Pandora; open source handheld console II

De iControlpad een zijproject van craig die ook de pandora maakt wordt nu door apple aangevallen

http://www.pocketgamer.co(...)pad/news.asp?c=19637

De icontrol pad een soort additie om smartphones pandora controls te geven

Het wifi probleem is gevonden

quote:

The Pandora team has found the problem with the internal Wi-fi module. Turns out a resistor had an incorrect value.

It was a resistor.

CraigIX

Good news: The modification is minimal and can be done within a few minutes. We told the company to send the boards already produced and tested to UK ASAP and Michael will go there and start modding.
Then we need the cases – and assembly will finally start.

(Evildragon)

van de officiele blog

Finally - a new blog post. Did take a real long time, since there was so much we needed to figure out first.

Okay, here is what happened:

1. The WiFi issue - finally resolved

A lot of guys have probably already followed this on the boards: notaz was working on the WiFi driver and still couldn't get it to work reliable. As he didn't know what else to try, he thought it could also be a hardware issue - of course, that got us alarmed. Michael immediately stopped the board production (700 had been produced so far back then) to first do more tests with WiFi. We were totally in the dark. If you ever wanted to know how sudden death feels... well, we do know for sure yet.

Michael did begin investigating the hardware while notaz did more tests and tweaks with the software. A kernel which disabled everything except WiFi did get a bit more speed out of the WiFi, but it still was very slow. Was it the driver causing problems when other stuff was running? Or was it the hardware? We still didn't know for sure.

As we didn't know, we decided we will get some WiFi sticks for the beginning and ask every customer whether he wanted to get the Pandora with a stick and internal WiFi that might be fixable by software or maybe needs a hardware fix later.

Then, at one time, we found out that WiFi was faster on Rev2/3 boards then on the recent Rev4/5 boards - pretty weird, as nothing had been changed in these revisions that could affect WiFi. Except the board manufacturer. Using that clue, we figured out that the impedance of one trace had been changed. The impedance is important here, as a wrong impedance will distort the signal and then the module doesn't get a clean clock. Measuring the clock signal did prove that: Yep, the impedance had been changed.
Who's fault was it? Hard to tell. The company had changed that trace without asking, but we also didn't explicitely say it needs to have a correct back. So it's a hard thing, the trace is working, it was just not good enough for the signal.
Knowing that, Michael did work on it for a couple of days, doing some trial and error (not much you can't do unless you do know the exact new impedance).
He got it working better - but still not good enough to really be usable - was this due to software? Or still hardware?
So he started to work on a new testing board (Rev6) which could also be used as new board for the rest of the 3300 Pandoras if it fixes WiFi.
While doing that, he had another idea - modded another Rev5 board and got a HUGE speed increase! On minimal kernel, he can get 350KB/s, on normal image he gets 66KB/s stable speed (tested downloading from the internet. That fix is easy: Simply piggyback a resistor on top of an existing one. Takes about 1 - 2 minutes. And the rest of the 3300 boards can be populated with the new resistor immediately, so that fix won'tl be needed on them.
Speed can probably still be improved - Michael just found out about that yesterday, he will try to tweak more (or even combine the two mods) during the next days, until he leaves for UK to start assembling (he will do the modification of each board while assembling).
Finally! That news did make us more alive again, we were really suffering during the last days...


2. The cases

Since board production had been stopped for a while, we allowed the Chinese guys to tweak the case moulds a bit more. As you might have seen on the latest image, the bottom part (with the keyboard) looks spot-on right now - however, the top part still has some weird discoloration. No problem with stability here, just looks a bit weird if you look closely.


3. The OS - ready for first release

The latest image had been tested a lot by all of us already. It is pretty stable, has some minor issues (like you need to restart after calibrating the touchscreen at the moment... no biggie, I only needed to calibrate once in the last four months).
It has a working browser, eMail client, IRC, ICQ, MSN, etc. everything you need for normal life.
There is room for speed improvement in the future, SDL is not using hardware surfaces yet, but that will follow.
Also, boot process will be further optimized and will use Upstart to be a lot faster.
If you don't like a fancy desktop system, you can also use some minimal GUIs. We also designed that system to be configurable, so as soon as anyone codes a new GUI, it can easily be included by simply changing a config file.

