Release SuperZaxxon - Beta 5 released

[mcobit]

Also don't throw lithium into water

 

[WizardStan]

It's like "don't microwave aluminum": it doesn't really seem like a common sense thing unless you've already got some basic knowledge of how microwaves work, so I can't really blame someone for thinking to cover their food with a bit of foil to keep it from splattSPLOSION!

 

[Binky]

Also don't throw lithium into water

Why not? It looks quite fun from a safe distance

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vRKK6pliejs?feature=oembed

 

[moxie]

This is my favourite video when it comes to alkali metals:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/sS3cIK9jlB8?feature=oembed

 

[Asmo]

When using Mame4all and PanMame under SuperZaxxon Beta 5a, roms that have names in upper case (MILLIPED.zip for example) don't show up anymore in the file selectors for either (whether booting with old or new kernel).


They appear as normal when I go back to HF6.


Known issue?


(apologies if not news)

Just to add, on further inspection it's not only upper case names that vanish from the file selection, it appears to be a completely arbitrary bunch of roms that don't appear when using eiher Mame version under SZB5a.

 

[Zink]

I never assumed you had a *lot* of information.

That's how I understand this: "I don't know how much more I can stress the necessity of heeding every warning that these batteries comes with."

If I had I wouldn't have felt the need to give you more information.

Not if you thought I haven't had read that information despite having it, which would present me in a very bad light.

I did assume that a person wouldn't go experimenting with something they didn't fully understand

That's where the problem is: I thought I fully understood them before. This thought was additionally supported by: 1. Integrated protection circuit, that shouldn't let the battery go below a dangerous level. 2. At least two mentions of complete discharge of the battery (one of them misunderstood) in the Pandora Wiki, with not a single word that such discharge could be dangerous and should be avoided. I hope this will give some hints to maintainers for future improvements.

That's really weird. It used to work just fine. I can't remember if maybe it had a different command or if poweroff was added to the sudoers file as nopassword, but either way it used to shut down at the prescribed percentage (5% by default). As I recall, when it reached that 5% it would pop up a dialog saying the critical percentage had been reached. Shortly thereafter the countdown timer would appear, exactly the same as what happens at 0%. My memory is rusty because it's been well over a year since the last time I had reason to hit that dialog. I have no idea why it was disabled for this release but it should really be reinvestigated, it's a very important feature.

I think you mix the 'sudo poweroff' with the timed shutdown dialog. They are not the same. 'Sudo poweroff' will cause an instant shutdown, without any dialogs. The counter appears at 0% (and maybe at 5% too) independently of any settings in the Battery Monitor, so it cannot be disabled (and for my personal opinion it is much better than the 'sudo poweroff' thing, probably it just replaced it).

 

[WizardStan]

Seriously, I've never met someone so averse to saying "thanks, I won't do that again" before.

I think you mix the 'sudo poweroff' with the timed shutdown dialog. They are not the same. 'Sudo poweroff' will cause an instant shutdown, without any dialogs. The counter appears at 0% (and maybe at 5% too) independently of any settings in the Battery Monitor, so it cannot be disabled (and for my personal opinion it is much better than the 'sudo poweroff' thing, probably it just replaced it).

In previous firmwares there was an option to shut down at the critical battery percentage which is and always has been entirely configurable. The details are fuzzy in my mind but not important at all. The important thing is that it doesn't do this anymore.

 

[twain]

hi


i am not sure if ths bug is already known, but when i switch from xfce to the minimenu and back i get the tray icon for switching wlan, usb, ... twice.


i use beta 5a


twain

 

[CeNTauR2]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU! Suspend mode is SOOOOO battery friendly now. Fantastic!

 

[aRTee]

Hmm, I just wanted to see what this update is all about, and I get to learn more stuff about LiPo batteries, thanks for the interesting discussion!


Aside exploding, check the youtube vid on Sony laptop battery burning.


Lithium fires are also supposedly not easy to put out.


My comments (all IMHO) related to the battery usage / management: like any device, the openpandora should not easily allow dangerous situations. By that I mean that whatever a user does just poking around with the stylus should not lead to any situation of Wizardstan going: OH NO, DDT (Don't Do That)!


Aside that, and I'm not sure this isn't in any other topic, I just didn't see it here: if I use the file manager to browse the SDcard (double tap the symbol on the desktop), enter a directory, then double tap or nudge-nub-up on a directory, it stops working.


This was also the case before (SZ1.1), but I figured that that would be fixed...


I'm not sure I understand how the SD cards are dealt with anymore - I first read that they will be unmounted before suspend, but after flashing to beta 5 I got one popup that told me not to remove any sd card whilst in suspend, for it may get corrupted..?!


So is it not unmounted then? Confusing...


Other than that, this beta 5a is really great, amazing battery life, thanks a lot!


Edit: the browser issue is reported here: http://bugs.openpandora.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=249

 

[Zink]

Seriously, I've never met someone so averse to saying "thanks, I won't do that again" before.

I have said that (not it that exact words), but you haven't noticed. I think you focused too much about misinterpreting my posts to the limits


No bard feelings

I'm not sure I understand how the SD cards are dealt with anymore - I first read that they will be unmounted before suspend, but after flashing to beta 5 I got one popup that told me not to remove any sd card whilst in suspend, for it may get corrupted..?!


So is it not unmounted then? Confusing...

The auto-unmounting of SD-cards before suspend has been disabled somewhere around beta 4.

 

[thatgui]

Probably already mentioned:


Shutting down the device via the hardware switch doesn't work anymore for me.

 

[Zink]

Probably already mentioned:


Shutting down the device via the hardware switch doesn't work anymore for me.

Works fine for me. Are you holding the switch for more than 3 seconds?

 

[Writing Ronin]

Having a strange problem - while I enable the USB host to get the machine to charge via USB, after a few minutes of charging the light goes out and the charge stops. No matter how many times I restart the host, it wont recharge until I switch off the unit and restart. Anyone else have this issue (or have I missed it up-thread)?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

You charge the OP with the small USB port.


And you don't need to activate anything.

 

[NoeleyC]

That had me slightly confused too, I often charge through that mini USB port, I've never had to activate it specifically to do so! I do have the same issue that sometimes my Pandora doesn't seem to want to start charging when I plug in a charging cable, but using the USB port normaly works in those circumstances. IT does sometimes stop charging at random times, I simply replug the cable in again, that normally does the trick!

 

[Writing Ronin]

You charge the OP with the small USB port.


And you don't need to activate anything.

That had me slightly confused too, I often charge through that mini USB port, I've never had to activate it specifically to do so! I do have the same issue that sometimes my Pandora doesn't seem to want to start charging when I plug in a charging cable, but using the USB port normaly works in those circumstances. IT does sometimes stop charging at random times, I simply replug the cable in again, that normally does the trick!

Strange. I've always used the small/mini port. This time, it keeps flaking out... and unless I enable USB it doesnt work at all.

 

[WizardStan]

When it looks like it has stopped charging, open a terminal and type


"cat /sys/class/power_supply/bq27500-0/current_now"


A positive number means it is still charging but the charge LED has turned off for some reason, a negative number means it has actually stopped charging.

 

[Writing Ronin]

Thanks, will give that a try


Edit: “It’s flaky” seems to be the result. Sometimes the charge drops along with the light, other times the light goes out while the charge is still there.


Bit strange and unreliable, but hopefully this is something which can be tweaked if I’m not the only person who has this issue.

 

[Zink]

It does that sometimes for me too. The light goes out, but it's still charging, because the battery meter keeps increasing.