Quotes Thread For The Blog

[mali]

The factory have already been instructed to get on with it, we should hear something today. We don't know if they will manage it, but we hope they will. They have told us pretty much every customer makes this week hell for them.

Cpasjuste is porting Maemo(or Mer?) to Pandora
Source: http://forum.gp2x.de/viewtopic.php?p=112440#p112440

The forums reach their maximum more often too, recently. I have the feeling this problem got worse after ED's update.

Just gave myself a google-MySQL and Apache2-Optimization-Crashcourse

Now it's using cache queries and the RAM much better. So the server should be way more reliable and faster.

 

[mali]

Another batch of Pandoras made from the last case samples shipped to devs today.

I've just realised some of those devs are real customers too.

5am already... great, got to be at work again in four hours. Did work on the OS, narrow down some more bugs with the devs, testing things...

(Thread title: Carry case and TV out won't cause a delay)

If it doesn't arrive in time, you'll receive the Pandora first and the accessories later.
No big deal, but we won't hold the Pandora back because of some missing accessories for you guys

Hi everyone! Long time no talk!

Well my Pandora arrived a few minutes ago and here is my first picture of it. It has the older case plastics being used, but I don't mind at all.

http://www.zodttd.com/docs/pandora_photo_1.jpg

I'm getting busy on psx4pandora today. Expect a more open project for psx4all now with the likes of public source with revisioning, bug/feedback reporting, and all in all a much more professional take on how I've handled things in the past with regards to the GP2X.

I have some big plans for psx4pandora, starting with an overhaul for the dynarec and reaching towards an OpenGL ES 2.0 accelerated GPU.

Thanks!
ZodTTD

My plans for psx4pandora is for it to be completely 100% free and open source, just as it should be. I am not looking for donations, although truly appreciated. If I do get donations, I surely hope it would be after the release and use of psx4pandora. I have no intention of profiting off this work in any manner.

I want this to be a project out of love, and not feel like work.

Loading some patched firmware onto the Pandora now. Be sure to check out skeezix's pics too! He has his up and running already.

I'm actually stuck in meetings (damn work!) right now, but thought I'd toss up a couple pics .. seems me and Zod got ourev3 prototype cased units same time

first -- THIS IS A SEXY BEAST!

But I'm talking on the phone giving orders to other developers, so all I Can give right this minute is some unboxing photos.

Sorry, can't blend it yet.

http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0089.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0090.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0091.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0092.JPG

More pics and videos as soon as I get time!

Added some more -- beside the iphone I've got in my pocket, so you can see the brightness and thickness comparison. (iphone 3gs)

http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0094.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0095.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0096.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0097.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0098.JPG <- a nice shot imho
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0099.JPG
http://www.codejedi.com/pandora/rev3_unbox/IMG_0100.JPG <- for thickness comparison

You know, even in rev3 state which is not 'finished' in the factory, this is _gorgeous_.

Like Craig said .. soon as you turn it on, THIS IS THE SHIT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE THE FIRST TIME YOU SAW STAR TREK AS A KID.

jeff

Well, I've had a mk2 dev board for more than a year and have been working on the whole PND file system, preparing an "SDK" of sorts, and all that business. Just now I've got a _keyboard_ and _nubs_ and such, so can pick it up without having to net-into it via ssh, etc So now I can actually work on apps a bit. Time is tight (yay for layoffs and massive OT :/), but I'm going ot prepare Hatari and BattleJewels ASAP.. at least direct ports, if not spiff thigns up a bit. Got lots of little bugs in the pnd-system I need to catch in the next few days too, to get stuff ready for you all.

Big credit to djwillis and notaz; me and vimacs are carrying the pnd-file system and various important bits, and lots of people hacking away, but the center of it all is notaz and djwillis on the kernel and distribution.

jeff

Some threads showing up on gp32x of people receiving their Pandora. I can't stop smiling at them.

 

[mali]

[quote name"Craig(tweet)"]More Pandoras due to arrive with people tomorrow, I'm enjoying reading their opinions.[/quote]

Slaanesh is indeed getting one.

It's more that Slaanesh has a proven track record of excellent support and dedication to MAME. That is who we want doing the tailoring. The best.

jumpman -- yeah, if I get a chance might be a good idea, though I'm possible biased. I've already long commented on the raw hardware (long ago, with my mk2 dev unit.)

I've not had much time to break her in yet, but a few thoughts..

It is _solid_, and this is the prototype! Feels really good. The nubs are fantastic!

