Pandora; open source handheld console

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Almost there
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 07:13 EvilDragon

Well, just some nice things you guys would like to know.

1. ALL parts (including the nubs) have arrived at the factory! For ALL 4000 Pandoras!

2. Chinese holidays are almost over, so the case should also be finished soon.

3. The Rev4 prototype Pandora is currently on the way to me so I can do the CE testing (gonna call the company today, I'll let you know when testing will take place)

4. Softwarewise, we're pulling all the patches we have together. The OS needs some more tweaking during the next months, but all the basic stuff does work and the image is pretty stable. I'll do more videos when I get the prototype model.

That's it for now. Short but good news, eh?

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Op maandag 8 oktober 2009 11:28 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Eindelijk

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Op maandag 26 oktober 2009 10:26 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Nou, echt perfect loopt het niet... Vooral in het begin hapert hij nog al eens en het geluid is geen gehoor.

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Op maandag 26 oktober 2009 10:47 schreef Gehenna het volgende:
hmm het lijkt een beetje slow-motion, of ik had zelf altijd mijn emulator op een te hoge snelheid
wel gaaf dat het ook zo'n 'bakkie' loopt trouwens

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Op maandag 26 oktober 2009 13:42 schreef PP. het volgende:
Komt ie nu dan eindelijk 's, BB?

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Op maandag 2 november 2009 13:11 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Elke keer als ik je in MyAT zie staan weet ik al welk topic het is Ik wacht nog steeds af op de reviews/ervaringen

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Sorry everyone,

I had to pull the countdown timer. I dared to be brave and got bit in the ass once again. Craig suggested I was crazy but there didn't seem to be anything else that could be screwed up at this point and I even factored in a couple extra days.

There was one part coming out of the molds messed up and they were to fix it, make new parts and ship everything tonight. Now, two more molds need the extra treatment and will take a few more days. I'm hoping they ship new parts this weekend but no more count downs. Unbelievable.

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Op maandag 18 november 2009 10:41 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Wat is de verwachte shipping datum van een complete Pandora nu?

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Op woensdag 9 december 2009 16:56 schreef __Saviour__ het volgende:
een soort van mini-linux dus
Dus daarvoor zijn zeker ook heel wat kleine spelletjes te vinden?

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 09:39 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:
TVP. Ben al een tijd niet echt een gamer meer, maar vroeger veel Playstation en sega gespeeld En zo'n mini linux pctje klinkt alleen al daarvoor handig Als mp3-speler ook handiger dan m'n telefoon en kan denk ik ook wel een stuk langer afspelen.
Dat ik nu pas achter dit ding kom

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 11:26 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:
Overal internet radio. Thuis een shoutcast server en overal je eigen muziek waar WIFI is of ik gebruik m'n mobiel als modem (zal vast wel gelijk kunnen en anders nokia tools in Wine).
Of zo'n dongle van kpn hiervoor is ook wel handig

Ligt eraan of ik geld heb. Denk dat dat de volgende batch wordt anders, heeft geen haast maar als ik geld heb dan doe ik het sowieso.

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 11:40 schreef RaptoR-X het volgende:
kun je ook TV kijken op je Pandora?

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 12:11 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:

[..]

Internet tv ! Zijn genoeg aanbieders

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 12:22 schreef Cynic het volgende:

[..]

Maar heb jij nou zo'n ding besteld of niet?

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Op maandag 10 december 2009 12:55 schreef RaptoR-X het volgende:

[..]

ooooh...dan valt het wachten nog wel mee dus

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Op maandag 11 december 2009 08:43 schreef __Saviour__ het volgende:
Zijn er ook al iets van beschermhoesjes gepland voor de pandora?
En stel dat ik er dus idd eentje in juli zou willen hebben, kan ik dan gewoon pas bestellen of wordt het weer flink van tevoren inschrijven?

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Op maandag 11 december 2009 13:53 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Aanmelden voor batch 1 gaat zeker niet meer?

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Your approximate queue position is 250 - 350.

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Op maandag 11 december 2009 17:01 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Ben benieuwd wanneer ik antwoord krijg!

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:03 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Ja site heb ik al door genomen en ziet er allemaal oke uit!
Bank transfer was ook een optie, maar goed ik doe het liever via paypal!
Maar jij hebt via hun site besteld? Of via 1 van die andere winkels?

