Quotations, Production speed and the future (2011-09-01)

[iArnold]

Let's bring the trolls back to business!!


I could see investors being interested in the Pandora...


even more interested in an improved version designed to meet tomorrows possibilities, not those of three years ago.


would this be one of the possibilities ED??


Regards,


Arnold

 

[dreamer]

even more interested in an improved version

Then they'll have to wait another 1-2 years.


As being stated a zillion times by the team before: Batch-2 will not be 'improved'.


Perhaps Batch-3 will have some slightly newer hardware.


An actual 'improved' version (whatever that means), with better specs (Tegra Quadcore? 8G ram?) will be years from now.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

I miss Boston Legal - great series....

 

[Shadowfox]

even more interested in an improved version

Then they'll have to wait another 1-2 years.


As being stated a zillion times by the team before: Batch-2 will not be 'improved'.


Perhaps Batch-3 will have some slightly newer hardware.


An actual 'improved' version (whatever that means), with better specs (Tegra Quadcore? 8G ram?) will be years from now.

Don't you mean decades?..

Why would it matter? Does someone have a burning desire to play Modern Warfare 3 on their Pandy? Or experience the burning hot sensation of battery juice exploding on their lap? :lol:

 

[EvilDragon]

Let's bring the trolls back to business!!


I could see investors being interested in the Pandora...


even more interested in an improved version designed to meet tomorrows possibilities, not those of three years ago.


would this be one of the possibilities ED??


Regards,


Arnold

After the next 4000 have been delivered (2700 need to be sold to new customers), the new SoC and RAM would be possible, yes.


However, we can't say anything about that, don't know any prices for that SoC yet.

 

[fusion_power]

Does at least these new SoC has a "good enough" Driver support? At least enough to make our coders more happy.

 

[EvilDragon]

Does at least these new SoC has a "good enough" Driver support? At least enough to make our coders more happy.

What drivers are you missing?

 

[fusion_power]

I don't miss drivers but I read often about that some Driver releated things are not that great on the current Chipset, mainly SGX and so on. Nothing new actualy.

 

[EvilDragon]

I don't miss drivers but I read often about that some Driver releated things are not that great on the current Chipset, mainly SGX and so on. Nothing new actualy.

Well, except for the SGX, I have no idea what driver issues we have...

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Let's bring the trolls back to business!!


I could see investors being interested in the Pandora...


even more interested in an improved version designed to meet tomorrows possibilities, not those of three years ago.


would this be one of the possibilities ED??


Regards,


Arnold

After the next 4000 have been delivered (2700 need to be sold to new customers), the new SoC and RAM would be possible, yes.


However, we can't say anything about that, don't know any prices for that SoC yet.

Dreamcast emulation in the future maybe? a guy can dream

 

[worldcitizen]

I don't miss drivers but I read often about that some Driver releated things are not that great on the current Chipset, mainly SGX and so on. Nothing new actualy.

Well, except for the SGX, I have no idea what driver issues we have...

I'm wondering if it would be an option to switch to a SOC like the Samsung Exynos 4210 which holds a Mali GPU developed by ARM the advantage of the Mali GPU over the SGX GPU by Imtec that the source code of te kernel modules has been released under GPLv2 and the X11 drivers under MIT license.


I don't know how other people think about this?

 

[Batou456]

I'm wondering if it would be an option to switch to a SOC like the Samsung Exynos 4210 which holds a Mali GPU developed by ARM the advantage of the Mali GPU over the SGX GPU by Imtec that the source code of te kernel modules has been released under GPLv2 and the X11 drivers under MIT license.

I don't know how other people think about this?

The first problem with that is you're talking an entirely different generation of Cortex CPU combined with that, and as such would represent a major deviation in the hardware.  The second problem with this is that there is supposed to be an Imagination Technologies open source driver this quarter. If true this would largely resolve the problem well in advance of when it would be even theoretically possible to respond to the issue by changing hardware.


Third, we're just now sort of getting to the point the community is willing to accept the concept of fragmentation with the OMAP 3730 and 3530, which are effectively the exact same chip at 45nm and 65nm.  Shifting to a A9 dual core with an entirely different everything would likely be a little much for some people to accept.

 

[Invader Amoto]

The second problem with this is that there is supposed to be an Imagination Technologies open source driver this quarter.

That open source driver is being written by the community by reverse engineering the ones from Imtec. That is not the same as Imtec open sourcing their drivers. The official Mali drivers are open source.


Also, that article is written by Phoronix. I can't say I trust anything they write. Not that what the article says is not going to happen, but I'm taking it with a grain of salt.


Other than that, I agree with what you said. The OMAP upgrade is fine, but upgrading to the Exynos would probably require advertising it as "Pandora 2" and would require updated software.

