Beta Upcoming (Hf5) Firmware Image

[EvilDragon]

It's been a while since the last hotfixes have been released, but now as Pandoras finally are shipping again, it's time to work more on the firmware.

Creating a HotFix-PND takes some time, but releasing an image as full flash is easy, so here's a preview image of the upcoming HF5.

There have been quite a few fixes and additions, here's a full changelog:

* LCD-Settings: Fixed the bug where the user could delete the default gamma setting
* LCD-Settings: Added Video-FIR-Selector
* Mass Storage Settings: Fixed a bug where it didn't remount the card under certain conditions
* First Run Wizard + Date / Time-Setting: Fixed timezone-selection - should finally work now.
* Applications: Removed Pidgin, Gnumeric, AbiWord, Clawsmail (use the PNDs for sebt3!)
* Applications: Added GCalcTool (Calculator)
* CPU-Speed: Now configurable using /etc/pandora/conf/cpu.conf
* Pandora-State: Can now set a default CPU Speed during startup
* XFCE4: Enabled Icons in Startmenu, added Pandora-Splashscreen
* WiFi: New driver and firmware version with a lot of fixes (Yuri Ershov, notaz and Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli)
* xf86-video-omapfb: Handle cycle/forcer events better
* Automount: Unmount from Thunar / XFCE4 is now possible
* Low-Power-Mode: Speed now set to 125 MHz (works more stable and doesn't use more power)
* Lid Closing: Disabled LCD Blanking, since that has issues with audioplayers
* Brightness-Buttons: Changed values so that the screen doesn't flicker anymore
* pnd_run: Lots of fixes and cleanups (sebt3)
* pnd_run: Script now popups a message if mount fails (sebt3)
* pnd_run: Fixed running of directories with PXMLs inside (Paul Brook)
* U-Boot: Add WiFi reset on boot (fixes occassional power eating from WiFi Chip even if it was switched off)
* U-Boot: Pandora Menu: Always add serial option (for sure)

Besides the fixes (and most notably some more WiFi fixes!), it introduces a cool new feature: CPU-Settings!
There is no GUI yet to configure those settings (will be added within the next week), but you can manually edit the configfile.

To do so, edit /etc/pandora/conf/cpu.conf (as root).

So, what can you change in that config?
You can adjust the minimum and maximum allowed CPU-Speed (i.e. if you know your unit can't go higher than 800 MHz, you can set that as limit).
You can set the Safe-CPU-Speed: If you clock higher than the safe setting, you get the overclocking warning.
You can disable the overclocking warning.
You can set the maximum allowed OPP (default set to 3). BE WARNED: A value higher than 3 needs lets you overclock higher, but needs MORE POWER AND REDUCES YOUR CPU-LIFE!
You can set the default CPU-Speed that will be set on startup.

Some might ask:
What happens if the default CPU-Speed is set too high and the system will crash on startup?
Easy: It won't change the speed on the next boot, so you can fix the settings.

The image has not been extensively tested for a long time, but that's where you can help!

How to flash the image?

Easy: Download the zipped image and extract the full contents onto the root of your SD Card.
Put the SD Card into slot 1 (the left one), switch on the Pandora while holding the R-Shoulder button and select "boot from SD1:1"

The flashing process should start. After it's finished, reboot the unit.
The first boot will take a while (up to 10 minutes). Patiently wait and you'll be greeted with the First Boot Wizard.

WARNING: You lose ALL YOUR CUSTOM SETTINGS you made on the NAND. The Pandora will basically the same as you got it! Be sure to backup ANY DOCUMENTS you saved on the NAND!

And please report back if you encounter any issues Thanks

NOTE: NEW VERSION RELEASED

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Sounds good ed looking forward to the finished hotfix 5 when i get my pandora back from repairs.

 

[sehs33]

* application: removed pidgin etc...

ED, will hf5 final (not the image above) move the applications to the SD card along with their current settings or will it simply delete the application files and settings?

 

[torpor]

Timidity?

 

[skeezix]

sebt3 built a timidity installer; if a few people try it, and it works, he'll upload it to the usual places (It worked for me, and includes a few soundfont choices.)

