Today Is A Great Day!(Hopefully)

[shunun]

So1e april only 500 will be made?
And the other 3500 a month later?

I want mine before summer holidays thats for sure. Im gonna be mad and cancel if mine aint shipped by then.

YEAH, ME TOO.

Craigix: "WHAT'S YOUR ORDER NUMBER??!!"

 

[mali]

I nearly had a breakdown this weekend because I had too much stress and work at the moment, so it's no real fun for us, you know?

Don't give up, well get through it somehow

 

[kingoddball]

So1e april only 500 will be made?
And the other 3500 a month later?

I want mine before summer holidays thats for sure. Im gonna be mad and cancel if mine aint shipped by then.

Those cancelling threats do nothing, they get a bit boring now... we all are aware of how close to edge we are and you can be sure we do everything to finish the units as soon as possible.
I nearly had a breakdown this weekend because I had too much stress and work at the moment, so it's no real fun for us, you know?

Anyways, that 500 for a start is nothing new, if you read the blog post, it's even stated there for over a week...

Mate, They're not treats.. People are just sick of waiting! Borg orders toward.... 2 years ago?
Seems like many will cancel soon... Sad fact..

 

[ste_167]

Thanks for the updates, ED. Hopefully, you'll have some sleepful nights in the coming weeks.

 

[Wolfsclaw]

I will eat my hat if i get to see my Pandora before June.

 

[gruso]

Soldier on, ED and team. We'll all get there, then we shall dance like rabid gnomes.

 

[Xenu]

I wonder if thoose who are willing to cancel at this stage really wantad a Pandora at all or just some cool device to show of with?

 

[bzar]

Soldier on, ED and team. We'll all get there, then we shall dance like rabid gnomes.

Oh yes. I for one will see this to the end be it bitter, sweet or bittersweet . No way am I quitting. Nosirree.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

So here is the first March 22nd thread. I'm sure there will be more by the end of the day.

I think we've been over and over the disappointment of unavoidable deadline slippage enough to be able to hold back on creating a thread every time a date has been set, especially this close to production. The team are no doubt on the verge of insanity and stretched to a transparent, taut film, ready to tear to pieces at the next pin prick.

We all know the processes that have been put together for production, and best estimate dates now. I think the best we can do now is focus on positive things like speculating what we are going to do with our devices, talk about games etc. Stop prodding the guys every time they wipe their ass. If something goes wrong now we will be told. I think the nagging and negative attention can only harm them at this delicate stage, and it is unnecessary to drape extra pressure and cancellation threats over them.

Now I'm sure that I am going to be doused in vitriol for guffing this out, but I've been up with back ache all night, I'm tired and I'm mad as hell (... and I'm not going to take this anymore!).

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi,

I'd gladly understand a week or more delay if all the team members decide to take some rest and have a break

I'm serious, I don't want to read the word "breakdown" or something similar here on gp32x.de ! Pandora is not important enough to ruin one's health, really.

What do you guys think about that ?

Bye, Magic Sam

 

[TrashyMG]

Seriously I'll be happy if I get mine by the end of August or early September, but I'm under the philosophy if I get a time when it will be done, expect it to take 3 times longer.

 

[EvilDragon]

Thanks guys, it's really helpful to have a lot of back support.

Well, I also do wonder how many would really cancel it that state. So far, mostly only those have cancelled who either ran out of money or did order the Pandora way later.
I haven't had much cancellations compared to how many orders I have - and I still get daily eMails with stuff like "I know all the risks - let me send you my money and I'll wait for it forever!"

So there's still a lot of fans who can imagine how hard everything is... and that we'll work our ass off

Well, I'm trying to accept the following scenarios:

a) Nothing will work out. We couldn't get Wifi to work and the cases are not usable. We have to refund all money and all are blank. The servers will be shut down which means the end of the file archives, the gp2x shop, maybe even gp32x.de or gp2x.de. We'll lose everything we worked for during the last 12 years.