The hinge in my proto is a little soft; its good enough, but if you wave the thing around the lid will flip full open .. so it feels like it wants to be 180, or closed, slightly more than at the middle-click; still, its okay, and I suspect the protohinge could be the issue there. Device fits in pocket, but is a little thicker then I thought it might feel.

The feel of the unit is very professional and it looks good; the keyb will take a little getting used to (key placement, such as the spacebar in the bottom right, and the location of shift and so on), but it is a very solid keyb. The d-pad and buttons and nubs are great!

My hands are normal size I'd say -- coder hands; not construction worker thick hands, but not little kid hands either I'm actually really surprised the controls feel as good as they do -- I had always assumed that either one set would feel better than the other, or both be awkward.. assumed nubs woudl be too far in, and d-pad too far out or something. But the reality, both sets of controls feel natural. I guess they looked awkward in folks videos since they're holding cameras in their mouthsm, you know?

Screen is crisp and bright!

The SD cards fit _flush_ in, at least with my cards; ie: they don't protrude out, which is _fantastic_; I hate when they stick an eigth-inch out, since they can catch; the volume roller, power switch and SDs are all flush and nice; the power slider is almost a little too flush, but better to be harder to hit hit when I've barely gotten used to it, then sticking out .

I guess DaveC designed this case? IF so, you can tell .. I never woudl have thought ot submerge those bits; its very classy.
It looks gorgeousw in all-black without silkscreens
It weighs more than I guessed, but thats not saying much
The lid closes very satisfyingly; it snaps shut and open and locks into the positions nicely.
Really, the hardware is a solid hit imho.
I'm working downtown Toronto tomorrow and Friday; if you're in the hood, let me know

L/R are 'okay'; handhelds never have good shoulder buttons, so these are about as good as everyone elses, maybe better -- when holding the nubs and d-pad, your hand is a certain way, so curling your fingers onto the shoulders seems right. Its just the whole idea of shoudler buttons on a small device isn't right imho

I think I can say the controls are actually better than I've had in years; the Wiz is not bad, but seems too 'small' for me, and the right-side buttons are cramped due to being crammed into the d-pad configuration they originally wanted. (This is not a biased dis against the Wiz; I actually think the Wiz is fantastic, and I'm as lon ga GP/GPH supporter as there can be.) The d-pad is great.. in a way it could be better, perhaps, but its better than any other mobile I've had. I just played Sega Genesis Raiden and it was glorious.. able to dodge shots and such, and I simply could not on most other gadgets.

The screen does ghost a little, visible in SuperTux, but these are all raw ports without too much Pandorification, so perhaps hw blitter will alleviate some of the blurring; its not too bad, certainly not as bad as original PSP, but maybe about same as PSP-slim (PSP2000).

I gotta admit, this is pretty sleek; going a year without controls/speakers/etc made me appreciate the CPU, but running the near-complete unit is sweet

We've a few things to fix up in the firmware before it goes, but right now its pretty great; a few rough edges, but we're smoothing as we go

jeff

Well I got my pre-release Pandora recently I am not a coder but for those who don't know the story, I designed the case, pad, buttons etc (basically all plastic stuff). So as a member of OP it is logical for me to have one to test things with. I didn't do pictures as others already have so it would just be repetition.

After seeing those close-up pictures of the flaws I was expecting the worst. I was suprised at how cool it looks in person though! Very slick! While it is not up to Apple and Sony perfection yet it is pretty damn nice. It is especially good considering it wasn't produced by a huge multi billion dollar mega corporation like Sony or Nintendo. It has this kind of badass industrial look to it. It is hard to explain but it doesn't look like a toy. The LEDs look awesome, kind of looks like a spaceship cockpit or something.

I think this thing is going to be HUGE when it hits the stores. I don't want to sound like a commercial but if you were on the fence I would try to get on the pre-order list soon (if you can, I don't know the status, that is not my area). I just have a feeling these will be in demand and be very hard to get until production is at full power.

Wonderful!

Quick question: I'm a bit unclear about who did what - didn't Michael Weston also work on the case?

No he really didn't touch the CAD models other than to convert them for use at the mold company. He made a 2d sketch originally of where the control positions were and the basic overall size and thickness.

He also had the prototypes made and checked them for errors then let me know what needed to change. I then made the tweaks.

DaveC, when you have time I would really appreciate if you could give us your thoughts regarding the lcd - specifically concerning the alleged ghosting and poor contrast. Thanks!

The viewing angle is good. It is real sharp as well. 800 x 480 is pin sharp. There can be a bit of ghosting on side scrollers with some colors combinations. The contrast is ok for an LCD. The color saturation is good. It is no OLED but if it was it would cost a fortune right now at that size.

