So What Are The Musts For You?

[Falcon Delta]

I want one so I don't have to decide what games to bring with me while I'm out. I tend to play a huge amount of Gameboy games, so I bring quite a few cartriges with me. With the Pandora I'll have my entire collection with me from PSX down plus music and video. Another major plus is that I'll be able to do much of my schoolwork on it.

Oh, and Doom. I never leave the house without it.

 

[Game_over]

PSX
AMIGA (I've been missing out)
The games I'm working on for it
Online multi-player homebrew
SNES
NES
Genesis/CD
N64 (maybe)
Saturn (yeah right)

all playing at 8-10 hours of playtime (maybe 4-6 for online).

 

[clippa]

all playing at 8-10 hours of playtime (maybe 4-6 for online).

Is 8-10 hours the estimate with the processor running flat out? Like running an unoptimized, demanding emulator? Surely not :blink: I'd be happy with three to four in those situations. Is 8-10 hours for average use? I don't suppose there's been any real life testing of the battery yet has there?

 

[Chip]

Is 8-10 hours for average use? I don't suppose there's been any real life testing of the battery yet has there?

Preliminary tests had the battery lasting for 8.5 hours with the CPU under full load @500MHz but without wifi. Your mileage may vary, but 8 hours under "average" conditions should be no problem at all.

 

[clippa]

Blimey! Top banana

 

[torpor]

For me, the Pandora represents a development platform for *new* apps to be written, so first and foremost it'll be a target platform for my development efforts - music-making applications, synthesizer, plugins, etc.

Then, if I can get a bit of emulation happening, it'll be all about MAME, Amiga, PSX, Speccie, and ***ORIC-1/ATMOS*** emulation .. yes, I can't wait to get my chiclet fix from the 80's playing Harrier Jet, tee hee ..

 

[Tor]

For me it's most definitely as a Nokia N800 upgrade. Faster CPU, more battery, better/faster graphics pipeline, more memory.

 

[Exophase]

hmm. let me think.. ok:

* functioning kernel
* functional libc
* working sgx drivers
* working wifi drivers
* sshd
* bash

optional:

* good vectorizing arm c/c++ compiler
* working sd drivers
* working s-video out and a cable

Working SGX drivers over working SD drivers.. you have interesting priorities ^_- Not that that comes as much surprise.

I take it that like most people you will accept telnetd instead of sshd, I know I won't bother with ssh.

EDIT: Although, scp is nicer than tftp.

 

[Tor]

telnetd instead of sshd? So, the first time you log in to your device when connected to a wi-fi hotspot you're fine with your login password etc. being in the clear for anyone running tcpdump or the like on that network..

It's rhetorical in any case, as getting sshd to work isn't more difficult than getting telnetd to work. Actually, it's easier to get sshd to work, as most linux distros these days don't even come with a telnetd.

 

[chaos engineer]

amiga, c64, amiga, c64, zx spectrum, amiga, c64, mame (power drift please)...

 

[Corican]

All I -need- is PSX emulator to run Little Big Adventure
But I -want- a whole lot more.
Mainly SNES and GBA

 

[pubzombie]

emulation
- Amiga
- C64
-Spectrum
- Atari ST

PDA
Notebook
Video/media player
laptop in my pocket.
PZ

 

[Bronek]

Internet device in the first place (email IMAP + SMTP; news NNTP; web HTTP), paired with 3G phone
Playing music and video
Skype for IM only is possible (no need for voice or video calls on the train .... I have phone for such things)
Perhaps some programming in C++
Gaming (if there are good games to be had, also happy to pay)
Probably won't bother with emulators, as I do not own any games for consoles anyway

 

[puppydee]

Psx
Amiga
N64 [if ever possible]

 

[Lorkile]

For starters, from all I've seen the Playstation emulator will be comfortable enough for me to use it over that on my PSP so it will be my gaming for the most part on the system (other emulators are nice, will look into with time).

Mostly, I want it for the web browser. Being able to surf the web on something so portable would make my year.

Also would really like to be able to use Openoffice on it for viewing documents and power point slides and such but don't need this from it as I can make do with some sort of notepad for typing.

