and ext3 filesystems, but the filesystem itself is not. There are just too many changes and new features that are completely incompatible with older filesystem drivers.
While I've never did that with ext4, i've mounted ext3 fs as ext2 many times and that always worked.
 
While I've never did that with ext4, i've mounted ext3 fs as ext2 many times and that always worked.

ext3 is just ext2 with journaling enabled, so if you mount it as ext2, it just doesn't use journalling.

ext4 has multiple new specific functions so that you cannot mount it as ext3 or ext2.

You can mount ext2/3 as ext4 though and turn it into ext4 if you use tune2fs to add the new features ext4 has.
 
This post is about good things. If you're looking for bug reports or whatnot, you're out of luck. :D

I decided that it was time to seek out a game to play that makes good use of the touchscreen and stylus. What better than Warfare Inc / Hostile Takeover?

I'm currently booting from a 64GB Samsung EVO microSDXC card using an adapter in the left SDXC slot. The program that creates the bootable SD card creates a 256MB 'boot' partition and a 7.5GB 'rootfs' partition. Since everything installed via Symantic or Apt is goping to install on rootfs and I had a lot of empty unpartitioned space on the SDXC card, I decided to fix that first.

I used fdisk /dev/mmcblk3 to add a partition called /dev/mmcblk3p3.
Then I used mkfs -t ext4 /dev/mmcblk3p3 to format the 55GB partition as ext4.

I was told in the bug report thread where I noted that there isn't much for documentation on this that the .dbp packages are expected to be found in a directory on an SD media called /dragonbox/packages. Creating and formatting the partition above were done as root, and I wanted this directory to be read/write usable without having to sudo. So, I opened up a terminal, sudo su, and went to /media/grenc/*longhexcodenameddirectory*. There I did chown grench. Exit from root.
mkdir dragonbox
cd dragonbox
mkdir packages
cd packages

Opened up Firefox, went to the apps site https://pyra-handheld.com/repo/apps
Clicked on the download link on Hostile Takeover - and it wanted to 'launch' instead of save. I overrode that and told it to save as I wanted to control which partition the resulting file ended up on. I found the file in /home/grench/downloads and cut/paste it to the directory in the 3rd partition that I'd created above.

I'm not sure what kind of magic is supposed to happen when files are saved in this /dragonbox/packages directory, maybe that is a future state thing. But, the .dbp file was click-executable and I was able to open and play Hostile Takeover (Warfare Inc).

I found the stylus to be very well behaved - even near the edge of the screen. Hostile Takeover has a tiny minimap in the bottom right corner that you need to swipe on to move the main game map around. It worked fine. Sound worked, gameplay was smooth. Fonts in the game are very tiny - I'd say around 4-5pt. Be glad we didn't get a screen with even higher resolution. But, the game itself was fairly immersive and the screen responded just as I would expect it to with my frantic taps, drags, rubber banding troops, sending them to their certain deaths, etc.

The new stylus is quite nice. It is larger in diameter and I think a bit longer than the Pandora stylus - searching around for a stock Pandora stylus to compare to and I'm not finding one here. I had switched over to the RHS years ago and seem to have misplaced my stock Pandora ones. The RHS will not work like it did with the Pandora. There isn't as much length in the Pyra's silo by about 5mm. The larger diameter of the Pyra stulus and retention mechanism means that the 5mm OD RHS won't retain in the Pyra. That said, I don't think the RHS is going to be needed as the Pyra's stock stylus is -much- nicer. The one that came with my prototype is made from the clear plastics. I'm picky on styli, and this one is one of the best 'stock' styli that I've used.
 
Trying to get KETM to run. I downloaded four different .dbp versions of it.

All of them refuse to run for me. dbp-run error window pops up to tell me that, "One or more dependencies for package 'ketm_episode1_sebt3' is missing. The program may or may not work without these. Below is a list of missing dependencies.
System packages (no listing)
Movable packages
Package name Version
ketm_engine_sebt3
[Install missing dependencies] [Abort launch] [Launch anyway]

I'm not reporting this as a gripe about it not working so much as wanting to show that there is pretty good documentation within the .dbp package system that shows me, "Why is this not working?"

I wasn't able to find anything in the .dbp repository called ketm_engine_sebt3.
[Install missing dependencies] yields: "Error: Automatic installation of dependencies is currently not supported"
[Launch anyway] just dumps back out to the desktop.

I'm likely missing something really simple, but I'm not seeing an obvious path to get there without bugging a dev in the forums.
@sebt3 , you are being bugged. :) Thank you for porting over games!

While you're there - I wasn't able to get supertux_sebt3-0.3.4.01.dbp to 'Open With Run DBP as program' either.
 
All the dbp stuff is completely untested, so don't expect too many things to work.
Most/all of them are also built for the previous debian version, so it might be looking for older versions of libraries. They probably all need to be rebuild for debian buster.
 
I must be doing something wrong. I'm not able to launch Streets of Rage Remake either. @TrashyMG, this one is one of yours.

I don't suppose anyone would want to make me a Vultures_Eye.dbp like the .pnd version we had for Pandora? Please? I know - lame isometric tile graphics overlay on a ASCII based game from the 80s. I still enjoyed playing it on the Pandora.
Post automatically merged:

All the dbp stuff is completely untested, so don't expect too many things to work.
Most/all of them are also built for the previous debian version, so it might be looking for older versions of libraries. They probably all need to be rebuild for debian buster.

Alright. Noted. I'll not post up notes on the ones that don't work then. I simply got really lucky eight o'clock day one when I tried Hostile Takeover first then.
 
Ah, small tip regarding that: Power off the unit while charging, as it uses less power then.

This brings up an interesting conundrum. When powered off and connected to my USB 2A source through my USB power meter to the microUSB 3.0 port, the unit pulls 0.47A - presumably charging the battery. When powered on, it pulls up to 1.87A, presumably running -and- charging the battery.

Between charging both with the unit powered off and on, I think it actually charges the battery -faster- for the first 80-85% of the battery capacity with the unit on. But, then the draw falls off to 0.87A or so and anything above 85% capacity seems to take forever -if- I can get it past that point at all.

I have never seen the battery reach 100% though. I've not left it off and charging unattended either though - just a general rule I have for unproven/untested electronics with beta test level power circuits.
 
the battery percentage in that kernel is wrong.
 
the battery percentage in that kernel is wrong.

Is there anything either in the Pyra or the battery to reliably prevent it from overcharging at this point? I.e. do I need to watch it like a hawk and pull it from the power supply the moment the current pull drops or is it 'good'?
 
I'd hope the battery controller chip is properly in charge of that and will function even if the OS has no (or two) ideas of what's going on. But I'm only an observer, so don't quote me on that, but hopefully if I'm wrong someone will be along to correct me shortly:
 
I must be doing something wrong. I'm not able to launch Streets of Rage Remake either. @TrashyMG, this one is one of yours.

To keep the download legit, It requires some game data files and put into the appdata dir... The site went down where I got it seems, after all my New Years Eve debauchery I can PM a link to get the game data.
 
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