Sleep Mode, Diagnostic/maint. Menu, Boot Off Usb?


danboid

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Mweston + Craig:

I take it Pandora will feature a sleep/stand-by mode to turn the screen off when not in use with an instant resume at the press of the power button? If I had to wait 3/4m or whatever for my Z to do a full boot every time I want to use it I would've never bought it. This is also one of the HUGE plus points it has over my increasingly archaic PC.

No BIOS bull at boot is lovely, I'd like to point out to those of you who've never used Linux on anything other than a normal PC.

Instead of having a BIOS screen on the Zaurus I've got 2 different menus, stored on a ROM, that I can boot into - the Maintenance Menu and the diagnostic menu. You access these special menus by holding down specific key combos whilst inserting the power after rebooting. The Maintenance Menu lets you choose which device to boot off and can also be used to restore the user drive. The diagnostic menu explains itself and I really wish my PC had a self-test app built onto ROM like my Zaurus. Its these features that made the Z 'unbrickable' without doing some real physical damage to the hardware and I'd want to be able to say the same of Pandora.

We'll have the option of booting off USB2 right?

EDIT

and how could I forget the emergency shell! The Z also has another key combo to boot to the minimalistic shell stored on the same rom.
 
Seems like a great idea to me. Shouldn't be too hard to implement as this stuff is mostly software, right? I think a diagnostics menu and emergency shell would be awesome for all kinds of things. Maybe with the serial driver loaded so that you can do some kernel debugging from a computer aswell.

And sleep mode would be a nice feature. I am sure they will support some advanced power management.
 
And some inbuilt "hold this key on bootup to start custom program X" functionality would be awesome, too. :)

But yes, 'bricksafety' through software like this would be really awesome, and pretty stupid if it were not implemented.
 
Yes, the machine will be pretty unbrickable. Even as far as someone coming along, hacking the user nand chip off (that contains the os), and replacing it with a completely blank one.

I'd also imagine there will be a way of copying files to/from sd/nand and editing files without needing an os (hotkey on startup/poweron), just in case you manage to fubar an init/boot script.
 
danboid said:
I take it Pandora will feature a sleep/stand-by mode to turn the screen off when not in use with an instant resume at the press of the power button? If I had to wait 3/4m or whatever for my Z to do a full boot every time I want to use it I would've never bought it. This is also one of the HUGE plus points it has over my increasingly archaic PC.
I was wondering about the possibility of a sleep/standby mode. Someone may have asked this already, but does Pandora know when her top is open? For me this could be just another great benefit of the clamshell.

ak
 
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Good idea. Perhaps we should even have a completely seperate ROM chip that has a minimal busybox with bash for emergency recovery.
 
atomicthumbs said:
Good idea. Perhaps we should even have a completely seperate ROM chip that has a minimal busybox with bash for emergency recovery.
Well, you could pass parameters to the kernel so it immediately launches bash or whatever just in case you fried an init script, etc; you could launch the default kernel just in case you compiled a new one that doesn't work, and you would always have the "reset everything to defaults". This wouldn't need a seperate rom chip (keeps costs down) and would be immune to you killing the os stored in nand.
 
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An effective Sleep Mode is ESSENTIAL for this device, and it should be configurable in a few different ways from a menu. So when you close the lid, whichever option you chose will take effect. Or, you can manually sleep from an option in the GUI, much like Start->Shut Down->Standby/Hibernate/Shut Down in the Windows GUI.

SOCs like OMAP3 provide a whole array of power saving and sleep modes.... some of which are extremely deep and use so little power, the machine could sit there for a week and use barely any battery life..... for me, a huge part of handheld gaming is being able to kill some time with it, and then when I need to do something shut the lid and put it away in my pocket. No fiddling with menus or options, and when I take it back out, no waiting for it to boot up!

Boot time should be entirely done away with, if there's an effective sleep mode and you charge the unit regularly. There should really also be a hibernate mode that saves current RAM contents to an SD card or some other nonvolatile RAM for rapid power-on. Anything else would really just be a waste of the OMAP series' myriad of power saving measures....
 
Stealth Bagel said:
An effective Sleep Mode is ESSENTIAL for this device, and it should be configurable in a few different ways from a menu. So when you close the lid, whichever option you chose will take effect. Or, you can manually sleep from an option in the GUI, much like Start->Shut Down->Standby/Hibernate/Shut Down in the Windows GUI.