 

[mali]

Another day, another bug fix by notaz: X does not stutter anymore when using DPad and keyboard at the same time. Some more devs got Pandoras

Everyone is booting from SD still; this is how the Pandora is unbrickable.. it knows how to boot right off SD. At first most of us were booting kernel from SD1 with the 'image' (the OS files) on SD2, but most of us are doing single-SD now .. two partitions, one FAT (to pull in kernel and boot conf) and the other ext2/3 for the OS image, leaving SD2 to be pnd-files or videos or whatever.

Essentially, we'll be mpoving SD1 to NAND and good to go; under NAND we'll be using a compressed filesystem and some union-magic as well, likely; djwillis is working hard on such things. For development, we run off SD though -- stick it into your dev machine, unpack a new image or mess with it, stick it into panda and boot; having firmware in NAND just makes it a little extra work to mess with when you're hacking it constantly. (Course you can usb-net into the Pandora and log in via ssh or telnet or serial console or the like as well.)

http://twitpic.com/12oiqa - Started to populate the Pandora appstore. Probably not the final name...

Trevsweb has done an amazing job working on the look, it's one of the most fun projects I've ever worked on because of his enthusiasm for it.

We are really hoping you love it. The whole thing is built from the ground up with 100% new code and ideas, we didn't try to copy or being inspired by anything else - we just tried to make the most simple and easy to use file server ever.

Geez, what a long day. After normal life work and tons of eMails I had to answer, I did some more Pandora website work and WIZ stuff.

A big thanks to all of you!
Well, it has been a wild rollercoaster ride. It was fun. It was annoying. It was amazing. It was frightening. It was unique.

I think most of you experienced the same during the loooong waiting period we had up until now.

There were times when I asked myself 'What the heck have I gotten myself into?'.
There were tons of rocks blocking our road - and each time I feared "Okay. This is it. Now everyone is gonna cancel and I have to pay debts for the next 20 years!"

I think I'm not the only one in the project who experienced the same.

On the other side, there were many things that kept us going. The progress the project made. How much you anticipated the videos. The reactions on the board when you saw the first prototype. And when you saw the first prototype case.

It was a long and bumpy ride. But now we we're there. Many many boards are finished already and are just waiting for the cases. The cases that took so long. But finally, we were content with them. We gave the green light. All that's left now is the production.
During the last days, activity on the boards has raised. And what I did read there made me happy.

Some devs I know and respect since the good old GP32 days received their Pandora - and they all do call it a beauty.

The whole community seems so happy that we finally finished it. The ranting has stopped.

Now I'm really sure what we did was the right thing. And that's why I want to say THANK YOU! Thank you all!

Thanks to...

... Michael, who really did a fantastic job designing the system and organizing so many things around the production.
... Craig, who was the guy that started all of it and kept us going. He was the one taking most the risk. And he was the one who convinced us to do it!
... Fatih, who did source a lot of the parts and companies we're working with.
... DaveC who decsigned the complete case all alone! A great achievement!
... notaz, who did work on a lot of lowlevel stuff and is now fixing various bugs that are still left. A very nice and talented chap!
... DJWillis for working on the OS image and getting WiFi to work!
... skeezix for developing the PND system and contributing various other stuff to the OS
... cpasjuste for working on various ports and pmenu.
....vimacs, for supplying quite a few scripts and helping skeezix with the libraries and PND system.
... Pickle for porting many many games.
... Squidge for testing the SoCs.
... all other devs that did help us in some way
... and of course all of you! The community! The ones that kept us going! The ones that laid their money into our hands to produce this great little machine! Thanks!



So, what will happen next?

We don't even know yet how many cases the chinese factory is able to produce until the new year or IF they are even able to produce them, however, the most important thing is that nothing needs to be changed anymore. So in worst case, they start the mass production after their new years break which is February 22nd. Not a big deal after waiting for such a long time.

Of course, once this starts, we'll try to finish your Pandoras as fast as possible. Will be a few weeks, I guess, as we shouldn't forget about shipping. The cases need to be shipped from China to America (takes a few days). After the Mass production, they need to be shipped to us (takes a few days as well) and from there they need to be shipped to you.

We'll keep you informed about what happens as usual.
As most work is going on with the OS right now, I'll set up a status page with what has to be done and what has been done for the OS soon.


Want to shake hands or talk with me?

You all do know me from the boards, I guess. However, if you want to meet me in real life: I'll be at the CeBIT in Hannover, Germany on March 6th. From 12pm - 1pm I'll be doing a presentation about OpenSource gaming handhelds. Of course, I'll have the Pandora with me. So if you happen to be there, why not join us there? I'll be posting more information about this soon.