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:08 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
haha nogal logisch opzich van de banken!
Ik krijg morgen denk ik wel een mailtje terug, dan zal ik meteen is vragen of paypal mogelijk is!

Bij banktransfer heb je iban nummer ofzo nodig toch!?

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:14 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Juist, dat google checkout icm met credit card!
Dat stond ook in dat mailtje en dat er nog zeker plek vrij was voor de 1ste batch!

Ding ziet er zeer cool uit en heeft denk nog een heleboel mogelijkheden open staan!

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:20 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Dat die emulators er ook op gaan werken is voor mij wel een pluspunt!
En geen gezever met jailbraik en die dingen idd!

Maar wat brengt de toekomst sowieso?
Bedoel meer van, staan er ook bepaalde releases vast?

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:23 schreef disjfa het volgende:

[..]

Uhm. Hij draait gewoon een eigen build linux (2.6.x) met een XFCE desktop. Dat kan je ook gewoon zelf instaleren als je dat zou willen

Alleen dan een eigen build met eigen knoppen natuurlijk. Maar dat is niets anders dan gewoon linux op een handheld.

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 01:34 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Linux valt ook te leren :p!
Nja ik ga morgen eens goed naar de filmpjes kijken en hoop op een positief mailtje

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Your approximate queue position is 250 - 350.

Thanks.

Jacquelyn

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Op zaterdag 12 december 2009 11:37 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:

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Twijfelgevalletje

Vind het een beetje te wantrouwig om het allemaal via de mail te doen

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Op maandag 15 december 2009 12:28 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:

[..]

Nice

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Op maandag 15 december 2009 15:41 schreef __Saviour__ het volgende:
Ziet er toch wel netjes uit, erg solide.
Maar ik denk dat ik toch nog even op veilig speel en wacht op een tweede batch. Dat ze eventuele kinderziektes kunnen verhelpen.

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Due to the demand from these 'second batchers' we will probably start orders for batch2 as soon as batch1 is shipping.

I think there might be more people waiting to buy then have bought...

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Op maandag 15 december 2009 22:54 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:

[..]

Kunnen ze niet een grotere 2e batch maken, het demand zal toch wel blijven komen. Ik denk dat dit best een hit gaat worden

Wel een mooie slag voor de open source beweging, gaan ze straks nintendo en microsoft voorbij in populariteit
Gratis software

Jammer dat ik nu geen geld heb, want zo'n ding is echt multifunctioneel. Een echte pocketpc

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Op maandag 16 december 2009 08:36 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:
Als ze een handheld snappen snappen ze dit toch ook wel? Handleiding erbij en gewoon een simpel opstartmenu dat je bepaalde emulatoren kan kiezen of zo. en dan natuurlijk gewoon booten.

Heel misschien heb ik nog op tijd geld voor batch 1 en anders batch 2. Zodra ik het kan betalen bestel ik er 1

Wat kost het nou eigenlijk? En hoe is dat inclusief beschermhoesje oid? Wat is het pakket dat je krijgt zeg maar?

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Op maandag 16 december 2009 08:43 schreef Netsplitter het volgende:
Is dat ding er nou eindelijk??

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The cases will probably arrive with Michael at the weekend if we are lucky. They should be the final ones.

So it looks like units won’t ship to customers in large numbers until (probably) after Christmas.

I’m sure Michael will make up more units, but it’s going to be small numbers before Christmas, probably for devs.

When you get your Pandora and see just how perfected it is you will understand the delays. (craigix)

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Today I've completed Castle of Illusion (this is still one of the best games ever made) and Sonic and Knuckles (more boring than I remember).

Played them with the screen sort of 3 quarters open, no issues.

About to fire up MAME...

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The unit does not get hot at all. I've used the Pandora for about 7 hours so far.

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It's expected to last over 10 hours.

We didn't lie with our battery stats like so many other companies do.

You would have to have the WIFI on constantly for it to drop severely.

Also, that's not the back room.

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Ed may well do a test with the wifi left on.

I'd expect it to drop to around 6 hours with it on, wifi is pretty hungry.

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Op maandag 16 december 2009 09:05 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:

Hoe meer ik erover nadenk hoe meer ik het wil. !

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Op maandag 18 december 2009 14:29 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Hellolo

Ik vind het een mooi apparaatje en ik hoop dat het een beetje aan slaat. Het is een leuker ding om mee op reis te nemen dan een laptop lijkt me. Kan er een simkaart in trouwens voor 3G acces, of is dat nou weer nét een stapje te veel?

