We Are No Longer Taking Hardware Suggestions

[CyruzDraxs]

I'd gladly carry a brick around if it never died.

On the note of hardware suggestions; I know the system itself is already basically finalized, however; what about peripherals? I think an official Pandora Dock might be nice because then it could function as a full console. It'd be even more awesome if there was some sort of official USB controller for use with it and higher resolution output through the dock, for those of us with HDTVs.

But maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

 

[schnitzelboy]

YES!! please from now on, the mk 1 units design should be considered finished, unless they run into more problems (e.g. wifi, nubs) sure make threads about addons, but come on, we can never please everyone, and i really don't want this to be delayed more than it has to

 

[nubie]

I'd gladly carry a brick around if it never died.

On the note of hardware suggestions; I know the system itself is already basically finalized, however; what about peripherals? I think an official Pandora Dock might be nice because then it could function as a full console. It'd be even more awesome if there was some sort of official USB controller for use with it and higher resolution output through the dock, for those of us with HDTVs.

But maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

meh, you can't have a dock for a million reasons (#1 - 100 being there is no HDTV support and there is already a TV dongle and a USB port in it, technically you don't want a "dock" you want an addon video encoder with a glorified USB hub, I am plenty happy to buy my own USB hub, if somebody wanted to sell you a usb hub on a piece of molded plexiglass I am sure you could get one. As for the video, you would need to solder that to some high-speed IO lines, maybe even to the ones the LCD is connected to, and somebody would have to write a lot of software to take it into account, it would also be freaking expensive, and since HDtv's aren't exactly portable it wouldn't make much sense)

Back on point, I don't like seeing these threads either (and I am turning this thread into another one apparently, I hate it already).

But the only real answer is moderation, AKA a seperate hardware sub-forum so that this junk can be kicked there and all will be well with the world.

The Pandora section of the site is just a huge mess right now with not enough sections, I know I have said that it doesn't really matter as there is no hardware or software or development, so it doesn't matter if there aren't sections for it, but maybe I was wrong, there should be a hardware ideas thread.

My problem isn't the ideas in and of themselves, just the half and quarter-baked nature of them.

(IE the dock thingy above. A dock provides I/O. The only I/O this thing has is USB and A/V. Since the A/V cable is included and USB hubs are mass-produced a dock becomes nearly useless. a STAND with a place for a hard drive / USB hub / A/V dongle is not a dock, and since it could be made easily from a single piece of formed plastic and you could add your own reasonably priced hardware to it and save your money there is little need to keep prattling on about it. HDTV would need to be attached to the motherboard, it would not be available via an "external" dock. It is too expensive, and it is optional, hardly any support would be there from the devs simply because of that fact. An S-Video to HDTV "Line Doubler" would come in handy, but those cost as much as the GP2X or Pandora, and for good reason, they are only useful if the HDTV has an un-scaled resolution, and those HDTV's are expensive.)

Sticky this, for the love of god, I am so fucccking tired of writing out all of these reasons a million times over, this kind of "wish-for-crap" syndrome is so dumb and I get so tired of hearing "dock" and "HDTV" and "slide keyboard" and "ugly keyboard" from people who don't understand why these requests are just freaking ridiculous. (damn that dock idea still pisses me off, all of the connectors aren't even on the same side of the unit, so you would have a franken-dock that clamps the front and back like some kind of spare psp battery dock, and that is so crappy looking that I almost couldn't stand it, let alone spend money for it.)

In the box will be all the adapters (aside from a USB hub) that you will ever need, so no dock. If you want to talk a "stand", then fine, but quad-processor, DDR3 docks will simply not happen (OK, so you asked for HDTV output, not quad processors and DDR3, just face it that HDTV is going to cost as much as a whole PC to implement and then we haven't the power to render anything useful to it, so you might as well leave it alone.)

 

[Azure]

I'd gladly carry a brick around if it never died.

On the note of hardware suggestions; I know the system itself is already basically finalized, however; what about peripherals? I think an official Pandora Dock might be nice because then it could function as a full console. It'd be even more awesome if there was some sort of official USB controller for use with it and higher resolution output through the dock, for those of us with HDTVs.

But maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

An official USB controller? Really? No offense, but I think that's a terrible idea (similar to one of those kinds of ideas nubie talked about). Craig & Co. already spent a lot of time/money designing great gaming controls to be built into the Pandora, and now you want them to spend more time/money to design a controller to possibly bypass those same controls (assuming single-player application)? If you had multi-player in mind, what makes you think that whatever Craig & Co. design with their limited time/money will be that much better (if at all) than one of the many excellent USB controllers on the commercial market that's made by huge corporation with plenty of time/money (people aren't complaining all the time about not being able to get good gaming controls through USB, are they? They're not, which has got to mean that there's got to be at least a few good ways that people have found to do such a thing, whether they be actual controllers or USB adapters to use non-USB controllers)? Again, no offense, but this just seems like one of the worst ways to waste the time, money, and efforts of the Pandora development team. It's a "frilly," unnecessary, request, in my opinion.

Sorry if I came off a little blunt.

 

[CyruzDraxs]

I'd gladly carry a brick around if it never died.

On the note of hardware suggestions; I know the system itself is already basically finalized, however; what about peripherals? I think an official Pandora Dock might be nice because then it could function as a full console. It'd be even more awesome if there was some sort of official USB controller for use with it and higher resolution output through the dock, for those of us with HDTVs.

But maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

An official USB controller? Really? No offense, but I think that's a terrible idea (similar to one of those kinds of ideas nubie talked about). Craig & Co. already spent a lot of time/money designing great gaming controls to be built into the Pandora, and now you want them to spend more time/money to design a controller to possibly bypass those same controls (assuming single-player application)? If you had multi-player in mind, what makes you think that whatever Craig & Co. design with their limited time/money will be that much better (if at all) than one of the many excellent USB controllers on the commercial market that's made by huge corporation with plenty of time/money (people aren't complaining all the time about not being able to get good gaming controls through USB, are they? They're not, which has got to mean that there's got to be at least a few good ways that people have found to do such a thing, whether they be actual controllers or USB adapters to use non-USB controllers)? Again, no offense, but this just seems like one of the worst ways to waste the time, money, and efforts of the Pandora development team. It's a "frilly," unnecessary, request, in my opinion.

Sorry if I came off a little blunt.

I was more thinking for it to go along with the dock idea. I just thought it might be cool if you could have local multiplayer gaming on it like a console. On the note of the video thing; couldn't you just have it plug into the USB port and send video data over that along with any other functional stuff the dock would do? I know it would need something to interpret and output the video signal, so it's probably too expensive to be practical--I was just thinking out loud.

The Beagleboard has DVI-D and I've seen many pictures and a few videos of it running full desktop environments on full-size LCDs, despite it's obvious advantage in embedded applications. I expect someone will eventually come up with some sort of hack to get a higher resolution output out of the Pandora--I just think it would be cool if there was an official way.

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-

 

[Azure]

I'd gladly carry a brick around if it never died.

On the note of hardware suggestions; I know the system itself is already basically finalized, however; what about peripherals? I think an official Pandora Dock might be nice because then it could function as a full console. It'd be even more awesome if there was some sort of official USB controller for use with it and higher resolution output through the dock, for those of us with HDTVs.

But maybe I'm just dreaming too much.

An official USB controller? Really? No offense, but I think that's a terrible idea (similar to one of those kinds of ideas nubie talked about). Craig & Co. already spent a lot of time/money designing great gaming controls to be built into the Pandora, and now you want them to spend more time/money to design a controller to possibly bypass those same controls (assuming single-player application)? If you had multi-player in mind, what makes you think that whatever Craig & Co. design with their limited time/money will be that much better (if at all) than one of the many excellent USB controllers on the commercial market that's made by huge corporation with plenty of time/money (people aren't complaining all the time about not being able to get good gaming controls through USB, are they? They're not, which has got to mean that there's got to be at least a few good ways that people have found to do such a thing, whether they be actual controllers or USB adapters to use non-USB controllers)? Again, no offense, but this just seems like one of the worst ways to waste the time, money, and efforts of the Pandora development team. It's a "frilly," unnecessary, request, in my opinion.

Sorry if I came off a little blunt.

I was more thinking for it to go along with the dock idea. I just thought it might be cool if you could have local multiplayer gaming on it like a console.

Is there any reason why you can't just buy multiple USB controllers already on the market for local, multi-player gaming? The controllers would be just as good as whatever Craig & Co. could come up with, and they'd be cheaper, too.

 

[gaterooze]

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-

A softmodded Xbox.

 

[Tobriand]

Stickied, unless someone else thinks it shouldn't be...

 

[chad78]

Stickied, unless someone else thinks it shouldn't be...
Thanks Tobriand.

I put the politically correct text in the first post so people would see it.