Well, the hard things have been done. PCB assembly and mass production works fine, we have enough working tests that prove that.
The prototype cases are working perfectly and all there is left is create them in a proper way. Same machine, same mould, nothing should go wrong here.
The OS needs a lot of tweaking, yes, but all drivers are working, so it's just a matter of time everything will become nice and tidy.

From the German board:

Was ist denn aus dem Plan geworden die Ferien durcharbeiten zu lassen?
What happened to the plan of letting the factory produce on the holidays?

Ist von vornherein gestorben, da das Werk sowas nicht anbietet. Wie ja geschrieben machen das einige Hersteller, nicht alle.
It's not possible at all, cause the factory doesn't offer this. Not every factory offers this service, as has been mentioned.

Und auch letzte Woche haben sie gesagt "Wir versuchen, sie noch vor Neujahr zu produzieren. Aber ich kenne die Mitarbeiter, wenn sie schon in Urlaubslaune sind, dann leidet die Qualität arg drunter. Ich würde es nicht empfehlen".
Last week they(note: the mould factory)said: "We will try to produce before CNY. But I know the workers, when they are in holiday mood, quality is suffering. I wouldn't recommend it."

Und was nun rausgekommen ist, nun, das mag Fatih wissen. Ich hab ihn aber noch nicht gesprochen.
Well, Fatih will know what actually happened. But I didn't talk to him, yet.

http://bunnitude.com/ari64/mupen64plus-arm-20100212.tar.gz

Changes since -20091217:

Full TLB emulation + Goldeneye hack
Instruction scheduling changes to avoid load-use and address generation interlock
Better handling of branches into delay slots of other branches
Limit recursion in liveness analysis when evaluating nested loops (was taking too much time)
Don't speculatively precompile code if invalid instructions are encountered

 

[mali]

Obvious question: does that mean you have got Goldeneye running? Please?

There are some issues, but it does run.

The set of changes needed to make virtual memory and pagefaults work was pretty large. There are still some problems with the code cache getting invalidated too frequently when virtual memory is used, but the compatibility looks pretty good so far. Hopefully some of the people who have received their Pandoras can give feedback on what's working, and what isn't.

 

[MiniSinisterMinister]

From ED

As far as I know, they just didn't do it.
The boss of the company told us last week they're trying to do it, however, the worker were already pretty much in holiday mood.
He warned us that they won't work as good as they can in that state which might lead them to rush the case (and therefore not setting everything up too carefully).
Before spitting out broken cases, he'd rather have them NOT produce them. We told they should really try to do it, but before getting broken cases, he should wait until the holiday is over (which is the case on February 22nd).

While I haven't heard back from Fatih or Craig about this, I THINK this might've happened.

I'd say: Let them enjoy their well-deserved holidays (they don't get much in China anyways) and let them do the cases without any rush when they come back in a bit more than a week.

 

[gruso]

Bloggers: ED has stated that he's not 100% sure, so let's wait for Craig or Fatih to confirm before posting.

[edit]

They were unable to make all of the parts in time (in any numbers worth shipping). So they will finish the run on the 22nd+.

This just means that all the Pandoras will probably ship in a steady flow from then, rather than a small batch first.

 

[mali]

I posted a video here:
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VmRLv9IhyTI
This is not at all optimized, but you can already hear how the sound is clearly superior to what we could get on the gp2x/psp/etc, and runs perfect, no frameskip.

Hatari also can run hard drive images, so you can mount the SD card as a hard drive, and other awesome stuff. Hell, run the MIDI out a USB MIDI device and use Notator/Cubase

Heres the desc I put in the video:
Wish youtube jwoudl actually save the damned description I've typed in 5 times..
Pandora is a combination UMPC(netbook) and gaming machine in one, from Open Pandora.
Hatari is a very good open source Atari ST emulator.
Atari ST is a 16/32bit machine, that was the primary competition to the Amiga.

(Atari ST runs Time Bandits, Dungeon Master, Captive, Xenon, Civilization 1, Monkey Island, lots of greats. plus is a full GUI OS with WordPerfect etc, good times!)
Hatari is set to no frameskip, fullscreen, pixel doubling to fill the screen (overscan borders removed), audio on.

This is a fast port with no pandora optimization; not compiled with optimizations (which would speed it up 20%); running regular clock on Pandora (We could overclock another 30%). Using SDL (not as fast as gong raw.) On top of X11 full desktop (we could run without X11 for more speed.)

