So I got my Pandora....

[squaresosig]

So recently I received my Pandora in the mail, and found that it had came in a normal cardboard box instead of the wooden box I was expecting, as well as no signature... Now I don't mind that too much, its the Pandora I want, but its still nice to have the nice box (I like boxes, i have a lot of them) and I would be very thankful if anybody can explain what happened, was it decided that they were to much of a hassle or something to that effect ?

First of all, I am enjoying my Pandora, it is a useful school tool, its charge is brilliant, its overclocking software is so simple to use, I love it, the usb port especially, even if it only seems to work with usb drives from my experience.

The pnd system is very cool and easy to use.

Emulation:

For the most part i have managed to get the emulators working quite well, the PS1, nes, snes, megardrive and others work near flawlessly as far as I have seen, however I have ran into some problems.

The gameboy emulators do not seem to work too well, if I can find the game (if the UI works) the game will either be tiny or discoloured, cut in half and in the shape of a parallellagram, so any help with that would be greatly appreciated. 

My next and much more painful problem is that of qemu. I have come to the conclusion that it is evil, I followed the wiki, couldn't find out how to get qemu manager to make a 0.14.1 machine, and I looked for a way to get it to, and I found that qemu is much better on linux, so I'm trying to install ubuntu on virtualbox so i can make a virtual machine in that, and ubuntu isnt cooperating, and I try to install directly on the Pandora, and that's not working, nor the floppy, cd or shard folder work, and it seems so hopeless and waaa all I want to do is play TA and starcraft

Music:

I had read that the Pandora was very good at driving headphones and producing sound, and I agree, however using it as a media player is a little different, I havent found any players that are that easy to use, deadbeef works but I can only navigate in one big list, and rockbox seems basic (don't want to sound like I'm moaning, sorry), so it seems like its back to my phone for that... oh well, that really wasn't what it was designed for. 

Also on a tangent I attempted to use audacity to record some audio off of the mic, and the first two mics didn't work and the third killed audacity to the point i had to delete the appdata file so it would open... so yeah :/

Sorry for maybe seeming as though I am just complaining, I do really like the Pandora, and will be buying the next one most probably, especially if it can run newer versions of windows as a 'other os' (it must be admitted that windows has a huge selection of good software) but anyway, thank you very much for reading this, and I hope that my ranting didn't annoy you too much.

 

[apersonthinks]

For gameboy emulation, either change the video settings in gambatte to "Only scale by integer factors" or to "None". Or you can use gbc.emu.

 

[LTStone]

It will grow on you more I bet, Also for more "regular" music players you can always try the ones in android like Poweramp etc. 

 

[squaresosig]

For gameboy emulation, either change the video settings in gambatte to "Only scale by integer factors" or to "None". Or you can use gbc.emu.

well I managed to get into the setting and fix all that, looks great now, thank you very much ^.^

It will grow on you more I bet, Also for more "regular" music players you can always try the ones in android like Poweramp etc. 

currently i haven't got android working, but I will definitely look into it, although it may be easier to use my android phone itself... it doesn't have a flip screen lol, thanks though

 

[Godmil]

The wooden boxes were done for a short time, but I think they were too expensive to keep up. On ED's site you can order pandoras and pay extra for the wooden box now.

 

[squaresosig]

The wooden boxes were done for a short time, but I think they were too expensive to keep up. On ED's site you can order pandoras and pay extra for the wooden box now.

poo :/ oh well..... I hope I stil get my icontrolpad display case thing 

 

[2bit]

Glad you got your Pandora

 

[Nintendo]

Congrats, mate~

 

[kirkanoss]

was it a 1ghz think only they got the box and think they ran out awail back. also would try smplayer2 for your audio/vid needs love it myself now. also for starcraft you can play it using Stratagus

 

[mcobit]

Congrats on getting your Pandora.


About qemu: please follow the wiki closely and use a desktop PC with qemumanager or qemu directly from commandline to setup an os.


A bit more information on what exactly doesn't work would be nice, so people can actually help you.


About windows as other os for the Pandora: Windows is not arm, but x86/x64 software. So it cannot run on arm socs.


Yes, there is windows rt for arm, but it won't be able to play any of your x86 games like Starcraft.


And to answer the next question:


There are a lot of reasons, why the Pandora or a potential successor will most likely not have a x86 CPU.


Enjoy your new toy

 

[Mr_Loon]

Hi & Welcome & please do tell us more about your philosophy

...
the usb port especially, even if it only seems to work with usb drives from my experience.

To use USB 1 devices with Pandora you need to attach a USB2 hub, power off the pandora, attach the hub, power on, enable USB host, then you should be able to use a mouse / keyboard etc. via the hub
 

The pnd system is very cool and easy to use.

It sure is, have you tried PND Manager yet? If not then give it a go, it's an awesome bit of software.

Music:
 
I had read that the Pandora was very good at driving headphones and producing sound, and I agree, however using it as a media player is a little different, I havent found any players that are that easy to use, deadbeef works but I can only navigate in one big list, and rockbox seems basic (don't want to sound like I'm moaning, sorry), so it seems like its back to my phone for that... oh well, that really wasn't what it was designed for. 

IMHO the best simple music player available for the Pandora is the one that comes with Ginge navigate with the D Pad to the musical note symbol and then use use the B button to select tracks / directories IIRC.