 

[Svartalf]

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-

Heh... The BeagleBoard probably could fill that role with the right firmware set and connectors for video, etc. Right now, however, we probably ought to see how the Pandora and BeagleBoard settle out.

A softmodded Xbox.

:blink: :huh: :lol:

 

[nubie]

I was more thinking for it to go along with the dock idea. I just thought it might be cool if you could have local multiplayer gaming on it like a console. On the note of the video thing; couldn't you just have it plug into the USB port and send video data over that along with any other functional stuff the dock would do? I know it would need something to interpret and output the video signal, so it's probably too expensive to be practical--I was just thinking out loud.

If you have ever looked into multiple displays (I think max I have had is 6 displays, but they were all on PCIe), you will find that USB display adapters are no good.

I think I am just upset at people who want to spend as much money on an accessory for the pandora to make it "un-portable" as it would cost to get a complete PC with much much better specifications that is nearly as portable (Shuttle K45 $100, Core2 Celeron $25, 2Gigs DDR2 $60, card with outputs $50, They offer a $200 model with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive, just need a video card at that point.)

QUOTE

The Beagleboard has DVI-D and I've seen many pictures and a few videos of it running full desktop environments on full-size LCDs, despite it's obvious advantage in embedded applications. I expect someone will eventually come up with some sort of hack to get a higher resolution output out of the Pandora--I just think it would be cool if there was an official way.

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-




If you look at the beagleboard: http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard#Components

You will find this:
QUOTE
DVI chip (TFP410)

Which links to here: http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tfp410.html

You would have to put this on the motherboard, where it takes up room, makes the PCB more expensive, the battery life less and the whole unit bulkier.

Not to mention that it would be useless with RGB or VGA, and this really would have trouble saturating a high-def display. The best to have would be RGB/VGA because it is cheaper and those displays have lower resolutions (not to mention pixel perfect resolutions).

I am not averse to the sticky, but maybe the first post should contain links to the proper posts of "why" these kinds of hardware suggestions are unwelcome.

If you have a hardware idea:

1 Ask why it wouldn't work, then actually listen to the answer.
2 Use Google.
3 Think about what it would actually take to implement. Have you personally ever built anything like this? Have you carefully examined anything with similar complexity with a view to reverse engineering. Have you any real world experience in turning out a product like this? Being on a marketing team attached to development is not the same, see the cartoon Dilbert for reasons why.
4 Use Google.
5 Ask the people who are building it why it is this way, listen to them.
6 Use Google to search this site by putting site:gp32x.de/board in your search string.

I like that you are thinking, but I would prefer it if you would educate yourselves as to why it wouldn't work, a simple google of "beagleboard" and clicking on the link to "hardware" and "wiki" in the top result found what I was after, a note as to the external DVI chip, and a link to the Ti website where I find that the chip doesn't support RGB, YPrPb or VGA. If that chip was added to the Pandora there would be a lot of complaining, and it really couldn't, take a look at the circuit board of the pandora and the beagleboard, it really wouldn't be able to fit that extra chip without an expensive multi-layer PCB and a lot of work on the part of the person designing the board.

Keep in mind that new people will read your "thinking out loud" and confuse it with an educated opinion, then will keep on asking for things that simply aren't in the best interests of the device.

On the upside of that DVI deal, I think you can get a box to make RGB/VGA/YPrPb for about $250, so it would only cost as much for a proper Pandora with outputs as a quad-core PC for me, with quad DVI/HDMI/HDCP/RGB/VGA/YPrPb outputs, oh, and a quad core processor. Flip side, you could buy a complete laptop with DVI output and a Geforce6600 for $300, or the same as the pandora, then it would be as big as the pandora with a "dock", and much more useful. I don't think I like a dock at all, even if it does all the stuff I think it should it would cost as much or more than the whole pandora, thus I can't get behind a dock. If it didn't do the stuff properly, why buy one?

 

[Prophet]

chad,

You've posted a lot of ideas to this board, but this sticky is the my favorite one. Wish I'd thought of it. Too bad it wasn't up months ago when the design was finalized.

 

[fusion_power]

I think I am just upset at people who want to spend as much money on an accessory for the pandora to make it "un-portable" as it would cost to get a complete PC with much much better specifications that is nearly as portable (Shuttle K45 $100, Core2 Celeron $25, 2Gigs DDR2 $60, card with outputs $50, They offer a $200 model with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive, just need a video card at that point.)

