Questions: A Small List

[Sarlix]

I have a little list of questions. If anyone cares to take a stab at them I would be grateful


1: Plugging-in the pandora to my PC starts to charge it, but it doesn't get recognized as drive or mass-storage device. I was expecting to be able to copy files directly onto the SD cards from my PC. Is this normal?


2: I've been testing out videos in Mplayer, but every one I have tried skips badly (is like a slide show) AVI files play in a window sort of OK, but as soon as I full screen it skips like crazy. I have been through all the Mplayer settings but no luck...Any ideas?

3: Putting the pandora into 'sleep mode' or whatever the term is (moving power button to the right) turns off the screen etc, but it doesn't seem to reduce the battery usage - example: I put it into sleep mode and shut the lid, it was at 96% battery. I popped out for an hour - when I came back the battery was down to 86%. I am wondering if this is known bug with the software? I will test it again just to make sure.

4: I was trying out the SNES9x port by skeezix. It seems to run great, but I am unable to go into full screen mode. I change to full screen in the settings by pressing space and accessing the menu, but it doesn't do anything. I just wondered if it even supports full-screen mode at the moment? I looked for documentation but couldn't find any.

5: Do I need to format my SD cards to a particular file system, eg: FAT, ext2, etc. I used Ubuntu to format them to FAT, they seem to work OK (apart from the previously mentioned problem of them not being seen unless you reboot) Also I can't seem to unmount them, I get a 'Cannot open /media/.hal-mtab' error.

6: Anytime I want to connect to my wireless network I have to reboot. I think it may have something to do with the 'default keyring password' as it asks me for it upon login. Is there any sort of work around for this? Like so it remembers it, or so I can make it prompted without having to reboot all the time.

I don't expect all of these to be answered, just putting them out there. Thanks

 

[Mithrildor]

6: You can also restart your network manager.

Dont know for the rest

 

[mali]

3

An other user observed this, too. I suggested to raise the low-power-mode core clock frequency to a higher value. ED said it's possible. I hope someone posts instructions to try different settings. 10MHz seems too low in my opinion. A process that is still running would prevent the CPU to idle properly, I would think.

 

[marshal]

I don't have a Pandora and I can't answer all of them...

1. I am not 100% sure about this one but I think Pandora as mass storage just isn't implemented yet.

2. No idea. Maybe Evildragon or somebody from the Pandora team could answer this one. I know video acceleration isn't is the best state now so it's probably something to do with this.

3. I believe this is "Normal". There is no real suspend mode on the Pandora... suspend is really complex and need every component to wake up properly afterwards. IMO it's quite unlikely to be implemented any time soon.
The current "Sleep" mode simply down-clock the CPU and turn off some of the hardware. I believe it's quite basic and not yet very optimized.

When you think of it most mobile device simply use little power when there are idle but don't have a suspend mode. (Think of your mobiel phone).
I believe the situation will improve with better power management in the future.

Also currently it's possible that the difference between simply closing the lead and putting it to "Sleep" is not big at all. It is even arguable if down-clocking the CPU to a very low frequency actually does save power.

5. FAT32 is probably a good choice for compatibility. Ext2 is fine if you use your card on linux computer only (it's possible to read them on windows but it requires 3rd party driver). I have no idea why you can't unmount your card.

6. Did you try to reset the 'default keyring password" to a blank one ? I believe I saw instruction on how to do this...
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/53652-default-keyring/ here it is. Hope it help.

 

[paddy]

I have a little list of questions. If anyone cares to take a stab at them I would be grateful


1: Plugging-in the pandora to my PC starts to charge it, but it doesn't get recognized as drive or mass-storage device. I was expecting to be able to copy files directly onto the SD cards from my PC. Is this normal?

I requested help with this also ,but there is currently no driver available to hook to a windows OS.

2: I've been testing out videos in Mplayer, but every one I have tried skips badly (is like a slide show) AVI files play in a window sort of OK, but as soon as I full screen it skips like crazy. I have been through all the Mplayer settings but no luck...Any ideas?