Good luck & have fun

 

[PokeParadox]

I would also say to give Rockbox a chance - It's very powerful for a music player that was originally intended as an open alternative formware for iPods and before that other mp3 players and also it supports skipping the track via the shoulder buttons - I use this extensively at work

 

[squaresosig]

Congrats on getting your Pandora.


About qemu: please follow the wiki closely and use a desktop PC with qemumanager or qemu directly from commandline to setup an os.


A bit more information on what exactly doesn't work would be nice, so people can actually help you.


About windows as other os for the Pandora: Windows is not arm, but x86/x64 software. So it cannot run on arm socs.


Yes, there is windows rt for arm, but it won't be able to play any of your x86 games like Starcraft.


And to answer the next question:


There are a lot of reasons, why the Pandora or a potential successor will most likely not have a x86 CPU.


Enjoy your new toy

Right now my qemu problems include not being able to set the machine to qemu 0.14.1 (I think thats the right number) as I only have 0.11.1, and when I try to add new ones it says it cannot connect to a server.

As for qemu on the pandora itself, I don't really know how i will work it, mounting more than one cd image is difficult, and although i managed to install win95 on the pandora directly, i ended up with no floppy, cd or shared folder access, mounting a floppy as described on the wiki didnt do anything, and mounting a <512 meg shared folder stopped qemu launching, but then again I understand I wasn't meant to install it that was anyway. 

As for the windows stuff, I havent kept up to date with the pandora 2, and did not know if it would still be arm or change to x86, or something else, but i guess not :/ 

by the way, how would copy protection work with cd games in qemu, I have had many experiences running games in virtual machines where it rejects the disk.

anyway thank you for your help, I know you have contributed a lot to qemu on pandora and I am thankful 

To use USB 1 devices with Pandora you need to attach a USB2 hub, power off the pandora, attach the hub, power on, enable USB host, then you should be able to use a mouse / keyboard etc. via the hub

I will try that, It should work for mouses, but idk about hacked ide drives I Need to buy a new one, but for now its my only working drive... 

It sure is, have you tried PND Manager yet? If not then give it a go, it's an awesome bit of software.

I have!, It was useful considering I set up my pandora folder when I bought the thing almost a year ago

IMHO the best simple music player available for the Pandora is the one that comes with Ginge navigate with the D Pad to the musical note symbol and then use use the B button to select tracks / directories IIRC.

Just looked at it, its not bad, I will use this for playing music when I need to, its still a bit fiddly though, but thank you!

 

[MrBazil2k]

Hello there,

do not forget about "Audacious" as an music player as well. =)

That one has got the option to look like "XMMS" or "Winamp"

Thats the one I use for music playing on the Pandora at the moment.

 

[crow_riot]

There's also GMU music player: http://wejp.k.vu/gmu/gmu_0_9_1_released

 

[ekianjo]

Shameless plug. Suggestion of software to use on PAndora in different categories

http://www.pandoralive.info/?page_id=9

 

[Kumaki]

I would also say to give Rockbox a chance - It's very powerful for a music player that was originally intended as an open alternative formware for iPods and before that other mp3 players and also it supports skipping the track via the shoulder buttons - I use this extensively at work

Yeah, I tried Rockbox, but I use Audacity now.

I liked Rockbox's ability to skip tracks with the shoulder button, I wish Audacity would do that...instead you have to use letters on the keyboard...not so good when you have the lid closed - which I normally do, as I am piping music thru my car speakers.

But setting up Playlists was a grand-royal biatch in Rockbox, and, even when I managed, it would only pick 1,000 songs for the playlist, and the other about 1,000 of my songs would drop off the face of the earth.,

And scolling thru that huge list was not too fun, either, but you COULD search by Title or Artist...and skip to the right letter, so it was not so bad for scrolling thru the list, if you figured out how to work it.

Overall, Rockbox just didn't do what I needed it to do, unfortunately...and it was not the most user-friendly player available.  Overall, that has to be audacious.  I jjust wish they would update that thing to support track-skipping via the shoulder buttons!

 

[gotwake424]

I would also say to give Rockbox a chance - It's very powerful for a music player that was originally intended as an open alternative formware for iPods and before that other mp3 players and also it supports skipping the track via the shoulder buttons - I use this extensively at work

Yeah, I tried Rockbox, but I use Audacity now.

I liked Rockbox's ability to skip tracks with the shoulder button, I wish Audacity would do that...instead you have to use letters on the keyboard...not so good when you have the lid closed - which I normally do, as I am piping music thru my car speakers.

But setting up Playlists was a grand-royal biatch in Rockbox, and, even when I managed, it would only pick 1,000 songs for the playlist, and the other about 1,000 of my songs would drop off the face of the earth.,

And scolling thru that huge list was not too fun, either, but you COULD search by Title or Artist...and skip to the right letter, so it was not so bad for scrolling thru the list, if you figured out how to work it.

Overall, Rockbox just didn't do what I needed it to do, unfortunately...and it was not the most user-friendly player available.  Overall, that has to be audacious.  I jjust wish they would update that thing to support track-skipping via the shoulder buttons!

You can set audacity up to skip to next song with the shoulder buttons 

 

[Kumaki]

And how do you do that?  Enquiring minds want to know!!