So true. It looks like many people want to use the Pandora as some kind of Desktop replacement at home, connected with a Full Size Keyboard, a Mouse, a TV/ screen, Docking Station, External HDD etc :lol:
The main reason why I want the Pandora is because it's a MOBILE Device and nearly everything is included, I like this. Even adapters should stay far away from the Pandora (but I think I will need one to have a 45° headphone plug for pocket usage) untill you really want to play onto the TV. I'm glad that this will be much more easy than connecting the GP2X to the TV.

 

[chad78]

It looks like many people want to use the Pandora as some kind of Desktop replacement at home, connected with a Full Size Keyboard, a Mouse, a TV/ screen, Docking Station, External HDD etc :lol:

And what's so wrong with that? The idea of a portable computer that becomes your desktop computer is not a new one. In fact, it's been suggested that soon that will happen with cell phones. People will have their portable devices on the go, and then when they get home slap it into an "appliance" that will grant it more speed, a bigger monitor, more traditional/comfortable inputs, stereo surround sound, etc. It's not a dumb or bad idea.

Think about it this way, wouldn't you like to be able to take your home computer with you everywhere?

Wouldn't it be nice to only have to worry about learning/knowing one interface - whether it's for your computer, your phone, or your game system?

Wouldn't it be nice to have the same info (contacts, todos, calendars, etc.) everywhere (home, office, on the road, on your phone, on your PC) without having to sync every time you come home?

If you are using the same device for everything - then you can.

True - the Pandora isn't as powerful as most people's home computers. True - if you use an external hard drive, of course the stuff stored there won't go with you when you are on the go. But the stuff you put on the SD cards will.

It's not perfect. It's not going to work for everyone. But if someone wants to do it that way, why not?

I, personally, won't be trading in my MacBook any time soon - but that doesn't mean I won't have some sort of docking station set up for it (even if it's not a single "docking station" device - just a bunch of USB hubs and devices). Probably something like an external USB HD, a keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor/TV, and maybe 3 or 4 USB game pads, and, of course, the charger.

Take out the game pads, and that's how I use my MacBook 95% of the time - as a desktop. But when I need to travel, I easily can. And I don't lose anything but the data on the external HD.

I still like the idea of an Arcade system powered by the Pandora, with a little slide out box that you can put the Pandora in and plug it all up until it's ready to go.

Give Intel's Atom, Nvidia's Tengra, and TI's OMAP a few more years... See how many people take their "desktop" with them in their pockets and dock it when they get home.

 

[Arialia]

+1 Chad

 

[CyruzDraxs]

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-

A softmodded Xbox.

Oh God no. Not nearly open enough, nor is that legal.

Maybe what we need is a home console equivalent to the Pandora? -lightbulb-

Heh... The BeagleBoard probably could fill that role with the right firmware set and connectors for video, etc. Right now, however, we probably ought to see how the Pandora and BeagleBoard settle out.

Yeah, I've been thinking that lately. I've seen it running full Desktop environment distros like Ubuntu, but I suspect it is currently not developed enough to be viable. Perhaps I should start frequenting their IRC channel and see what I can learn.

 

[Azure]

...nor is that legal.

And I imagine you will only use public domain roms when using emulators on the Pandora? Owning the physical game doesn't necessarily make it legal, you know

 

[MarkoeZ]

indeed chad, u put it correctly, and been enjoying ur posts

I for one will be carrying the pandora around in a belt holder at work (office on the go) underneath my jacket , in my coat pocket after/before work(for music and entertainment), and prob even as a console at home since i don't own any

ok, enough pandora adorement, back on topic?

 

[Squidge]

A softmodded Xbox.

Oh God no. Not nearly open enough, nor is that legal.


It's been proven in court that a modded Xbox is legal. It only becomes illegal if you put pirated software on it, so if you only use homebrew, your fine

 

[CyruzDraxs]

...nor is that legal.

And I imagine you will only use public domain roms when using emulators on the Pandora? Owning the physical game doesn't necessarily make it legal, you know

Where I'm at digital reproduction isn't illegal at all unless you don't have a legal copy. That will likely change relatively soon though with the pressure the US has been putting on us, >.>

A softmodded Xbox.

Oh God no. Not nearly open enough, nor is that legal.


It's been proven in court that a modded Xbox is legal. It only becomes illegal if you put pirated software on it, so if you only use homebrew, your fine

Most Xbox homebrew is programmed with the XDK, which makes it illegal. Technically, yes; homebrew can be legal on the Xbox and there is a handful of stuff that uses the Open SDK, but all the good stuff like emulators are made with the official XDK, which is illegal to use without a license for whatever is being made with it.