_{En ik hoop op Zsnes nog steeds}

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Op maandag 18 december 2009 14:29 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:


_{En ik hoop op Zsnes nog steeds}

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Op vrijdag 18 december 2009 18:48 schreef seventhseagulll het volgende:
Maar die dev hoeft ook geen complete port te ontwikkelen, want zsnes bestaat al voor Linux. Aangenomen dat je de goede libraries hebt geinstalleerd, zou je zsnes met wat moeite kunnen compilen voor de Pandora. Maar goed, dat zegt natuurlijk niet of het ook soepel werkt enzo. Het grootste werk is echter al gedaan.

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Advantus schreef hetvolgende:

Hello,

I've made a new video of the most recent sources for Mupen64plus and gles2n64. It shows Banjo Kazooie rendered at 400x320 (then upscaled fullscreen) with no frameskip or sound. Its an amazing looking game, my camera doesn't really do it justice. There's a minor bug with the tree rendering in the intro. Its about 17 - 20 fps in game, but it looks pretty fast.... Once the 400x240 framebuffer mode is made available we can get another ~10% since I don't have to render to an FBO then to the backbuffer. It seems some games are GPU bottlenecked after all, at 800x480 banjo kazooie is about 10 fps.

mupen64plus - Banjo Kazoie.mp4

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Today I am invited to a birthday party in berlin, so I took the opportunity and invited myself to EvilDragon's home in Ingolstadt to have a look at his pre-production pandora. While Ingolstadt isn't exactly on the way between Karlsruhe and Berlin, I figured having a premature look at the pandora is well worth a 3:30h/500km detour. I had quite an early start having to get up at 5:30 in the morning after 4 hours of sleep. The trainride was as beautiful as I hoped the pandora would be, the whole country is covered in fresh white snow, the sun was shining, the weather was sweet (and freaking cold). As I my train came closer I got somewhat nervous. Would the pandora be as good as she is constantly described by it developers (hello craig). I certainly hoped so, just to rub it in the face of my twatty vapourscreaming friends. To my knowledge, I'm the first "normal" customer (no first or second party developer), to write a preview.
So let's get it on.

NOTES
--- I had the pleasure to use a pre-production model with a two different nightly builds of the software. This preview does not rate the device that will be shipped! ---
--- I am german. I don't consider my english bad, but I know it isn't perfect, so please forgive minor mistakes in orthography and style and ask if something isn't clear ---
--- There won't be many (or any) news in this preview. The process of the pandora development is too open for that ---
--- Everything written here is my opinion, im not affiliated with anything (websites, magazines, open gaming handheld development startups) concerning the pandora ---
--- NES and SNES are Famicom and Super Famicom. I don't know which name it has in the US ---

First off, EvilDragon is - as well as online - a super nice guy in reality. Thanks again for having me at your home, I had a great time.
Well, what's to say about the pandora? It's stunning. Really. ED and craigix are absolutely right when they tell you that this device will rock.

Looks:
It is the pre-production-model, the same that ED took photos and videos of. The silk-screening isn't done and the finish is not finished . It already looks lovely nonetheless. Some things need the finishing and redo: the shrinking, left side of the battery compartment, translucent LED cover and shoulder buttons. Nothing new here, but I'll be honest, in normal use, it's hard to see this stuff (except the shoulder buttons). Shrinking and battery compartment issues can be seen with the naked eye and a close look, but you'll need a magnifying glass to see the led cover-problem.
Concerning the shoulder buttons: They are okay as they are now, I guess everyone would be grateful if he had them on any other device. I had a look at the translucent case, too, the shoulderbuttons there are better (don't ask, it's a chinese thing ) and we will get better ones in the final version. The LEDs look nice and remind me of older Thinkpads where you could see the same LEDs whether the lid was closed or not. With closed lid, the device bulky compared to other modern devices. But well, those devices are mostly smaller than the battery of our sweety, so go figure. The Pandora-Cube on the lid is good to distinguish it from japan-based lid-closing gaming handhelds.

