Wi-Fi problems \ Nubs\

[coreyjohnson711]

Just got my Pandora, loving it so far except I'm having some issues with WiFi.


Problem 1 (That so far seems to be gone after updating to Beta Driver)


Being connected to the router but, not having an Internet connection after a few minutes of browsing.


Problem 2 (partly related to Problem 1)


a.) Speed seems to be pretty slow when downloading anything...In fact I haven't really been able to download anything


b.) Downloads seem to get "stuck" either for a little bit or permanently. I have tried changing save location to a different SD card. And refreshing the page I get a Resolving Host message at the bottom and sometimes it will continue to the page and sometimes it will get stuck on that forever. (and as I typed this I tried to download Wormux and it got stuck a few times and now is stuck at 16.9 Mb)


c.) Downloads sometimes start fast (seems like 500kb/s) and then slows down to 50 kb/s or slower or stops as in b.)


Problem 3


Not sure if it is a problem yet do Ad-hocs work for wireless tethering with a phone? I haven't gotten it to work but it could be something on my end and not the pandora.


Nubs:


They seem to be a little slower sometimes going in a particular direction, I think this is more of a calibration issue but, am not sure yet. Are there any good ways to a.) calibrate them better or b.) figure out if they are in any way broken


MuPen


Latest Revision - can't get zelda oot to work...get to screen where I enter my name, then it crashes...


About my Pandora


Hotfix 4


WiFi Beta Driver (After install and reboot I don't need to do anything else correct?)


I think I turned off WiFi Sleep mode but am not sure if that is a permanent change upon reboots.


This is on a couple of networks, WPA AES, and the open network for my school.


I am a newb when it comes to linux (as well as my Pandora) but, pick up stuff pretty quick.


Also wanted to use this time to say thanks to the whole OPT, this is an amazing device, and I can't wait for everyone else to get theirs. EvilDragon - I always appreciated the time and energy you put into the community. It meant a lot to me, as well as helped me figuring out my Pandora. Even though this device is in what I would consider an alpha phase, I can tell there is so much potential to be unlocked. I'm not super technical but, have more than lurked here a lot. I can't wait for more recent games to be ported (Wolfenstein ET comes to mind) , more emulators to come out (Dreamcast) , more homebrew to come out, mnore apps to be created and ported, better Wi-Fi drivers, access to the DSP available for devs, and of course - I can't wait to figure out how to fully utilize my Pandora. I've had it for only a few days and already am in love with it. Use it a lot for web browsing ( Chrome thanks for that)and the experience is great for such a device. I also have been using it to play music, videos, and read e-books - all of which run flawless (even when multitasking.) Anyways, I don't want to rant on. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who made this device possible. You are gods among men.


EDIT: Also wanted to add, if in the off chance you go to UC Berkeley and want to check out my Pandora, drop me a PM.

 

[milkshake]

problem 2. has been an issue since forever but acording to the latest beta firmware this has been fixed, so either flash the latest beta firmware or wait for hotfix 5

 

[EvilDragon]

Problem 3


Not sure if it is a problem yet do Ad-hocs work for wireless tethering with a phone? I haven't gotten it to work but it could be something on my end and not the pandora.

No, not yet in the driver.

Nubs:


They seem to be a little slower sometimes going in a particular direction, I think this is more of a calibration issue but, am not sure yet. Are there any good ways to a.) calibrate them better or b.) figure out if they are in any way broken

They autocalibrate while using them.


If they don't work properly right away, move them up, down, left, right (stay there for half a second) and it should work afterwards. Sometimes you need to do it 2 - 3 times and that's it.


If you have those problems in XFCE: Can also be related to mouse acceleration, so simply disabling that also works.

MuPen


Latest Revision - can't get zelda oot to work...get to screen where I enter my name, then it crashes...

Bug in the 3D plugin, AFAIK.


Hopefully will be fixed someday, as it was working with an earlier version.

 

[- Theo -]

Just got my Pandora, loving it so far

Welcome to the club

MuPen


Latest Revision - can't get zelda oot to work...get to screen where I enter my name, then it crashes...

