Selling My Unit.. anyone interested ?


Disco Devil

Still Fresh
Joined
Apr 18, 2011
Messages
89
Immaculate condition overall (used in a DS case i will throw in) buttons,nubs & shoulders are all fine no screen bezel bowing or SD card slot issues.


I've had the unit for approx 1 month and overall i am extremely impressed with what the Pandora team has achieved here.. so why am i selling i hear you ask? ..simply put the state of the emulators we currently have (in my humble opinion) is hugely disappointing, i appreciate this is out of the teams hands, but quite frankly i expected better at this stage in the game (how long are people expected to wait for optimised emu's especially after waiting 2 and a half years already, as i did?).. no (decent) Mame (or FBA for that matter) N64 (my main reason for purchase) 'plays' a handful of games, unoptimised Snes emu, Scumm no screen scaling, many have quite frankly terrible & confusing UI's without any useful documentation & almost all seem to have very little or none at all screen scaling & graphical filter options.. why not??


Note to any devs reading this: Most emu's are far far too convoluted/particular and almost anti user friendly (and believe me i am far from an emulator novice)


I would certainly be interested in another unit when (if?) more mature & optimised emulators ever became available, but i won't be holding my breath..


Anyone interested please PM me.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Immaculate condition overall (used in a DS case i will throw in) buttons,nubs & shoulders are all fine no screen bezel bowing or SD card slot issues.


I've had the unit for approx 1 month and overall i am very impressed with what the Pandora team has achieved here.. why am i selling i hear you ask? ..simply put the state of the emulators we currently have (in my humble opinion) is hugely disappointing, i appreciate this is out of the teams hands, but quite frankly i expected better at this stage in the game (how long are people expected to wait for optimised emu's especially after waiting 2 and a half years already, as i did?).. no (decent) Mame (or FBA for that matter) N64 (my main reason for purchase) 'plays' a handful of games, Unoptimised Snes emu, Scumm no screen scaling, many have quite frankly terrible UI's without any useful documentation & almost all seem to have very little or none at all screen scaling & graphical filter options.. why not??


Note to any devs reading this most, emu's are far far too convoluted/particular and almost anti user friendly (and believe me i am far from an emulator novice)


I would certainly be interested in another unit when (if?) more mature & optimised emulators ever became available, but i won't be holding my breath..


Anyone interested please PM me.

Hi


Good post.


Have to agree with what you say, lots of emulators have little or no first time user documentation and are less than user friendly.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Cmon m8 show me a beter handheld mame anywhere else mame4all is practically perfect mame 106 and sdl while buggy run games no other handheld can n64 is a work in progress snes and md are practically perfect, yes i understand your point but thats part of the parcel with the pandora its not as if theres 10 million pandoras out there like the psp so hombrew projects are not going too be as high on the pandora but the next 8 months are going to be very interesting a little faith goes a long way chin up!!!
 
What's with all these people selling their Pandas? It's not like there are better alternatives out there!?

I expect that after all the hype, the months of watching devs like ari64 discuss N64 emulation amongst themselves, that people assumed that the emulators would all be of reasonable quality... It turns out that this is not the case in the slightest. As far as usability and compatibility goes, N64 is probably the worst of the lot unfortunately, and there doesn't seem to be any progress being made. In fact, the only software that seems to get polish is pretty much made by Notaz.


Of course, the problem that the hardware is getting very old now doesn't help - even though it's still a very capable device, people are looking at smart phones and the upcoming NGP and seeing the Pandora in a very poor light. Having excellent gaming controls and a real keyboard doesn't seem to be swinging things in the Pandora's favour :(


D.
 
Good overview, thanks babe.


Is N64 emulation progressing (usability and compatibility wise) on Android or is it at a stand-still as well?

As far as I can see, all N64 emulation on handhelds rely on Ari64's dynarec - and there's been no progress on that for quite some time now. I'm not sure if Ar64 can make any further optimisations; he may have done as much as is possible.


D.
 
Ok, that's good, in a away. Pandora isn't alone then. :)

Heh - don't take anything I say as gospel; although I'm pretty experienced in simple (interpretive) emulation, what Exophase and Ari64 get up to is way out of my league. They may yet surprise us all with something stunning... All I'm saying is that the lack of further developments may be an indication that we've hit the limit of what the Pandora can do. Looks like the Pandora isn't capable of N64 emulation, but is capable of everything from there down.


D.
 
I'm actually pretty happy with the N64 emulation on the pandora. Some games don't run, but there's still plenty to play.