Build Quality:
Very nice. Really. Especially the base part feels rock solid. I pushed but the case didn't flex. The battery compartment feels very solid too. Me and ED (rhymes galore) opened and closed the thing several times, more often than you would normally do in a month and it feels like you could to it a million times without breaking anything. D-pad, action-buttons and keyboard are very well built, it felt absolutely like a device a big company could sell.
One thing about the lid I didn't knew (I follow the official and inofficial blog but I don't read every last thread on the forums): The hinge is not THAT sturdy that you can use the pandora when the lid isn't snapped to the final position WHILE WALKING OF JUMPING. THIS IS FREAKING IMPORTANT AND I WILL COME TO YOUR HOME AND PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE IF YOU POST SOMETHING ABOUT IT WITHOUT READING WHAT I HAVE TO SAY IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TEN TIMES!

Ergonomics and using the pandora:
So here you hopefully are still reading on from the last paragraph. Important: If you use the pandora handheld you WILL snap the lid to the final position. Because it's by far the most comfortable one. Unless your hands are somewhat crippled, you will. Believe me. If you don't move, you can use it with the lid in any other position, but it will snap close or fully open if you walk or jump around with it. I can't think of any situation where you would hold the pandora in this uncomfortable position while moving, so this is no issue. The only reason to use the pandora half-opened is when you put it on a table or something to watch a video or else and this works flawless.
I hope I got this covered now, it is the only thing that really was new to me and it doesn't concern me one bit, but I thought I let you know. And please remember the last paragraph of "Build quality".
The keyboard:
Is great. For a handheld device the buttons are really big, so you won't have any issues with fat thumbs or drunken typing. You will type with your thumbs. I don't have big hands, I'd say less than average and I can reach everything comfortably. Even stuff like capital s, which is one of the harder letter as you have to press shift with the left thumb and reach over to the s with the right one is easy to do. This is without sticky keys (wasn't implemented on this build). I even used a little vim (because I work as a linux administrator and plan to use the pandora with ssh) and I think with some training it will even be suitable for that. My typing speed increased while using the pandora (I ony was 2 hours or so at EDs) and I'm confident that with a few days use, you will type very fast on this thing. ED was way faster than me already. It is however no full-size keyboard and you won't write your next book on it. But for everyday use, IM, surfing, writing on forums, blog, twitter and else it is fine.
The d-pad:
Sad news first: On the builds available and in such a short time there was no game or emulator available to really test it. This would be games I know and play reasonably well, like Contra III, SMB1-3, SMB World, Street Fighter and some more. EvilDragon and the devs have better things to do then making emulators run under XFCE for me to play, so I can't make a final judgement on the d-pad. I did however play some supertux and DooM and I tell you: the d-pad just feels great. Really. I played a lot of NES and SNES in my days, some xbox360, dreamcast, ps1, ps2 too and I can say it feels freaking comfortable. As Supertux and DooM don't use diagonals I wasn't able to check them, but I _felt_ them. I'll eat some broccoli if this thing won't let you produce lengthy combos in beat-em-ups.
Action Buttons:
They work. They feel good and they work. You can feel when the button is pressed, this is very defined (omfg, this isn't proper english, is it?). I don't have much to say about them, I just can't imagine how to make them better.
Analogue Controls:
There was no game to play with them but they feel _very_ nice. If they work and the software makes good use of them, you will have the best analogue control on any mobile device (yes, I'm looking at you, PSP). I can't say anything devinitive about them.
Shoulder buttons:
Well, as you already know, they need some fixing. They are digital buttons, so I assume if the click distance is shortened, they will be nice.
Touchscreen:
I don't really plan to use the touchscreen a lot as I don't use the mouse alot on fullsize computers. You can use the touchscreen with your fingers if the buttons aren't too small. The screen feels nice and is matte, so it isn't sir smudgealot like certain smartphones and you don't have to wipe it after every use. The touchscreen works as expected. It was configured that rightclick was pressing long and this worked too. The only thing I can't see coming (for me) is using the stylus and the basecontrols (keyboard, buttons and pads) and the same time a lot. I think with the d-pad as cursor buttons and the keyboard and perhaps even the analogue control as a mouse you will find that you'll use the touchscreen mainly for mouse-only or heavy-mouse-use (now there is a word that can't come up too often) applications. I may be wrong, because as stated above I don't use mice alot anyway. The screen itself looks very good. High resolution, bright, good viewing angle. Contrast is higher on OLEDs (no shit, sherlock) but good anyway.
Speakers:
Well, they are tiny speakers. They are okay for gaming sound, they aren't very loud, but lond enough for me. No HiFi, sorry.
Headphone-Out:
Sounds very nice. I just had my Koss Porta Pro to check, but I was satisfied. I put it up to full power and it was too loud for me. Guess that should be enough
TV-Out:
Not tested. But I saw the cable. It has sweet little pandoralogos on it.
SD-Card-Slots:
Work like every other SD-Card-Slot in the world.
Volume Control:
A real, hardware wheel (Rhyme again!). I like it alot, I don't think it will accidently be rolled (?!?) in your pocket.
Changing the battery:
You don't really have to do it a lot (unless you need a day of pandora-using without a power outlet, but it works quite nice. The battery isn't heavy, I expected much more. It looks cool because it has a pandora-logo on it.
Overall:
I considered stealing it.
It fits nice in my trousers front pockets and is way to small for my cargo pants' side pockets. The rounded edges on the top let it glide in to your pocket. Really, it is absolutely pocketable if you don't wear tight trousers. I really had to touch it again and again. When I first saw the design (feels a long time ago, I guess it was somewhen in the eighties) I honestly didn't think it would be so freaking comfortable. The only thing I can imagine is that people with no motoric skills and very fat thumbs will press to action buttons and the same time once a year, as they are a little bit closer together as on the SNES. You will be stunned and surprised.