B) Same as a), but there are a lot of people interested to buy the finished boards. This probably give us as much money back to not lose everything, but have a lot to pay back during the next 150 years.

c) We'll get the cases and can build the Pandora but somehow can't get WiFi working. A lot of people will want to cancel. Others don't care about - they'll either try to get WiFi working (maybe even successfully) or plug in a cheap stick in the back. Most of them only want to play anyways. We probably lost a lot of money with this, but we'll surive.

d) We'll get the cases and get WiFi working. We'll deliver and are happy everything worked out. Best case scenario

e) We give up and sell everything to some big company for a few millions. We wouldn't have lost anything - but we also wouldn't have achieved anything


I still think the most likely thing is d)
March 26th will still be in time for April 1st assembly, and that WiFi bugger will also eventually be fixed
The OS is working quite well, that's why we're concentrating on WiFi at the moment, games and emulators can be played.

I personally wouldn't mind sticking a cheap WiFi stick in the back of the Pandora until everything is working - after all, it doesn't even get in your way while playing, that USB port is really placed well
We'll continue or search for the working wifi

 

[Bosbeetle]

We must take into acount hofstadter's law

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

 

[Vlynndar]

I will eat my hat if i get to see my Pandora before June.

Then, for the safety of your hat, I'll advise you to not watch the webcam stream of the production process

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm serious, I don't want to read the word "breakdown" or something similar here on gp32x.de ! Pandora is not important enough to ruin one's health, really.
What do you guys think about that ?

Well, I guess we're all involved in it too much.
Of course we'd all want to take a break - however, what would you do if you knew that your whole existance could be basically wiped out with that project?
If anything goes wrong and most will want a refund, we'll either have to go look for an investor (true, possible to find with an almost-finished device with so many press reports) or give up and lose everything (well, of course we'll never do that).

Therefore, if all you have is endangered, of course you try to fix everything as soon as possible.
I guess every issue that occurs in that project does hurt us more than it does for everyone else. I still wonder I didn't suffer a heart attack yet.
Just think about how much money a preorderer could possibly lose and how much we could lose...

Maybe we should've done everything with some kind of sponsoring or shares instead of preordering: Everyone willing to pay the amount of money could do so but it might happen he'll lose that one if anything goes wrong. Instead of preordering and we'll HAVE to pay it back (or deliver).
We'd have fewer orders for sure, but we wouldn't have that huge amount of money sitting in our backs which would put a lot of ease on our mind which would've made production a lot more easy.
Who knows.

Anyways, I'm sure we'll manage. It's just that we have a lot on our backs right.
Just got the information from the chinese company that everything is back to normal. The issue delayed it a bit, but they're sure they'll ship on March 26th.
Still in time for assembly.

Now all we need are the boards

And I'm back to WiFi debugging and testing... we can connect, but we still lose some packets which slows down things a lot.
Might be an easy fix, but as usual: Even if the fix is easy, it can take weeks to actually find it. Or it could happen you eventually stumble over it and it works tomorrow.

I'll keep you updated!

 

[slaanesh]

I don't know why everyone is so hung up on getting the Pandora within the next few days. I'd patiently wait another 6 months if it took that long. A few days here and there won't matter much.

Anyway, if everyone got it tomorrow, there'd still wouldn't be much to actually play with as if you look at the file archive it's pretty much empty. Although I'm sure this will snowball quickly once they are delivered.

 

[pawprints]

Cheers ED,

I know it must be a tough time and I'm really suprised you still have all your hair intact with all the stress of it all.

I for one am happy to shove a USB wifi stick in the back of my pandora if it solves the problem. I think it would be more awkward if the USB socket was placed differently but as far as I understand it it's in the back like a DS cart goes into a DS. The screen should then rest against it and you wouldn't notice it was there. (Unless I've got it all wrong). If you didn't have a usb host then things would be very different of course but you do.

now please tell me the font used on the keyboard so I can finish off the model of the pandora and make some cool animated videos

 

[Mithrildor]

Huh wtf?

500 pandoras in April and 3500 in May?

I never heard that before. Or is it the arrival at our homes?

Please explain ED (or Borgqueen why he thinks that)

 

[Balzac2m]

Since I ordered, I waited 538 days. Why should i bother to wait antother 100?
Keep up the great work ED, I'm sure we'll figure out the Wifi-Driver when the pandora is released, if it isn't done by then.

 

[mali]

@Mithrildor
Borgqueen is guessing there. 500 boards were expected to arrive till the 22nd, but as I understand it, they've tested 360 so far and are still in Texas. Sorry, that's wrong.

March 22th - March 26th: 500 populated and tested boards and all parts will be shipped to UK.

Whatever, predictions are pretty much moot at this point.