I think ultimately, shoudl roll that installer into codec-pack .. it shoudl not likely be oart of firmware proper, since its a huge beast It shoudl be optional (for which soundfont, and if you want it at all.)

jeff

 

[sebt3]

if a few people try it, and it works, he'll upload it to the usual places (It worked for me, and includes a few soundfont choices.)

I uploaded it to the File Archive some days ago as it seems that feedback come only for emulators and base system these days...

Edit: link

 

[WizardStan]

* application: removed pidgin etc...

ED, will hf5 final (not the image above) move the applications to the SD card along with their current settings or will it simply delete the application files and settings?

This one deletes them, but they have PND equivalents on dl.openhandhelds.org you can download either before or after they're removed. It would be a little difficult to have it install them to the SD card. It'd have to figure out if you even have an SD card or not, whether you have pre-installed them or not, etc...
Easier to just remove them and tell the user to manually download what they want, I think.

 

[Pleng]

Lid Closing: Disabled LCD Blanking, since that has issues with audioplayers

This seems a quite extreme corse of action for such a minor issue.

Better would be to have it selectable by user option.

Even better (and probably easier to implement) would be to have an environment variable (BLANK_LID) set to TRUE. PNDs of affected applications could then set the value to FALSE before executing and back to true when the close down.

 

[skeezix]

How coud LCD being disabled effect an audio player?

To me, the LCD shoudl be disabled on lid close, thats pretty much the whole point of it

Is there a bugtracker entry for this, or some detail? I'm pretty surprised.. dont' do this one out of the blue, lets do a review of that before commiting anything. (Presumably you just commented out an entry in /etc/pandora/conf/eventmap so its easy to enable/disable?) We could make the scripts more intelligent, and have a file-test or something, a script that requests lcd bloank not to occur for awhile etc, but .. shoudlnt' be necessary I'd think.

jeff

 

[sweetlilmre]

How coud LCD being disabled effect an audio player?

To me, the LCD shoudl be disabled on lid close, thats pretty much the whole point of it

Is there a bugtracker entry for this, or some detail? I'm pretty surprised.. dont' do this one out of the blue, lets do a review of that before commiting anything. (Presumably you just commented out an entry in /etc/pandora/conf/eventmap so its easy to enable/disable?) We could make the scripts more intelligent, and have a file-test or something, a script that requests lcd bloank not to occur for awhile etc, but .. shoudlnt' be necessary I'd think.

jeff

This.

Also XFCE 4.8 seems to be a huge improvement, is there any timeline on moving to the newer release?
-(e)

 

[Dunny]

How coud LCD being disabled effect an audio player?

To me, the LCD shoudl be disabled on lid close, thats pretty much the whole point of it

This. Battery life is bad enough with the lid closed as it is, and have you felt how hot the Pandora's lid gets when the LED is on and the lid closed?

I was going to download and test this HF5, but having seen this I don't think I'll bother until this gets fixed. Surely not shutting off the LED is a bug? Keeping it on cannot be a desired behaviour!

D.

 

[WizardStan]

How coud LCD being disabled effect an audio player?

To me, the LCD shoudl be disabled on lid close, thats pretty much the whole point of it

This. Battery life is bad enough with the lid closed as it is, and have you felt how hot the Pandora's lid gets when the LED is on and the lid closed?

I was going to download and test this HF5, but having seen this I don't think I'll bother until this gets fixed. Surely not shutting off the LED is a bug? Keeping it on cannot be a desired behaviour!

ED didn't say anything about the LED backlight, he said blanking it.
The lid script does two things: first it shuts off the backlight, then it blanks the framebuffer. I don't know exactly what blanking the framebuffer does (although I have my suspicions) but the result is that while this blanking instruction exists, it causes problems with audio and other programs, including snes9x: load something, close the lid, note how the sound changes.
Opening the lid reverses it, unblanking the framebuffer, and then turning on the backlight, at which point sound goes back to normal.
The hotfix does not touch the backlight, it is only this blanking of the framebuffer that has been removed.

