Surprise Attack!


Thanks for the video, Blue Shadow, I'd forgotten about that one. Since you (ED) have a working main board, sample cases, various key mats, can we expect to see an assembled unit soon. Even a photo of that showing it running at 1.5GHz would be super cool!
 
Great work, good progress ED!

The idea about the wandering pyra is just terrific, even if every person has it for only 2 or 3 days, not to mention the advertisement power it could have or the potential of getting more developers on board. Though someone keeping it for himself it's always a risk, I think there are more possitive odds. Anyways, if you decide to do so pull me in! :D

PS: My server in germany has been reciently been DDOS'd by swedish ips, a couple of quick iptables rules kinda fixed the issue, did you check the source of the lag?
 
FWIW, the lag's due to filesystem corruption, caused by the forum software not expiring old sessions properly. Going forward there's be a cron job to tidy the session table, but in the meantime the partition's a bit fritzed, and I'm personally impressed the who shebang is still up, but it means some packages need to be resent.
 
I like the idea of the ensuing prototype, just not sure it is really a good idea. There are a lot of ways things can go wrong. With tracking you can at least help keep people honest. Maybe send it around Germany or Europe. Crossing oceans, especially repeatedly, plus whatever customs wants to do with it, could really slow things down. On the other hand, I would love to mess with one asap.


Kippykip said:
I've always wished of having a pocket sized Dos computer when I was younger
Click to expand...
I highly recommend the HP 200LX or related palmtops. I have a 100LX that I got at a great price. If you are considering one make sure to do your homework, especially when looking for PCMCIA or CF cards and adaptors. One thing I love is the that you feed them AA batteries. There are also some other options (remember Terminator 2?), although some of those are probably more rare, and sometimes much more expensive.

If you will actually use it, keep your eye out for a while and you might find one very cheap (less than a fast food meal for a family). It is not practical at all, but it is great fun.
 
I'll call shotgun on the wandering proto first!

(but I do think it might make more sense to go round Germany first before crossing the channel. Probably still more than crossing the atlantic and the pacific to get to you, Wally)
 
EvilDragon said:
5. The wandering prototype

I am thinking of maybe use one prototype to send it to interested preorders for a couple of days and then they'll send it to the next one on the list.
While the software surely won't be fully working, everyone can at least try the keyboard and overall design.

I'm not sure I'll do it, but it seems like an interesting idea.
The only thing the interested user has to pay are the shipping costs to the next one on the list.
It would ship without a battery though, as shipping items with batteries included isn't cheap.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

Solution 1: 3D Print or carve a spacer that allows a Pandora battery to fit the prototype and only allow it to travel (without battery) from Pandora battery owner to Pandora battery owner.

Solution 2: Find someone centrally located in the given region who is willing to let people visit the prototype. (There are some practical limits to that though.)
 
The prototype will run fine off a 5V mini-USB cable that can provide enough juice. Unfortunately the only mains adaptor I have only admits 500mA, but I could always plug it into my computers, or I do have a USB battery that claims to squirt out 2.1A.
 
EvilDragon said:
4. Case and keymat

I decided to let the keymat company produce the DPad as well and apply it directly to the keymat (similar to the one on the Pandora, just more reliable and we don't have to do it ourselves).
This is simply because it doesn't really add more costs and I've made a lot of tests - but without glueing the DPad, it just doesn't feel as good.

I'm waiting to receive samples of both of them.
Click to expand...

Hey ED, This means that you are going to glue the dpad into the keymat?
 
Kippykip said:
Doesn't matter too much now as most of the games I played on Dos have source ports now (Descent, Doom etc)
Click to expand...

TL;DR: After pouring so much into this ramble, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Click the links to find freeware DOS games and YouTube clips of catchy music.