I have found MuPen to be one of the less reliable emulators available for the Panda (in terms of game compatibility, performance, etc.) Haven't tried ZeldaOOT yet, but it's a bummer, I was planning to play it. If you want to see what great fullspeed N64 emulation can be, try Super Mario 64. I'm sure it will improve a lot in the future.

...more emulators to come out (Dreamcast)...

I wouldn't have high hopes on this one (at least in the near future). More realistically we might have a Saturn emu in the next months, although it's tricky to emulate.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Thanks for getting back to me guys, why I love this community. I'll wait for hotfix 5 to come out and see if that fixes my WiFi problems.


ED- thanks for the feedback on the nubs and Ad-hoc.


And dreamcast emulation doesn't seem impossible. From what I've read on the forums the guy working on the android emulator said he will port his work to the pandora when he gets it.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Just had an interesting little problem, well two to be exact.


My pandora said it had 51% battery, and all of the sudden shut off. When I plugged it in, it said 1%...


Having some problems with one of my SD cards, it seems to sort of mount but can't be accessed properly in the file manager, and shows up as some weird name _PNG with 001A icon under it...It also says I cannot unmount it "Cannot open /media/.hal-mtab.

 

[MarioPandio]

Just had an interesting little problem, well two to be exact.


My pandora said it had 51% battery, and all of the sudden shut off. When I plugged it in, it said 1%...


Having some problems with one of my SD cards, it seems to sort of mount but can't be accessed properly in the file manager[...]It also says I cannot unmount it

The battery monitor doesnt always refresh itself accurately I believe (or at least needs a change of activities) but 51-1% is too big a jump for that I would guess. I think you may have a loose contact with the battery and could try using a little paper between the cover and battery to make a snug fit.


Thunar has a bug that doesn´t handle unmounting SD cards, see the other thread titled on this issue by Dennis and the terminal command to unmount will be in there. Alternatively I believe it has been stressed that as long as the card is not being accessed, you can safely eject it. I´ve had zero issues but I now use Mass Storage Mode and USB to make file transfers as Its my laptop I dont trust with SD cards, despite `safe´ unmounting in windoze. I sometimes find a refusal to mount cards or HDD from the menu but by selecting media/thenthecardordrive it then does mount and access properly. Usually thats from within an app and trying to access docs/roms etc rather than direct from Thunar. You can also download the PND of XFE as an alt file manager http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,116,163.


ED or others will correct me if wrong and put you right/explain it better

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Thanks for that! I'm going to try the paper thing right now because my Pandora won't turn on. One green LED comes out but that is all that happens...We'll see what happens...


Well the paper thing didn't help it turn on. I wonder what on earth is wrong...

 

[EvilDragon]

Thanks for that! I'm going to try the paper thing right now because my Pandora won't turn on. One green LED comes out but that is all that happens...We'll see what happens...


Well the paper thing didn't help it turn on. I wonder what on earth is wrong...

What LED does come on?

 

[coreyjohnson711]

It was either the left most or right most green. It turned back on (the Pandora) but was running funny (started a .PND opened for a sec, then closed, and then no other .PNDs would open.... and something seems to be going on...and it has turned back on but is stuck on the lading screen with the pandora logo and relase 1 - zaxxon... right now the green LED on the far right side is the only one on. Will try a hard reset.


EDIT: Upon hard reset, it is the LEFT most green LED that is stuck on, and my pandora will not boot.

 

[MWeston]

It sounds like your NAND has been corrupted and needs a full restore. If the leftmost LED is on at power up, it means that no functional boot method was found. Unfortunately, it also means that the only way to shut the power off is to pull the battery because it takes software to do a power down.


If you are able to boot occasionally then it again sounds like stuff is really messed up and needs reflashing.


You will have to create a bootable SD card and load it into slot 1. I think there is a topic or link to a guide somewhere on this forum or on www.gp32x.de but I must admit to not following things closely on the forums and I don't know exactly where this stuff is.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Wow, that doesn't sound good at all...Thanks for letting me know, if someone could point me to a well written guide (I really don't want to screw something up) I would greatly appreciate it. Will try and find something in the mean time.