 

[Mantis]

Okay, so here's the deal. My Pandora is a first-batch unit from Craig. I requested a form to send mine for repair a few months back due to a nub which started to malfunction. Due to a very short notice family situation, for the past couple of months I haven't been at home where my Pandora is. I'm now at home and I was looking to send my Pandora for the nub replacement and a check over as I believe it's still covered by warranty (and I think it would be a little cruel to turn me away ), and before filling in the form sent to me by Craig's secretary lady, I figured I'd take a look at GBAX anyway and see how business is going for them. The site's... gone? I apologise for not keeping up with the news, but I don't know what the heck's happened. It seems I'll have to send my Pandora to Germany for ED to fix, right? I appreciate the fact ED is going to these lengths to help everyone out, but will I have to pay for ED's return shipping costs as well if I'm able to send it back for repairs?


Like I said, the nub issues presented themselves a few months back, but I'm actually somewhat glad I didn't have the opportunity to send it to Craig as I have a feeling something pretty bad went down at his place, what with the domain being a placeholder and ED handling everything. :unsure: As much as I loved my Pandora, I have been without it for a few months, so I could survive without it for a while longer. But some kind of estimate of how long it would take for it to be returned would also be nice. (I'm not looking for precision, just a number of months.)


Thanks, I'm very much out of date with the Pandora news so your patience answering my questions would be appreciated.

 

[EvilDragon]

Okay, so here's the deal. My Pandora is a first-batch unit from Craig. I requested a form to send mine for repair a few months back due to a nub which started to malfunction. Due to a very short notice family situation, for the past couple of months I haven't been at home where my Pandora is. I'm now at home and I was looking to send my Pandora for the nub replacement and a check over as I believe it's still covered by warranty (and I think it would be a little cruel to turn me away ), and before filling in the form sent to me by Craig's secretary lady, I figured I'd take a look at GBAX anyway and see how business is going for them. The site's... gone? I apologise for not keeping up with the news, but I don't know what the heck's happened. It seems I'll have to send my Pandora to Germany for ED to fix, right? I appreciate the fact ED is going to these lengths to help everyone out, but will I have to pay for ED's return shipping costs as well if I'm able to send it back for repairs?


Like I said, the nub issues presented themselves a few months back, but I'm actually somewhat glad I didn't have the opportunity to send it to Craig as I have a feeling something pretty bad went down at his place, what with the domain being a placeholder and ED handling everything. :unsure: As much as I loved my Pandora, I have been without it for a few months, so I could survive without it for a while longer. But some kind of estimate of how long it would take for it to be returned would also be nice. (I'm not looking for precision, just a number of months.)


Thanks, I'm very much out of date with the Pandora news so your patience answering my questions would be appreciated.

The company where Craig hosted GBAX.com has gone away, that's why GBAX.com is gone right now.


We're trying to move it to our server, but the admin eMail of the domain was set to one admin of the old company and they didn't reply.


Therefore he had to prove he's the owner of the domain.


That happened now, so we can move the domain.


That's what happened to that.


Now onto your request:


Yes, I am doing the nub replacements, so you should ship it to me.


OpenPandora GmbH


Schäffbräustr. 11


85049 Ingolstadt


Germany


Be sure to include a notice with what's wrong as well as the address where I should send it back in the package.


I can't exactly tell how long it will take.


I managed to repair 8 Pandoras this week, but still got about 15 to go.


I should have a bit more time as the business plan is mostly finished (just need to translate it into english).


When your unit arrives here, I probably finished fixing them.

 

[Link]

Totally sucks when your host goes under or your registrar and you have invalid information in the Whois regarding the transfer. Dealt with that many times back in my Network Solutions days.

 

[Argtrak]

Curiosity always kills the cat but I'm not the cat so I'll give it a shot. Can we have a quick approximate update to the numbers on the official site's status page that was last updated on the 2011-04-11?


Also, I kind of lost track of when the last shipment of boards was an how many were received. Anyone?

 

[Exophase]

I'm wondering if it would be an option to switch to a SOC like the Samsung Exynos 4210 which holds a Mali GPU developed by ARM the advantage of the Mali GPU over the SGX GPU by Imtec that the source code of te kernel modules has been released under GPLv2 and the X11 drivers under MIT license.

I don't know how other people think about this?

Everyone these days (including IMG, Qualcomm; it ain't just ARM) releases the source code of their kernel modules, in an effort to try to get them upstream. It doesn't work because the kernel maintainers don't want to include kernel-land APIs that don't interact with useful user-land applications. Which brings me to the salient point - the real useful driver work is done inside user-land binary blobs.