And finally, for media. Music and ebooks will take priority, occasionally I will want to watch videos.

So all I want it for seems to either coincide with what many others want or is currently steadily moving along in development. The only thing I could hope for in the future would be a tablet conversion or a tablet version for convenient use as a notepad or for drawing as I doubt either will be much more comfortable then it is on my DS Lite and that will mean neither will be more then a novelty.

 

[Exophase]

telnetd instead of sshd? So, the first time you log in to your device when connected to a wi-fi hotspot you're fine with your login password etc. being in the clear for anyone running tcpdump or the like on that network..

It's rhetorical in any case, as getting sshd to work isn't more difficult than getting telnetd to work. Actually, it's easier to get sshd to work, as most linux distros these days don't even come with a telnetd.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Used to telnetting into these embedded devices over a wire, where ssh is just unnecessary overhead.

 

[darkblu]

Working SGX drivers over working SD drivers.. you have interesting priorities ^_- Not that that comes as much surprise.

I take it that like most people you will accept telnetd instead of sshd, I know I won't bother with ssh.

EDIT: Although, scp is nicer than tftp.

well, it's just that there's little i could do to an SD card. i think that the most i've ever done to a flash card was lose a pocketful of them.

oh, and i'm a very secure person ; )

 

[RavenX]

OK, I won't bother to repeat all of the emulators that I have already seen mentioned, but one of the things I am looking forward to on top of the portable web browsing and portable ssh terminal is portable VNC remoting into my various desktops.

Another thing that I haven't heard anything about yet that I would like to see is Java. Does anyone know of any Java variants that might get ported to the Pandora?

 

[Iorgy77]

I want to play carrier command.

With a stylus and keyboard and joystick at the same time.








... on the toilet.

 

[Ze_ro]

I collect a lot of older, 8/16-bit computers... but it's a huge pain trying to keep them all hooked up and usable. I'm really looking forward to a quality MESS port so I can enjoy some of the more obscure stuff without having to ship proprietary monitors across oceans or anything like that. I'm especially looking forward to:

• Amiga - I actually have an Amiga 3000 hooked up in the basement which works great, but having a portable option will be a real treat... especially since I'll be able to use regular ADF's rather than flaky 3.5" disks, or trying to figure out why some of my WHDLoad installs don't work right.
• C64 - Again, I have a C-128 hooked up, with a 1541 Ultimate (which is damn sweet by the way), but being able to play while lying in bed, or sitting on the toilet is something to look forward to.
• Atari 800 - While I have several old Atari computers sitting around, I've never had the space to hook them up for anything more than a quick test.
• Apple II - I have an Apple IIGS that I hook up from time to time, but I don't have the proper monitor for it, so I have to settle for a low-quality display. I was always disappointed that there wasn't a good Apple II emulator for the GP2X (There was MESS, but that was it), as it should have been well within it's capabilities.
• Atari ST - Again, I have three in my basement, but I can't for the life of me find a video cable for them, or a proper monitor. I've been planning to build a cable to hook one up to a 1084S, and have all the parts, but haven't had the time to see it through.
• Spectrum - I've always wanted to fiddle with this machine, but importing one from Europe seemed like a hassle, and I was never quite sure if I'd be able to get around the PAL/NTSC issues. The GP2X seemed to do a decent job here, but I imagine it'll be better with an actual keyboard.
• Acorn Archimedes - This always looked like an awesome computer with an interesting operating system... but I've never managed to get it working properly in an emulator (and finding the system BIOS roms was quite difficult, as the Acorn community frowns on their distribution).
• MSX - Ditto here I guess. I never really took the time to get into this system, but it looks to have a LOT of quality 80's games and arcade ports.
• X68000 - Another system that would cost me a fortune to ship in from Japan, but with tons of high-quality games that I've been dying to try.

My guess is that the 16-bit machines I listed will probably be a bit too resource-hungry for MESS though, and might need their own dedicated emulators.

I'm also looking forward to good ports of Frotz, ScummVM, and FreeSCI.

--Zero