 

[EvilDragon]

Just wanted to reply the same thing but was looking for the thread


Let us know if you need more help

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Man my luck is bad, so it turned on (I haven't done anything yet regarding the thread mentioned in the previous post) and I was surfing on chrome to make sure things were okay...And then chrome seemed to lock up but I couldnt open the task killer (holding the pandora button) or exit chrome (but I could move the nubs around.) And now upon hard reseting, nothing is happening. I have it plugged in right now, I thought the battery had a good % left (~30% last time I checked.) No LEDs are on now...


EDIT: Still not working, I have tried CPR, this thing is more or less my child I figured it was worthing trying.

 

[ardje]

My pandora said it had 51% battery, and all of the sudden shut off. When I plugged it in, it said 1%...

I had battery problems too. In my case the battery packaging made it not align with the probes inside the casing: it was just at the edge of the coper. You can check this if you look at the battery, and see if the scratchings are at the edge of the copper.


Behaviour was eratic reboots, low power warnings when just charged etc. ...


The fix was a piece of folded paper on one side to make the battery allign. Since I did that the pandora works smooth (power wise).


-- edit --


Boy, do I need to learn to read the complete thread to know this has already been explained.


Except for the part to look at the copper ;-).

 

[ardje]

Man my luck is bad, so it turned on (I haven't done anything yet regarding the thread mentioned in the previous post) and I was surfing on chrome to make sure things were okay...And then chrome seemed to lock up but I couldnt open the task killer (holding the pandora button) or exit chrome (but I could move the nubs around.) And now upon hard reseting, nothing is happening. I have it plugged in right now, I thought the battery had a good % left (~30% last time I checked.) No LEDs are on now...


EDIT: Still not working, I have tried CPR, this thing is more or less my child I figured it was worthing trying.

Well, chrome has not worked for me, it triggers lock up bugs ;-). The lates chrome-dev however works like a charm, and firefox 3.6 and 4.0 beta work. If you have the xfce GUI the pandora button will pop up a task killer. Most of the times (I mean: everytime when you need it), it will pop up behind the application and usually will not get focus at all (because the application grabbed the input, and the task killer can't ungrab it).


If you use the minimenu, the pandora button is bound to kill the last process started from the menu, or something like that ;-).


The hard reset (pandora pressed, and then slide power button to on) should always work (if I am correct it's hardwired). You should see an immediate fading of the screen, and if you have power plugged in, it will boot up again (hoping I am not mixing my G1 with the pandora right now ;-) ).


If all else fails you should (really last resort) remove the power supply and battery, and then insert those again.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Good news everyone! (yeah pretend it is futurama) My Pandora is not dead, I am now at a screen that says "Angstrom, The Angstrom Distribution my user name) blah blah" so I think I can reflash the NAND. Will update later


Alright, so noob question. I have Windows 7, is there any guide that will let me use that to make a SD card bootable on the Pandora?


So I think I updated to HF5 Beta okay, not sure if everything went right though... I cannot get Wifi to turn on...


And upon restarting when Wi-Fi and no .PNDs wouldn't work...I get this


"failed to load kernel, you may need to reflash the firmware"


Can someone please write up a better guide? I went to the one posted but am confused on where exactly all the files go on the SD card, and how to format the card correctly for Linux booting in Windows 7.


I will post what is confusing to me in the guide to not seem like a total nub.


"Unzip first to someplace else than the SD, extract u-boot.bin from bootf.tgz to the root of SD, then copy everything extracted to SD. Sync and unmount."


When it says copy everything else, do I copy it as is, or put everything on the root of the SD card, ie no folders just files in root of SD card. When I tried to do what I thought were the correct steps, it said it couldn't find the u-boot files.


Also wanted to say thanks again for all your help, I greatly appreciate it.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Still stuck, it seems to boot into the desktop sometimes but runs horribly and the left nub refuses to go left, ruh roh!


EDIT: Nub issues seem to be gone but same problems, my pandora refuses to turn on right now, but it did twice today and worked for a little bit. :/

 

[Link]

Trying taking out your battery, plug it in, plug in power without battery installed. How's it running? If it is good, something is up with battery contacts as described previously.


Don't add/remove battery while power is attached.

 

[coreyjohnson711]

Will try that, I got this "failed to load kernel, you may need to reflash the firmware" again.