Just looked at the NGP... and wow those specs are impressive. I wonder if there is a pin compatible OMAP Cortex A9 chip that could be used to update the pandora without needing to change the PCB design.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm actually pretty happy with the N64 emulation on the pandora. Some games don't run, but there's still plenty to play.


Just looked at the NGP... and wow those specs are impressive. I wonder if there is a pin compatible OMAP Cortex A9 chip that could be used to update the pandora without needing to change the PCB design.
I am certainly buying a NGP!!!
 
I wonder if there is a pin compatible OMAP Cortex A9 chip that could be used to update the pandora without needing to change the PCB design.

There isn't. The best you can upgrade to is DM3730, which offers Cortex-A8 at up to 1GHz, RAM up to 200MHz (over 166MHz now), and SGX530 up to around 200MHz (over 110MHz now).


I'm sure there's far more potential to optimize performance of the N64 emulator on the video side of things than the CPU side.
 
....and with the speed of production I am now worried that it will never take off enough to warrant a Pandora 2.


I pray that the slow speed through the queue is because it's taken up by brand new premium orders - otherwise board production really has halted.


At this rate it is looking like back end of year for mine and I am 1300-1400.


The new Android phones apart from the keyboard and nubs could blow the Pandora away if things do not improve.


Great concept etc but too many preorders to fill that is the pandoras failing unfortunately. Weeks drag on into months etc
 
....and with the speed of production I am now worried that it will never take off enough to warrant a Pandora 2.


I pray that the slow speed through the queue is because it's taken up by brand new premium orders - otherwise board production really has halted.


At this rate it is looking like back end of year for mine and I am 1300-1400.


The new Android phones apart from the keyboard and nubs could blow the Pandora away if things do not improve.


Great concept etc but too many preorders to fill that is the pandoras failing unfortunately. Weeks drag on into months etc

Wow. I have to say, I haven't really paid attention to production since my Pandora actually arrived... I was around 600-700 (even though my pandora's serial no is 1105), and I was seriously furious that it hadn't arrived by the end. I can't believe they haven't gotten to 1300 yet, I thought they'd be well into batch 2 by now.


In fact I was so disenchanted with the whole thing that I didn't really touch the pandora until 2 weeks ago (on my holidays), and it arrived around xmas. The week before it arrived I was so pissed off I actually sent an email asking to cancel... I didn't get a reply but then it arrived.


I am really happy with it now, but my USB doesn't work so I need to do an RMA. At the moment I am enjoying it too much though, and am fearful that if I send it back I will be waiting another year before it returns! It's a shame because USB host was a big selling point for me.


EDIT: Correction, I was actually 400-500 in Craigs queue, but I did some guestimation maths and thought this meant I must be around 600-700 out of all pandoras.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I was around 600-700 (even though my pandora's serial no is 1105)
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but only the first 100 serial numbers are sequential - the rest are in random order. :p
 
is it maybe that it doesnt work because youre trying to use a usb 1.1 device on it w/o a usb2 hub?
 
I wonder if there is a pin compatible OMAP Cortex A9 chip that could be used to update the pandora without needing to change the PCB design.

There isn't. The best you can upgrade to is DM3730, which offers Cortex-A8 at up to 1GHz, RAM up to 200MHz (over 166MHz now), and SGX530 up to around 200MHz (over 110MHz now).


I'm sure there's far more potential to optimize performance of the N64 emulator on the video side of things than the CPU side.

That doesn't really sound worthwhile. How significant would the PCB re-design be - given that the CPU/GPU/Memory are essentially a single unit I guess the rest of the PCB can remain relatively unchanged (I guess there is also possibly the power management chip and regulators too though)?


I know the pandora isn't meant to compete with the likes of the NGP, and the 3 axis gyro, acc and magnetometer, cameras etc while nice are not really so important, but those CPU/GPU specs do seem to blow it out of the water.

I was around 600-700 (even though my pandora's serial no is 1105)
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but only the first 100 serial numbers are sequential - the rest are in random order. :p

Yeah... although I thought it was kind of semi-random!

is it maybe that it doesnt work because youre trying to use a usb 1.1 device on it w/o a usb2 hub?

I think it's properly borked
 
Shortly when 'NGP/PSP2/PSV/or whatever it'll be called' is launched...Smart phones will leap-frog it in terms of overall CPU performance, so SONY's new portable will be obsolete quicker than you can say blueberry pie.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top