SOCs like OMAP3 provide a whole array of power saving and sleep modes.... some of which are extremely deep and use so little power, the machine could sit there for a week and use barely any battery life..... for me, a huge part of handheld gaming is being able to kill some time with it, and then when I need to do something shut the lid and put it away in my pocket. No fiddling with menus or options, and when I take it back out, no waiting for it to boot up!

Boot time should be entirely done away with, if there's an effective sleep mode and you charge the unit regularly. There should really also be a hibernate mode that saves current RAM contents to an SD card or some other nonvolatile RAM for rapid power-on. Anything else would really just be a waste of the OMAP series' myriad of power saving measures....
Hopefully it will include a total power off mode where it uses 0 power too. This way if you put it away for a few weeks you won't be greeted to a totally dead battery when you go to use it. That was annoying as hell with the PSP. It was fine if you babysit the thing and remember to keep charging it, otherwise it was a real pain.
 
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The thing is though, even if the CPU, GPU and most other major functional blocks in the OMAP3 can shut off entirely, SDRAM needs constant refreshing to keep its contents, so the memory controller and RAM must always be powered... which is why I suggested a "Sleep" where RAM is powered, and a "Deep Sleep" where it's copied to SD, NAND or whatever storage is provided, and the unit shuts down entirely.
 
Squidge said:
atomicthumbs said:
Good idea. Perhaps we should even have a completely seperate ROM chip that has a minimal busybox with bash for emergency recovery.
Well, you could pass parameters to the kernel so it immediately launches bash or whatever just in case you fried an init script, etc; you could launch the default kernel just in case you compiled a new one that doesn't work, and you would always have the "reset everything to defaults". This wouldn't need a seperate rom chip (keeps costs down) and would be immune to you killing the os stored in nand.


ah, but what if you mangle bash/busybox?
 
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atomicthumbs said:
ah, but what if you mangle bash/busybox?
You'd have to be pretty daft to do something like that... But even in that case, there would still be a backup just in case.
 
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danboid said:
Mweston + Craig:

I take it Pandora will feature a sleep/stand-by mode to turn the screen off when not in use with an instant resume at the press of the power button? If I had to wait 3/4m or whatever for my Z to do a full boot every time I want to use it I would've never bought it. This is also one of the HUGE plus points it has over my increasingly archaic PC.

No BIOS bull at boot is lovely, I'd like to point out to those of you who've never used Linux on anything other than a normal PC.

Instead of having a BIOS screen on the Zaurus I've got 2 different menus, stored on a ROM, that I can boot into - the Maintenance Menu and the diagnostic menu. You access these special menus by holding down specific key combos whilst inserting the power after rebooting. The Maintenance Menu lets you choose which device to boot off and can also be used to restore the user drive. The diagnostic menu explains itself and I really wish my PC had a self-test app built onto ROM like my Zaurus. Its these features that made the Z 'unbrickable' without doing some real physical damage to the hardware and I'd want to be able to say the same of Pandora.

We'll have the option of booting off USB2 right?

EDIT

and how could I forget the emergency shell! The Z also has another key combo to boot to the minimalistic shell stored on the same rom.
I'm still going through the datasheets but everything I see shows a native support for an instant on feature and a low power sleep mode (to be created in software). This is something I have always wanted to have in a next gen handheld and that is how Pandora will be. A full reboot should only be necessary when you crash the system testing new code or if you want to completely power down the system for longer periods of time.

The system will support a key press sequence on power up that can boot from the serial port, the USB OTG port or the SD card slot 1. This simplistic approach to low level boot up guarantees the device is unbrickable.

Also, a first stage bootloader can be created in software to boot from multiple images on any input source on Pandora. You could have a different image programmed into each letter of the alphabet if you wanted. I don't see this being a popular choice, but it could be done. This is something that you could do on a GP2X as well (with game buttons) so it isn't particularly unique.
 
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Yup, the first thing the Pandora will do from a fresh power on is launch the SOS*. This will let you launch your own code (pre-Linux), a Linux kernel stored anywhere (so you could test kernels without fearing of breaking the installed kernel in nand, or have a recovery sd card if you wanted and boot Linux from that completely), or the built in recovery software.

* SOS = Squidgey Operating System **
** = Maybe subject to name change(s) :D
 
Does a standard Sleep mode and advanced Power-Save features require a "soft-off" Button (like PC's have) instead of a Full Hardware Power Switch (like the GP2X has)?