So as you can see, full speed, no frameskip, and not even optimized.
Right away the SDL lib maps the Atari ST keyboard to the Pandora keyboard, and the joystick to the Pandora d-pad and buttons.
Finally you will have ST, Amiga and others in your pocket!

First produce of the recently received Pandoras - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRLv9IhyTI - Atari ST emu. Marvelous.

KEyboard works good; if you're quick you might notice..
1) up front the crack demo is there, and I have to hit 1 to pick Xenon out of the list of 3
2) next it shows the trainer white screen; hit space to go into the game without training

Then its 'fire button' to get into the game proper, which is mapped to to Y by SDL.
Yes, Dungeon Master, Captive, Millenium 2200, Civ 1, Time Bandits, all work.
I was tempted to geek out and show 3d modelling in mono-ST mode in a CAD, but thats gong too far
Next up ... *Secrets*

Must sleep now; worked day and night for a month or two straight, and free time all next week ... oh yeah But first, to sleep a few days.

Awsome, Will the analog nub be used as a mouse? If so this will really be like a portable ST!
Can't wait to test. This probably means HDD images are supported which will rock.
Any chance after this is done maybe a Handy port with 4X pixel quad?
Great work is such short time

Analog doesn'tmap 'magicly' to mouse; I'd have to code that. (not hard)
Touchscreen maps to mouse right off, which is sexy.

Did you notice the audio quality? I figured oyu'd pick that up right away, I was waiting to see what you'd say Course I was rocking back and forth for no good reason so you probably can't hear very well, half the time

HDD images work; this is a full Hatari port from current source (1.3.1 I think).

(Thread: Is it still possible to order from the first batch?)

We have been sorting the orders again, weirdly even now people still cancel, and a few orders are always never paid (we are cancelling every single one of these now).

So while you might get an email at the moment saying 'Please wait' or even no reply for a few days, if there is a Pandora available you will get an email, we just need to do the final 'sort'.

After that we will email out information on batch 2.

New OS status table:
http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=13&lang=en
OS posts by ED:
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52007-what-does-this-mean/page__view__findpost__p__814137
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52007-what-does-this-mean/page__view__findpost__p__814140
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52007-what-does-this-mean/page__view__findpost__p__814151
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52007-what-does-this-mean/page__view__findpost__p__814177

 

[Vlynndar]

[quote name=CraigiX's twitter]I'm very pleased with the Pandora 'appstore', we have made it as minimal and as functional as possible. I think you're going to like it.[/quote]

 

[mali]

Just recorded a new Pandora video. Should be online within the next hour

Geez. Tweaked some UAE settings and now Amiga runs fullspeed with sound at FS2! Without using an optimized ASM clone! That is GREAT!

Another video uploading. Turrican 2 and Superfrog on my Pandora. Whoopeee

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOtENx0QuZM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM2Z-N0_1_A

Yep, it was the original UAE, the slowest of them all.

And one thing I noticed: There is no Frameskip 0! The best setting is FS 1 (which means it draws EVERY frame) and the second one FS 2.
So basically... it runs fullspeed by just skipping one frame! The normal UAE!

Incredible... think about what PUAE (based on UAE4ALL) can do on this system!

 

[juniorm33]

The main thing to remember is you got the Pandora for less than cost price. We lose money on every one.

We don't have the final bill yet for the board population, but it will probably put the Pandora just a little over ($20-$30) the price charged.

Fingers crossed we can lower all that on batch 2, but due to high lead times some parts are actually now MORE expensive! FFFuuuu....

 

[mali]

(Repo?)

DJWillis has a concept in mind, I think it's based around OPKGs and might as well be a standard repository.
Additionally you can also download a full image to reflash in case you broke something (or if you want to have a OS to play around on your SD Card)

EvilDragon: I really don't understand why you and Craig aren't 100% enthusiastic about hosting your own repository for Pandora users - if you had a standard repo at openpandora.org, it would mean you have a channel directly to your customers to get new software - it doesn't have to have commercial/emulator-stuff in it, but it would be a fantastic thing indeed if we get our Pandoras and can then just use the repo to stay up to date with the official factory software updates.

Guys, we discussed this at least 1000 times already.
IF there is a package manager repository for OPKG, it's for firmware upgrades, NOT for new software (well, except for things that do make it officially into the firmware).

Package managers always do keep their database and stuff inside of the rootfs - that's sitting in the NAND and that's already pretty much cramped with the base system we have.

For new software (games, emulators, etc.) that you will keep on your SD Card, using OPKG is not working since once you remove the SD Card, you'd have tons of dependency problems, obsolete desktop entries of games that don't exist anymore since they maybe were on an old SD Card that broke, etc.