It depends. Sure, I've got those on my Pandora natively, but here is just part of the list of the games I had to install in DOSBox because I couldn't find source ports or engine reimplementations (with the now-freeware entries hyperlinked):
  • Alien Carnage
  • Ascendancy
  • Bio Menace
  • Cannon Fodder
  • Colonization
  • Companions of Xanth (Point-and-click adventure game with puns galore. "Take the door. It's ajar.")
  • Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
  • Crystal Caves
  • D/Generation
  • SSI D&D games like Dark Sun: Shattered Lands ("Baldur's Gate before there was Bioware")
  • Duke Nukem 1 & 2 (Free on my CD-ROM copy of Duke 3D)
  • Epic Pinball (Gotta love the Enigma table)
  • Eric the Unready (Point-and-click comedy adventure game with referential jokes. "Give the Roddenberries to Mr. Zulu.")
  • Jetpack (I remember this clone more fondly than the "real" Lode Runner... but just barely)
  • Master of Magic (Like a fantasy Civ clone)
  • Mystic Towers
  • Rayman (Yes, you can play the original Rayman on your Pandora)
  • Realms of Chaos
  • Redhook's Revenge (Fun pirate trivia board game for the whole family)
  • SimCity 2000 (Unfortunately, I only have SimAnt and SimEarth for Windows)
  • Skunny Kart (I play the shareware release for its catchy music)
  • Even More Incredible Machine
  • The Incredible Machine 2 (TIM3 is basically a Windows 3.x port of this. Unfortunately, I only have the Windows 3.x version of The Incredible Toon Machine)
  • Challenge of the Ancient Empires (Despite being a TLC game, it's more like La-Mulana Lite than edutainment and still fun)
  • Tetris Gold (CD with launcher and all DOS/Windows/Mac releases of all Spectrum Holobyte Tetris games)
  • The Lost Vikings (While the Battle.net version is a DOSBox wrapper, I'm still glad I own the CD)
  • Theme Park
  • Ultima Underworld
  • Wacky Wheels
  • Z (Thank God I own the CD, given that GOG only received the butchered "iPad->PC re-port" version)
I mention Tetris Gold (mobygames) because it takes more than falling blocks to make an engaging Tetris game. I'll take my 4-shade grayscale Game Boy Tetris ROM (Retrode) over LTris any day because, despite its primitive graphics, Korobeiniki is just that appealing. That said, I tend to prefer either Tetris Classic (from Tetris Gold) for its beautiful art and music or, when I have the CPU power, (more than the 800MHz overclock the "WinBox" PND has access to), I'll play a piece of shareware named BrickLayer. (I actually tried playing T-Maxx on Audacious behind LTris, but it's just not the same with blocks that fall smoothly. I need to be able to pretend that the blocks fall to the beat of the music.)

...speaking of which, I play BrickLayer in Wine 1.2 on my desktop. I really need to look into cross-compiling a qemu-user+Wine 1.2+BrickLayer PND since that'd probably perform better than DOSBox+Windows 3.1.

Anyway, for collection's sake, it's too bad they didn't include the Apple IIGS versions in Tetris Gold too. Spectrum Holobyte's Mac and Apple IIGS Tetris games beat Nintendo to using Korobeiniki by a year. (ELORG licensed Tetris to Spectrum Holobyte in North America and Bullet-Proof Software in Japan, who then sub-licensed it to Nintendo.)

By the way, if anyone wants to track down a CD-ROM copy of Challenge of the Ancient Empires, the only CD-ROM release I'm aware of is on the "Make the Grade!, Vol. 4" bundle from after SofKey bought The Learning Company and it is the DOS version since no Windows port was ever made.
 
Last edited:
EvilDragon said:
I decided to let the keymat company produce the DPad as well and apply it directly to the keymat (similar to the one on the Pandora, just more reliable and we don't have to do it ourselves).
This is simply because it doesn't really add more costs and I've made a lot of tests - but without glueing the DPad, it just doesn't feel as good.
Click to expand...

Very good decision :)

I wouldn't do the wandering Prototype right now.
To unsafe.
Better give it to me. I'm waiting much too long now :p

We have enough money to produce 1000 Pyras, right?
I do it after the first 1000 are shipped and with a fully functional unit.
I know, we need 500 more preorders but I would wait until we have a Unit with at least the components (especially the case) finished.

BTW. My programming teacher is interested in the Pyra. So I really need one ;)
 
Nice!

I'm not sure about the wandering Pyra. It would be a good idea for really trustable persons. Maybe tech-journalists.
 
ssokolow said:
TL;DR: After pouring so much into this ramble, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Click the links to find freeware DOS games and YouTube clips of catchy music.