Really don't know about this one ,i have had no problem running video ,mabe it's the format that is wrong ,i run avi with no problem at all.

3: Putting the pandora into 'sleep mode' or whatever the term is (moving power button to the right) turns off the screen etc, but it doesn't seem to reduce the battery usage - example: I put it into sleep mode and shut the lid, it was at 96% battery. I popped out for an hour - when I came back the battery was down to 86%. I am wondering if this is known bug with the software? I will test it again just to make sure.

known issue with power savings ,and the pandora charge features are not very good for the moment.

4: I was trying out the SNES9x port by skeezix. It seems to run great, but I am unable to go into full screen mode. I change to full screen in the settings by pressing space and accessing the menu, but it doesn't do anything. I just wondered if it even supports full-screen mode at the moment? I looked for documentation but couldn't find any.

It seems that all the emulators i have tested run very poorly including picodrive and there is no screen stretch features on any of the emulators as of yet ,i think this is bacase they are gp32 ports and the screen display is smaller ,in time we hope all emulators take advantage of the pandora display.

5: Do I need to format my SD cards to a particular file system, eg: FAT, ext2, etc. I used Ubuntu to format them to FAT, they seem to work OK (apart from the previously mentioned problem of them not being seen unless you reboot) Also I can't seem to unmount them, I get a 'Cannot open /media/.hal-mtab' error.

if your cards do not auto mount then you should format them to fat and use sd port 2 ,the one next to the volume slider.

6: Anytime I want to connect to my wireless network I have to reboot. I think it may have something to do with the 'default keyring password' as it asks me for it upon login. Is there any sort of work around for this? Like so it remembers it, or so I can make it prompted without having to reboot all the time.

yes it is the default keyring issue ,same with ubuntu ,as i had the same problem with my laptop ubuntu ,also choose blank no pass for keyring when prompted and also once you connect to your router ,go into wifi options and put a tick in always reconnect.



hope this helps.

 

[Sarlix]

Thanks for all your replies, they pretty much answered everything.

@paddy So you can full screen your videos? did you adjust any of the Mplayer settings? or are they all at default?

I managed to sort out the network issue, well sort of - thanks for the link marshal. I had to go into .gnome2 folder and delete the default file, then choose no pass for the keyring. However the network manager still refuses to detect my wireless network unless I disable and re-enable WLAN. It's better than having to do reboot anyway.

As for the power issue. I've noticed if I go into 'sleep mode' and DO NOT shut the lid then it seems to work ok. However if I go into sleep mode and DO shut the lid, it seems to cancel out sleep mode and just go into normal stand by mode. I left it in sleep mode for 30 mins with the lid open and there was no battery usage.

 

[ZoxFox]

5. FAT32 is probably a good choice for compatibility. Ext2 is fine if you use your card on linux computer only (it's possible to read them on windows but it requires 3rd party driver). I have no idea why you can't unmount your card.

hm that´s a real handicap if you want to use a windows pc...
fat32 doesn´t cope with data files which are bigger than 4GB. will be there any NTFS-through-the-backdoor-solution in the future?

 

[Prometheus]

NTFS support is installable via the Community Codec Pack, if memory serves.

 

[paddy]

yes ,media playback fine with default settings.

 

[God Ginrai]

5. FAT32 is probably a good choice for compatibility. Ext2 is fine if you use your card on linux computer only (it's possible to read them on windows but it requires 3rd party driver). I have no idea why you can't unmount your card.

hm that´s a real handicap if you want to use a windows pc...
fat32 doesn´t cope with data files which are bigger than 4GB. will be there any NTFS-through-the-backdoor-solution in the future?

NTFS support is installable via the Community Codec Pack, if memory serves.

NTFS, even with added support, probably still won't work with the bootloader. So if you want to flash your firmware or boot from SD, you will probably still want that SD formatted to ext2 or some fat.

-God Ginrai

 

[craigix]

The video playback is still all software, there won't be hardware acceleration until a further firmware update.

 

[Trevsweb]

The video playback is still all software, there won't be hardware acceleration until a further firmware update.

is this a quick fix or something the devs are working on that might be ready a few weeks/months away...