It would be userunfriendly like hell and could break the system easily.

For easy usage, we created the PND files. Download, put them on the SD and that's it. You can even download them using the Pandora. No unpacking, no installing, nothing. It just works.
The game appears in the system and disappears when you remove the card. No dependencies, no obsolete menu entries, nothing.
If you switch to a new SD Card, simply copy the files from the old one over and that's it.

Basically, a repository is just a site where you get all the files you want. That's what the archive is (which will probably replaced by craigs appstore, once it's tested out, since it can do more stuff than the old software I use).

So there will be two repositories: One for games and apps and one for the firmware including updates.

A "Full Repository" is a lot of work and space, and given Pandora is a jiggered Angstrom, why not depend on the Ansgtrom repo?
ie: The OP folks will certainly keep the official firmwares and patches and unique packages, as well as the pnd-repository.
IS it really necessary for them to have _Every possible Linux package_ available as well, when they are already in other locations?
As to what OP plans on it, I don't know; I'm just throwing that out there .. I for one woudl not expect OP to have a full repo, just the important bits as I say

jeff

DJWillis thought something up AFAIK, and I trust him

My best guess is to have on OPKG repository with all stuff related to the Pandora firmware. Nothing more.
That should be tested and stable.

If anybody wants to install stuff from the Angström repository, there is no problem, he can do this.
But as this might break something in the OS, I wouldn't want that to be included automatically.

Just think about what happened just two days ago: Angström had a broken package in the repo and starting games using PNDs didn't work anymore.
That's something we don't want to happen.

I.e., if the PND system stops working because a package is installed, it's not the package's fault, it's the PND systems.

Sorry, that wasn't the case here. Angström updated the "file" package (which is a tool that finds out what kind of type a file is) but didn't include the magic files. Therefore, the file command didn't work anymore.
That's not a fault of PND, but of Angström. Yet, it was an unstable package, but it's in their official repo and people might've installed that.

By the way, you ARE using packages for Pandora software, right? You're not just dumping executables into the image; you create packages and then install them, right? Right?
(really hoping that your answer isn't "no")

At the moment, there are no packages as packages are only for updates and we currently use full images for developing.
It's baked with recipes according to Angströms standards.
You can bake your own OS, just head over to the Angström site, learn how to do that and then head over to git.openpandora.org to find all the recipes you need.

If you think everything will be that bad, what prevents you from creating your own OS?

 

[mali]

The OP team did get the money from prepaying people (i recon they needed a lone from the bank this customers lone is sneaky).
That people pay for the materials needed and that all the development was don is just a plain lie.
Most surprising to me is that it is not a down-payment of about 50% but he full whooping 100%.

Yeah, sure. We have millions of USD lying around from the preorderers on our account.
How could the project have worked out with just 50% of the money when even with the full 100% we are way beyond a break-even?
We did pay way more than just a few dollars from our own accounts. We're happy to regain our loss with the second batch.

Well i am happy i am a sceptic i never put my money in.

Thank god not all from the community were like you.
If they were, the whole project would've never been started. If we wouldn't have gotten enough interest and preorders back then, we wouldn't have continued the whole project.

I can fully understand why people would NOT take the risk to pay us in advance for the device. But the funny thing is that most of those only tell us we did do bad and make it sound like it is the most easy thing to take on such a project without having millions of USD handy.

I distrusted it when the so called bank fiasco happened.
For me it was prove to be a scam ore just a sign that these people did not have a sound business plan.
Well we know now it was the second.

Oh, I see. You're a business plan expert and would've done all what we did here way better?
Cool. Why didn't you offer your services back then instead of telling us we did do bad?

According to the business plan:
We did have a plan, and that did work out well. It just took way longer than we planned, because of a lot of things happened we didn't see coming (often also due to not having big knowledge about such big projects).
Our plan was to produce an OpenSource handheld with participation of the community.
People were (and are) helping us for free to fullfill this plan. We never were experts in what we were doing and we never claimed we are.
Yes, there were too many delays which should't have happened. There were a lot of things we could've done better. But you know what? It's easy to tell afterwards.
If you have no idea how long such a development takes, it's hard to estimate something. Even with asking the companies that produce that stuff: They usually tell you it won't take long and then another month is over.
If we ever produce a second handheld, it would be way easier since we now A LOT more about case moulding, designing, etc. and can surely plan everything out way better.