It depends. Sure, I've got those on my Pandora natively, but here is just part of the list of the games I had to install in DOSBox because I couldn't find source ports or engine reimplementations (with the now-freeware entries hyperlinked):
  • Alien Carnage
  • Ascendancy
  • Bio Menace
  • Cannon Fodder
  • Colonization
  • Companions of Xanth (Point-and-click adventure game with puns galore. "Take the door. It's ajar.")
  • Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure
  • Crystal Caves
  • D/Generation
  • SSI D&D games like Dark Sun: Shattered Lands ("Baldur's Gate before there was Bioware")
  • Duke Nukem 1 & 2 (Free on my CD-ROM copy of Duke 3D)
  • Epic Pinball (Gotta love the Enigma table)
  • Eric the Unready (Point-and-click comedy adventure game with referential jokes. "Give the Roddenberries to Mr. Zulu.")
  • Jetpack (I remember this clone more fondly than the "real" Lode Runner... but just barely)
  • Master of Magic (Like a fantasy Civ clone)
  • Mystic Towers
  • Rayman (Yes, you can play the original Rayman on your Pandora)
  • Realms of Chaos
  • Redhook's Revenge (Fun pirate trivia board game for the whole family)
  • SimCity 2000 (Unfortunately, I only have SimAnt and SimEarth for Windows)
  • Skunny Kart (I play the shareware release for its catchy music)
  • Even More Incredible Machine
  • The Incredible Machine 2 (TIM3 is basically a Windows 3.x port of this. Unfortunately, I only have the Windows 3.x version of The Incredible Toon Machine)
  • Challenge of the Ancient Empires (Despite being a TLC game, it's more like La-Mulana Lite than edutainment and still fun)
  • Tetris Gold (CD with launcher and all DOS/Windows/Mac releases of all Spectrum Holobyte Tetris games)
  • The Lost Vikings (While the Battle.net version is a DOSBox wrapper, I'm still glad I own the CD)
  • Theme Park
  • Ultima Underworld
  • Wacky Wheels
  • Z (Thank God I own the CD, given that GOG only received the butchered "iPad->PC re-port" version)
I mention Tetris Gold (mobygames) because it takes more than falling blocks to make an engaging Tetris game. I'll take my 4-shade grayscale Game Boy Tetris ROM (Retrode) over LTris any day because, despite its primitive graphics, Korobeiniki is just that appealing. That said, I tend to prefer either Tetris Classic (from Tetris Gold) for its beautiful art and music or, when I have the CPU power, (more than the 800MHz overclock the "WinBox" PND has access to), I'll play a piece of shareware named BrickLayer. (I actually tried playing T-Maxx on Audacious behind LTris, but it's just not the same with blocks that fall smoothly. I need to be able to pretend that the blocks fall to the beat of the music.)

...speaking of which, I play BrickLayer in Wine 1.2 on my desktop. I really need to look into cross-compiling a qemu-user+Wine 1.2+BrickLayer PND since that'd probably perform better than DOSBox+Windows 3.1.

Anyway, for collection's sake, it's too bad they didn't include the Apple IIGS versions in Tetris Gold too. Spectrum Holobyte's Mac and Apple IIGS Tetris games beat Nintendo to using Korobeiniki by a year. (ELORG licensed Tetris to Spectrum Holobyte in North America and Bullet-Proof Software in Japan, who then sub-licensed it to Nintendo.)

By the way, if anyone wants to track down a CD-ROM copy of Challenge of the Ancient Empires, the only CD-ROM release I'm aware of is on the "Make the Grade!, Vol. 4" bundle from after SofKey bought The Learning Company and it is the DOS version since no Windows port was ever made.
Click to expand...
Actually when thinking about it, scorched earth on the go would be the tits!
 
Urben said:
Nice!

I'm not sure about the wandering Pyra. It would be a good idea for really trustable persons. Maybe tech-journalists.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that tech journalists are more trustworthy than the rest of us.

I'm also not sure about the 'wandering' idea. Better to have one or two trusted people to review/test; I'm happy to wait until it's ready, but it would be great to get more in depth videos soon, and some different perspectives.
 
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