Software:
As I wrote before, I tested some nightly builds of the OS with XFCE as DE. XFCE is really snappy, I'd say it is as fast as gnome on my thinkpad x200s with a dualcore 1.86Ghz CPU and 2 Gigs of RAM. It reacts instantly. I hadn't the opportunity to test WiFi because one of the devs (sorry, I forgot your name) is currently working on it so the Nightly Build had a half-done driver on it. Same with PMenu. I saw the .PND-magic and I think it is a very nice way to put software on a device which mainly relies on temp-storage. It is very fast even on the really slow card ED used. The icons appeared on the Desktop instantly. XFCE didn't really look sexy but when we the people have the device we'll change that in a minute, I'm sure. I played the first two levels of Doom and even with unoptimized control I loved it. Quake is framebuffer only atm, but the control scheme of Q1 and 2 is somewhat similar. With a little training you'll be on par with people using a normal keyboard. I know in the youtube videos of FPSs on the pandora the players always suck but it must be because they can't play FPS or have to use a camera or something. Supertux was okay but I don't really like the game that much. Using the shell was cool on such a small device. With a nice keyboard-setup using the shell will work superb. Not much more on the software side but it is being worked on hard and if the pandora ships and the devcounter goes from under ten to over hundred there will be a lot to see.

Conclusion
I'll conclude on the pandora part: OMFG!!!! This is the coolest thing ever. It is worth every cent, every second of waiting, everything. You will jump around full of joy once you received it. You'll feed it the coolest homebrew and emulators on the planet. You will play cool games from the 80s and 90s on the go WITH CONTROLS AS GOOD OR BETTER as the original. The pandora is still unique and it's hard to believe you'll find anything even remotely comparable in the future.
Thanks ED for letting me into your house, sharing this experience, telling me interesting stuff, showing me interesting pictures (they will be released an some point in the future for sure), showing me your office and everything. I hope I'll come back one day! Thanks to all the other developers for putting so much work in this. As far as I can oversee it, you did everything right.

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View PostMooTheKow, on 20 December 2009 - 12:29 AM, said:
Just for clarification - are you saying that despite the hardware being delayed over a year - the software for the emulators still don't support the use of a d-pad?

I find that mildly disappointing... so even if they'd shipped the first 1000 before Christmas we wouldn't really be able to use them to actually play emulated games?


Obviously not - you have seen me play on loads of them, Eds firmware when he turned up to see the Pandora just didn't have the set up to use emulators. This is because Eds Pandora is being used as a testing unit for the latest firmware with desktop applications being the top priority.

My unit is for emulator testing.

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Op maandag 22 december 2009 11:05 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:

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Die dingen zien er wel vet uit.
Ik bedacht me trouwens ook dat als je je pandora standaard met je telefoon via bluetooth laat verbinden voor internet als wifi niet beschikbaar is. Dan kan je je telefoon in je zak houden de pandora pakken en heb je internet.

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Op maandag 22 december 2009 11:11 schreef pc-fr34k het volgende:
Er zat geen camera op toch? Zou wel vet zijn anders kon je ook makkelijk mobiel webcam/mic gebruiken. Kan alsnog wel als je wat aansluit, of via tel, maar dan is die wel zo leeg lijkt me