There is one interesting thing though:
Because we're just a bunch of amateurs behind such a huge project, with is being funded by a community and no bank or investor, we stirred up a lot of interest.
The next issue of the Handelsblatt in Germany (the biggest financial magazine in Germany out there, read by all the managers from big companies) will have an article about the Pandora - as this is the first time they've seen such a big project with that interesting funding and idea behind it.

It's unusual in our business world today that people will preorder and wait for so long. That no investors or banks are involved. That a bunch of people creates such a device without having much knowledge about it except for knowing they will try to solve every problem on their way there is. That the community can actually TALK to the developers behind it, follow every step.

If it was just a normal device made with the help of Investors, that magazine wouldn't have cared about.
They do because it happened the way it did.

Let me tell you once more:
I'm not happy with all those delays (nobody is). It did cost me more money than I expected (I have to pay about 500 EUR each month to get everything running, so each month without delivery is a 500 EUR loss for me).
Yes, we could've made a lot of things better if we would've had more experience.

Yes, I can understand why a lot of people would not preorder and wait for the device. They might really need the money and couldn't possibly risk to help out with such a risky project.

However, I CANNOT understand why people try to tell us we shouldn't have taken the preorder money or only part of it, etc.
If we wouldn't have done it this way, the Pandora would never exist.

If you are unhappy with the project, don't give us your money and that's it. If you believe in the project and want to support us, pay us so we can produce that thing and follow what is happening.

It's as easy as that.

There were 7 rev3 cases. Skeezix, DaveC, zodttd got one and posted here about it. Slaanesh should get one according to Craig, put didn't post, yet. So possibly 3 left we don't know anything about, yet.

Squidge, cpasjuste and DJWillis, as far as I remember.

Adventus has one too and so does Pickle.

 

[Awakening]

Perhaps you want this. And thanks for updating this thread Mali, I really appreciate it since I don't miss anything

ED:
I have a few questions about the OS. On the SD card there are no subfolders inside the menu folder. Do these PND files show up inside the game manu because they are specified as games inside the file? Would it be possible for me to organize my files somehow? It would be really nice if I could organize them into subfolders if I want.

Yes, the category is included in the PND file, therefore it appears in the right spot in any Linux desktop or PMenu.

You can also create as many subdirectories and put them there. PNDs can be run by simply doubleclicking them, so feel free to organize them whereever you want.

Does the Netbook Launcher or PMenu support multitasking?

Netbook Launcher yes. It's basically just an app running on a Window Manager.
PMenu no, it's basically a console style (PSP, gp2x, etc.) launcher.

The Netbook Launcher does not differentiate between a click and a drag, what I mean is that when you drag the finger on the screen it should not register it as clicking on buttons. This makes it easer to scroll around and then you tap the screen to open something.

The netbook launcher is still in early development, so there are things that should be enhanced and fixed

 

[mali]

But then _PND_that_assumes_package_exists_because_it_claims_you_are_running_standard_ will fail.

That's my (users) fault then for doing something that's not supported - i see no problem. The only problem that i see could be that the space on NAND will not allow for this (== they prefer to have feature X instead of the package database), and for this i'm suggesting a development image (for an SD card) should be made available for download.

But that's the point - our image IS a standard Angström image. It's exactly created according to their bitbake-rules.
ALL you need is already at the GIT: http://git.openpandora.org
You can change the rules to whatever you like and bake your image.

And all that stuff that is baked in there can be removed with OPKG. So you CAN do all this. Why shouldn't you?
But you won't find much you could remove in our image, except for if you want to scrap X or XFCE4.
It's basically a minimal system with X, useful libraries and some useful programs like the webbrowser, ClawsMail, NetworkManager, etc.
Not much to remove at all.

I'll propably swap xmms for audacious (why you're still going with XMMS?... IIRC its old and not so well maintained, though it does do the task) or amarok (the version used with kde 3 ....) if possible. Claws mail will be scrapped, i only use gmail with the web interface...

Simple: There's no Audacious in the Angström repos, only XMMS.
Amarok won't work, as it needs tons of KDE stuff which isn't there.

We want to exchange it with Exaile once we find the time to do that.
Exaile is way better for proper music listening

P-UAE does run, but its not looking much different than UAE
I finally have UAE4ALL running with some controls and things are looking good. I would like to add scaling, fix bugs and should be good to go. Much faster than the others.

http://twitpic.com/13ojww - Thanks to notaz, we now got a working battery meter. You can also configure warnings and automatic shutdown

Skeezix' text adventure
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52067-a-teaser-for-you-retro-fanatics-text-adventures-ftw/

 

[mali]

There's a new Pic on MWeston's Photobucket-Page.
Have a look
The Comment from MW is

Now with more hacker points to void your warranty even faster.