 

[sweetlilmre]

Installed.

Seems stable enough so far.

Thoughts:

• Took a loooooong time for first boot with no apparent progress, if I hadn't known better I would have assumed it was locked up.
• Wifi dialog is still too big for the screen without auto hiding the taskbar. This will suck for n00bs.
• Tested some emus (PSCX etc) and they seem to work OK. Sound seems fine (I had weird issues initially with HF4).
• Shutdown screen (powered by angstrom one with prog bar) still is half blacked out.

Other general firmware thoughts:

• Why does the app store not render properly in midori? Its probably the first thing someone is going to look at.
• Can the Pandora button be changed to pop up the start menu (short press)? This would make DPAD navigation so much more functional.

-(e)

 

[WizardStan]

Why does the app store not render properly in midori? Its probably the first thing someone is going to look at.

Because midori doesn't fully support CSS, and Craig has yet to heed suggestions on fixing it.

Can the Pandora button be changed to pop up the start menu (short press)? This would make DPAD navigation so much more functional.

It... does. At least it does for me. It's supposed to. You aren't the first person to suggest that it isn't working as intended though.

 

[Dunny]

How coud LCD being disabled effect an audio player?

To me, the LCD shoudl be disabled on lid close, thats pretty much the whole point of it

This. Battery life is bad enough with the lid closed as it is, and have you felt how hot the Pandora's lid gets when the LED is on and the lid closed?

I was going to download and test this HF5, but having seen this I don't think I'll bother until this gets fixed. Surely not shutting off the LED is a bug? Keeping it on cannot be a desired behaviour!

ED didn't say anything about the LED backlight, he said blanking it.
The lid script does two things: first it shuts off the backlight, then it blanks the framebuffer. I don't know exactly what blanking the framebuffer does (although I have my suspicions) but the result is that while this blanking instruction exists, it causes problems with audio and other programs, including snes9x: load something, close the lid, note how the sound changes.
Opening the lid reverses it, unblanking the framebuffer, and then turning on the backlight, at which point sound goes back to normal.
The hotfix does not touch the backlight, it is only this blanking of the framebuffer that has been removed.

Ahh, my mistake then. I may give this hotfix thing a go.

D.

 

[skeezix]

I just assumed he meant LCD backlight. If its just blanking then how the heck does that impact music playback

I'll have to try it.. I don't use the panda for mp3 playing, obviously

The Pandora button, for xfce mode, checks the hold duration and brings up the 'start menu' on short push; it is perhaps too close a timing for some folks? The timign can be fiddled with if need be.

jeff

 

[WizardStan]

I just assumed he meant LCD backlight. If its just blanking then how the heck does that impact music playback

I suspect it is affecting vsync timings in some way.
Wait, I can look at the omapfb source. Back in a bit.

edit: yes, "blank" causes the framebuffer driver to actually suspend. Anything trying to draw to the screen in such a case is going to encounter issues, if not crash entirely. Good idea for low power mode, but bad for closing the lid when you may want things to keep running normally.

 

[notaz]

It also turns off power for LCD itself (not backlight), saving something like 40mA. Never heard any sound problems though (short pop at worst due to CPU usage spike).

 

[WizardStan]

chris_c had a rant and examples about his issues with SDL+OGLES programs crashing and locking up when you close the lid, but I can't locate it right now.
I don't know exactly which players are talked about, but you can definitely demonstrate it to yourself with snes9x which I have used. Start a game, wait for some music, close the lid, and note that the music gets really slow. Open the lid and it's fine again. Remove the line that suspends the display, and it no longer slows down when the lid is closed.

 

[God Ginrai]

I just assumed he meant LCD backlight. If its just blanking then how the heck does that impact music playback

I'll have to try it.. I don't use the panda for mp3 playing, obviously

The Pandora button, for xfce mode, checks the hold duration and brings up the 'start menu' on short push; it is perhaps too close a timing for some folks? The timign can be fiddled with if need be.

jeff

On my Pandora, the Pandora Button never did either of the 2 functions it is supposed to do in Xfce.

-God Ginrai