Week 1: OS, Chromium, PCSX, Snes9x, and battery issues

[Axman]

Howdy,

Still in week one of Pandora ownership, and I've got some problems that are annoying and vary from major to annoying, and Google isn't much help with them. These problems are with a brand new SD install I did with software current as of last Sunday. 

Edit: Thanks everyone so far! My remaining problems are annoying but minimal. If no solution presents itself, so be it. 

OS:

> From time to time, the session manager crashes. When this happens, I can't shut down/logout/restart. This happens every time I try to switch from XFCE to MiniMenu. I get the error message "Failed to receive a reply from the session manager -- Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a shutdown -- Close"

> I cannot switch from XFCE to MiniMenu. 

> From time to time, XFCE stops rendering the title menu and window controls. Restarting XFCE fixes this if the session manager is working, otherwise it requires a full restart. 

> I don't know how to set up a default browser. I have Chromium installed via .pnd but don't know how to associate it with the menu. Alternatively, I'd like to just remove the browser portion from the menu entirely. How can I edit it? Worked around.

Chromium:

> I cannot install plugins or extensions of any sort! What must I do to get Adblock working? (Also Vimium, if you're not familiar with it, would be a real boon for the Pandora's controls. http://vimium.github.com/) Worked around.

PCSX:

> Very impressed. Renders better than my desktop. However, there is no sound in the majority of games' cutscenes. In fact, I have only found one game where the sound works when playing back video (FFIX). This cripples some game experiences. It seem unrelated to clock speed (1200 appears to be stable for me). Could it be BIOS-related? Should I try more? (So far I've tried a handful to no effect.) Solved!

Snes9x:

> No mouse cursor. It tracks, it's there, it functions, I just can't see it. Makes it incredibly difficult to quit; I just force-quit it. Worked around.

Battery:

> My Pandora shipped without a battery. I bought a spare and asked ED to ship me my original with it. I'm still short one battery. Working on it.

 

[mcobit]

Chromium: Don't use it. It's an old dev build. Better use firefox. Setting the defaultbrowser to a pnd is really some task but there is a thread in the support section, that might be interesting for you.


PCSXReArmed: do you use bin/cue images? The cdtracks need the cue file to be played and you have to start the game with the cue file. If you use ebootfiles, the audio of cutscenes is sometimes trimmed.


Snes9x: where did you get it from? From repo.openpandora.org?


Use the snes emulator from there. It should be quittable from the menu without any mouse.


Battery: Contact ed via the ticketservice at dragonbox.de

 

[Asmo]

ReCSX games and no music - as mcobit said, if these games have been compressed by someone to make them extra small, they may have chosen to lose the audio, or you may have omitted the .cue file (if it's a bin/cue pair of files) or the .cue file isn't a matching filename. I rip all my own PSX game images from disc, and the audio works perfectly on all of them, it must be an issue with your game images.


+1 re Chromium, it's very old, check out the alternatives.


Snes9x from the Repo ? You can use the touchscreen to tap the 'quit' button IIRC.

 

[Axman]

Chromium: Don't use it. 

Done and done. 

PCSXReArmed: do you use bin/cue images? The cdtracks need the cue file to be played and you have to start the game with the cue file. If you use ebootfiles, the audio of cutscenes is sometimes trimmed.

Yes, and those don't work. Straight-up .img files work fine.

Battery: Contact ed via the ticketservice at dragonbox.de

Thanks.

ReCSX games and no music - as mcobit said, if these games have been compressed by someone to make them extra small, they may have chosen to lose the audio, or you may have omitted the .cue file (if it's a bin/cue pair of files) or the .cue file isn't a matching filename. I rip all my own PSX game images from disc, and the audio works perfectly on all of them, it must be an issue with your game images.

Alright, I'll rip them (too lazy). Have a utility recommendation?

Snes9x from the Repo ? You can use the touchscreen to tap the 'quit' button IIRC.

Brilliant! Never would have occurred to me...

 

[Asmo]

Alright, I'll rip them (too lazy). Have a utility recommendation?

I use an ancient version of defunct utlity 'CDRWin' (by GoldenHawk) on an old PC to rip mine to .bin/.cue files - I gather that others here use a free tool called Imgburn to do the same (bin/cue).

Yes, and those don't work. Straight-up .img files work fine.

is that your eboots or bin/cue files that don't work for you? If it's the pair of bin+cue files, make sure that both files have identical filenames (extension aside) and if you open the .cue file in a text editor, that the first line also has the correct filename for the .bin file.

I would bet though, that what you've encountered is files that have been selectively compressed to make them small as possible - dumping music and cutscenes is a good way to squeeze them right down, but not for purists!

 

[Axman]

Awesome, thanks again. Here I was assuming you had to use some arcane piece of software to rip the images.

 

[Ian J]

PCSX:

> Very impressed. Renders better than my desktop. However, there is no sound in the majority of games' cutscenes. In fact, I have only found one game where the sound works when playing back video (FFIX). This cripples some game experiences. It seem unrelated to clock speed (1200 appears to be stable for me). Could it be BIOS-related? Should I try more? (So far I've tried a handful to no effect.)

There is an option in PCSX to enable/disable streaming sound to make games run faster, take a look at that.

 

[notaz]

PCSX:

> Very impressed. Renders better than my desktop. However, there is no sound in the majority of games' cutscenes. In fact, I have only found one game where the sound works when playing back video (FFIX). This cripples some game experiences.

Sounds like you disabled "XA decoding" in advanced options, fix that or use "restore defaults" option.

 

[Axman]

Sounds like you disabled "XA decoding" in advanced options, fix that or use "restore defaults" option.

Yes! Thank you for helping me deal with problems I made myself.