EDIT 2: and what's that unfinished looking part on the upper right?!

Looks like the insulation was scraped away to obtain a nice big 0V measurement point.

Nope, that's to connect the shielding of the LCD ribbon cable so that it passes CE

from the blog

Update: Never content to leave a question unanswered, pandoratoday.de blogger Screeny dropped Michael Weston a line to ask what this 5th board revision is all about. The reply:

Hi,

There is not much to say. We made 105 rev4 boards. I tweaked a couple things and added a lot more test points, then called it rev5.

Rev5 is the paying customer’s board, rev4 [was] for testing and for devs to work with.

Michael

so just a lot of extra measuring points

 

[gruso]

frankly, i lost interest in pandora but i still develop PUAE (now, 2.0.2 b6 and it has most of the features of winuae 2.0.2)
and i assume EvilDragon has uae4all not puae so both are different.

Gnostic puae infact does run on pandora I compiled it a couple days ago, had to hack a couple things to get it to compile though. We have uae, puae, and uae4all running.

 

[Qwertyuiop]

ED Twitter

Standby mode working, battery LED blinks on low power, shuts down on critical power and display goes off when closing lid. Thanks devs!

http://twitter.com/EvilDragon1717/statuses/9267310333

 

[mali]

(bootable SD)

As above, you shouldn't need it.

However, to make a bootable SD is something like that, yeah, though the script bits depend on the Linux distro you run it on. ("mke2fs" versus "mkfs.ext2" that sort of thing.)

In general, I imagine people will float around a SD-image (like an .iso), and just write that to an SD when you're in a pinch

But yeah, essentially you make either 1 SD with two partitions on it (fat for boot, ext2/3fs for OS image), or 2 SDs (1 for boot, the other for OS image), or other arrangements (SD boot, image on NAND, etc.) It really is only a couple steps to do on Linux or BSD, and a bit more effort on Windows.

But not generally needed except for techhies

jeff

I guess booting off an SD Card when we got U-Boot installed in the NAND will be easier

It's only a bit complicated creating bootable SD Cards when you have no bootloader on anything installed on the Pandora (which is the case with our development units)

Did you get your Pandora, Ad?

Yeah i did. Haven't had much time to play with it and get it running properly (blame work). I don't have much to add beyond Notaz/DaveC/Zodttd/Skeezix, but my impressions so far are:

• The controls are fantastic, there's no handheld device i know of that rivals this. The Nubs are really nice, its the first thing everyone wants to touch.
• It has a very small footprint, makes the screen looks really large. It is quite thick compared to DS / PSP but i actually find it more comfortable (easier to grip).
• Everything is really solid. The plastic is very rigid and feels thick, i can see this thing being very durable.
• The Battery cover design is nifty, works really well.
• Even though this is just a prototype it has quite decent build quality, the only obvious flaw is the lid sits about 1mm lower on one side.
• The matte black suits it very well, there's too much glossy crap around nowdays.

I'll show some pictures of mupen64 running or something when i get a chance.

Pandora button, power button, lid close and other things are configured as part of libpnd.. Pndevmapperd . You can alter what the buttons thus do.
One thing we,ve had to wrestle with is never knowing what environment.. X or no x? Xfce, pmenu, ubuntu netbook launcher or other? Could even be anoher distro.. And sdl, OpenGL, or x11 API?

It makes some things tough (ie: If an app is fullscreen sdl on /Dev/fb, hard to have another app switch onto the top, but if it's x11 then you can, etc.. MS has it easy

skeephone

I believe this is the datasheet for the DAC, although I just found it in a thread so I'm not 100% sure:

http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/pcm1773.html

Some similar threads:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/45252-can-anyone-report-on-music-sound-quality
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/45093-details-and-specs-of-the-pandoras-sound-card
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50015-the-pandora-sound-chip
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/50518-pandora-sound-hardware
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/44508-audio-hardware

(Look for Guru posts, MWeston in particular).

Regarding software, you'll have plenty to keep you busy once a few key people start porting stuff.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/47362-music-making-software-daws-sequencers-recorders-etc-for-pandora
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/51536-music-creator
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/51424-pandora-audiomusic-sequencermixer
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/49917-csoundpd-pro-audio
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/46855-pandora-and-the-ol-mucking-about-with-sound-aspect

 

[gruso]

ED Twitter

A quick way to run an app: Press Pandora-Button, type in part of the name and press Enter. Works nicely in latest OS with XFCE4

http://twitter.com/E...uses/9280412148