 

[fusion_power]

The video playback is still all software, there won't be hardware acceleration until a further firmware update.

HW acceleration is very important, so please don't forget to include it.

I really thought all modern linux kernels already have (video) HW acceleration inside. h34r:

 

[Sarlix]

Well that would explain the poor performance anyway. What I don't get is why I can manipulate the video screen borders to make it effectively full screen and it will playback alright. But if I go to true full screen or maximize the window, it starts to go bizarre. That is to say it skips a lot.

 

[Dead1nside]

They're not going to forget it. I think it was one of the things that involved moving to a newer kernel. It's going to take some work tying it all together, but we've already seen much of the software working on the Beagle Board.

VLC 1.1 is being released soon, with in-built support of the OpenMax IL DSP acceleration libraries. So once they get put into the OS, it'll be all good for VLC. There seems to me, to be quite a lot of exciting happenings on the video hardware acceleration front.

 

[paddy]

to get full screen ,use the full screen button on the bottom right side ,you will notice it goes full screen with a border at the bottom showing you the timeline of the movie ,if you move your mouse cursor into the middle of the video it will go fullscreen without the border.

 

[EvilDragon]

1: Plugging-in the pandora to my PC starts to charge it, but it doesn't get recognized as drive or mass-storage device. I was expecting to be able to copy files directly onto the SD cards from my PC. Is this normal?

At the moment, it's a g_ether device (basically networking over USB).
Windows needs a driver - I THINK there is one out there, but I need to look for it.

Mass storage should be possible and we'll look into it and include that into one of the next updates.

2: I've been testing out videos in Mplayer, but every one I have tried skips badly (is like a slide show) AVI files play in a window sort of OK, but as soon as I full screen it skips like crazy. I have been through all the Mplayer settings but no luck...Any ideas?

How big is the video and what codec do they use?
At the moment, xvid up until 800x480 work great, all other need a lot of scaling or decoding and the CPU might not be able to do that.
We're doing software-only decoding at the moment, as TI only released the driver for a higher kernel version (only binary, not the sourcecode), so we couldn't include that.
That's one of the big things for the next firmware updates

4: I was trying out the SNES9x port by skeezix. It seems to run great, but I am unable to go into full screen mode. I change to full screen in the settings by pressing space and accessing the menu, but it doesn't do anything. I just wondered if it even supports full-screen mode at the moment? I looked for documentation but couldn't find any.

It's just a quick port, so yeah, it doesn't use the fullscreen.
Using the WHOLE screen would look ugly though - SNES is 4:3, your Pandora is widescreen.

to get full screen ,use the full screen button on the bottom right side ,you will notice it goes full screen with a border at the bottom showing you the timeline of the movie ,if you move your mouse cursor into the middle of the video it will go fullscreen without the border.

You can also doubleclick on the movie screen

 

[EvilDragon]

It seems that all the emulators i have tested run very poorly including picodrive and there is no screen stretch features on any of the emulators as of yet ,i think this is bacase they are gp32 ports and the screen display is smaller ,in time we hope all emulators take advantage of the pandora display.

Eh? Picodrive is fullspeed with VSync and runs everything... SNES is fullspeed for most games but is missing VSync and therefore tearing a little bit, same for Amiga, Atari ST.
C64 runs perfectly.
Scaling them to fullscreen would make most of them pretty ugly - they ran on a normal TV and the Pandora is widescreen, so the games would be stretched (and that's uuuugly).
I can't imagine that Picodrive could become better as it is - as it's perfect...

 

[devhace]

Scaling them to fullscreen would make most of them pretty ugly - they ran on a normal TV and the Pandora is widescreen, so the games would be stretched (and that's uuuugly).

I know a lot of people don't like stretched images... but I'm among the few that do. It'd be nice to have

 

[EvilDragon]

Scaling them to fullscreen would make most of them pretty ugly - they ran on a normal TV and the Pandora is widescreen, so the games would be stretched (and that's uuuugly).

I know a lot of people don't like stretched images... but I'm among the few that do. It'd be nice to have

Well, it's up to the devs if they want to include such things