Oh and please don't make such an fragile, cheap and poor Power Slider like the GP2X has. ;)
 
fusion_power said:
Does a standard Sleep mode and advanced Power-Save features require a "soft-off" Button (like PC's have) instead of a Full Hardware Power Switch (like the GP2X has)?
Sleep mode and powersave functions will be software dependant, so they can be an option in a menu, a switch, or whatever.
 
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MWeston said:
I'm still going through the datasheets but everything I see shows a native support for an instant on feature and a low power sleep mode (to be created in software). This is something I have always wanted to have in a next gen handheld and that is how Pandora will be. A full reboot should only be necessary when you crash the system testing new code or if you want to completely power down the system for longer periods of
How will this total power down be handled? Will you be able to do this as easy as turning off the unit? Or will it involve some complex series of keypresses/menu selections?

This is important to me as I use these for games and not PDA type things. As I said I hate to put the thing away for awhile only to go to use it and find a dead or half charged battery. Also with the ever draining battery you are forced to kill the battery as they have limited charge cycles. You are forced into wearing it out as you must keep charging while the system drains it even if not using. We still don't know how easy it will be to get a replacement battery, how much it will be, and if it will be possible to get it after a few years. It may be that when the battery stops taking a charge, the Pandora will be worthless(I hate that planned obsolescence). Hopefully that was well thought out.
 
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Relax DaveC, I'll be very surprised if you can't leave this thing a few (3+) months at least on a single battery charge (and most of that is simply because batteries discharge themselves over time). It's not going to copy the psp, as in full charge battery, not use it for 2 weeks, then you pick it up and it's 10% left.

However, if your going to leave it for a month or so unused, you should remove the battery as a precaution (not pandora specific - I'd say the same for any other equipment that takes batteries, whether rechargeable or not).
 
DaveC said:
How will this total power down be handled? Will you be able to do this as easy as turning off the unit? Or will it involve some complex series of keypresses/menu selections?

This is important to me as I use these for games and not PDA type things. As I said I hate to put the thing away for awhile only to go to use it and find a dead or half charged battery. Also with the ever draining battery you are forced to kill the battery as they have limited charge cycles. You are forced into wearing it out as you must keep charging while the system drains it even if not using. We still don't know how easy it will be to get a replacement battery, how much it will be, and if it will be possible to get it after a few years. It may be that when the battery stops taking a charge, the Pandora will be worthless(I hate that planned obsolescence). Hopefully that was well thought out.
Pandora has a power button like the PSP. You press it quickly to put the device to sleep or you can hold it down for a longer time to enter a full shutdown procedure. There is no hard switch like on the GP2X.

Each of these modes is implemented in software and there can be a configuration menu where each Pandora user can set up exactly what they want the power button to do (like a laptop power button) and exactly what sleep mode does. You could have it maintain network connections (like the Nokia N810) or you could have it back up the current state to the SD card and then completely power down or it could just go into a deep sleep where only the RAM is held up and the processor main clock is stopped and waiting for an interrupt to bring the system back up.

This configuration menu could also set an option to prompt the user with "are you sure?" when the power button is touched to prevent accidents or it could ignore the button if certain activities are occuring (like downloading something from the internet or accessing the SD cards or even if locked out because you set a software 'HOLD' feature).

I don't know what the PSP does when it goes to sleep. Maybe it doesn't power down as much as it should due to design choices? Pandora has been designed with low power and sleep modes in mind so we will see how well it works and how many weeks sleep mode is good for. As Squidge said, the battery does lose a little charge over time on its own but that shouldn't be too much.
 
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MWeston said:
Pandora has a power button like the PSP. You press it quickly to put the device to sleep or you can hold it down for a longer time to enter a full shutdown procedure. There is no hard switch like on the GP2X.

Each of these modes is implemented in software and there can be a configuration menu where each Pandora user can set up exactly what they want the power button to do (like a laptop power button) and exactly what sleep mode does. You could have it maintain network connections (like the Nokia N810) or you could have it back up the current state to the SD card and then completely power down or it could just go into a deep sleep where only the RAM is held up and the processor main clock is stopped and waiting for an interrupt to bring the system back up.
Could you have it just shut down completly and NOT save the current state to the SD card? If I am just playing SNES I really don't need it to save anything (like GP2X) and I am not too lazy to save the SNES game position etc if I want that (many times I won't). This would save time as well as card writes (and possible card corruption). I don't care about internet/network etc. I am sure there are some like me that will just use it as a game box and not need all of that extra stuff. Hopefully there will be a "clean mode" or something that. Will there be? Otherwise the first mod will be to put in a real power off switch, I hate that PSP "standby mode" thing.
 
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