The libpnd system is also working nicely: download a PND onto your SD Card and it will automatically appear in the menu (or on the desktop). Games will be sorted into categories, every dev can include a documentation in his PND so you can easily check the manual or installation settings, etc. Really convenient.
Of course, the categories, icons, etc. can be overriden, in case you want to have your own ones.
One thing you should not expect from the beginning is (as said before) accellerated movie playing (and therefore, also youtube movie playing).
This does need a new kernel and is on our TO-Do list for the next firmware release, which will be worked on as soon as the first one is ready to go on the NAND.
You can also help us testing then, as you can install the new beta image on an SD Card and try it out.

As the image is working well already, devs already concentrate to port more things. At the moment, we got fullspeed Amiga 500 emulation (without frameskip) at 500MHz, fullspeed Genesis and MegaCD, fullspeed C64 (Vice!) on 500 MHz without any frameskip, VCS2600, Colecovision, Atari ST, ... tons of stuff to play. Skeezix is also porting PocketSNES, so fullspeed SNES will also work when you get your unit.
PandoraPanic (minigames created by members of the GP32x.com community) is working nice, FreeDink, some PyGame-Games, etc. have also been ported already.

Overall, you will get a good working first release OS which still leaves a lot of room for improvements.


4. The current situation

We lost two weeks due to that WiFi issue, but now that this has been resolved being a fixable hardware issue, Michael told the company yesterday to ship out all the produced boards we have as soon as possible to UK. Additionally, Fatih told the Chinese to do the same: Produce the cases as they are now and ship them!
DJWillis is working on making the image NAND-installable, so yes, you might see us assembling them on webcam soon!

Het wifi probleem lijkt opgelost door het toevoegen van deze enorme resistor

en van de twitter

quote:

Craigix: Looks like the Pandora parts will be arriving next week for sure.

Dus ik hou mijn fingers crossed en hoop nogsteeds op assembly in april.

I have to admit it's getting better

ohja en een testje van de fabriek

Op het forum hebben ze laten wezen dat ze deze one-off roze waarschijnlijk op ebay gaan zetten

officiele blog

quote:

Here we go with the latest updates for the hungry masses!
First, my apologies for not updating the site a lot. That WiFi issue really did wear me out, I wasn't able to do much during that time. We all were a bit demotivated, but now that WiFi's working, we've recovered and are working fullspeed ahead!
Sorry for that, but after all, we're only human beings, too... and after years of constant work on the Pandora and our normal jobs... well, things can get a bit hard.



1. The hardware

Michael has finished working on WiFi and did manage to get it working quite well. Stable websurfing at about 500 KB/s. He tried webbrowsing, streaming music, etc.
This put our minds on ease, we really were quite scared when we found out about WiFi.
We now got FULLY WORKING HARDWARE, as we got drivers for EVERY component!

As can be seen on this picture, there's a lot of boxes shipping to UK. Some might go to Turkey, as Fatih got hold of a company who usually does laptop repairs, and they might help to fix the WiFi on the already produced 700 boards to speed things up a bit.

Boxes full of Boards and LCDs
Boxes full of B...
Boxes full of Boards and LCDs Boxes full of Boards and LCDs

This whole WiFi issue did throw as back a few weeks - but I hope you all do agree it's better we took the two weeks finding out what the problem was. Otherwise, you would've been gotten Pandoras with broken WiFi... not a good idea, if you ask me.
This seemed to happen for a big, well-known company whose latest product has serious WiFi issues (and WiFi working much worse than ours...)
We rather ship you something working - even if it did delay things by two or three more weeks!


2. The cases

While Michael was working on WiFi, the Chinese were working on increasing the case quality.
And we really do think it was worth the extra time - especially the final one that has some paint added looks spot-on!
Way better than anything we've seen before!

color1
color1
color1 color1

Just compare that to an older version of the case...

DSC07222
DSC07222
DSC07222 DSC07222

Was it worth it? That's up to decide for yourself. We sure do think so.

Unfortunately, adding paint did lead to one thing that has to be done: As it makes the case a bit thicker, Michael needs to approve that case and therefore is waiting for a sample.
To speed production up, Fatih will visit the company in China if necessary to make sure they won't mess around more but start shipping!
They still have a few days to ship, as applying the WiFi fix to the boards will take a while.

One thing that might interest you: You might have seen that they also painted a pink version of the Pandora... Michael will most probably put a Rev 4 board in and sell it on eBay soon!
Yep, that Prototype will probably be out shortly before we assemble and ship!

color21
color21
color21 color21

So if you want to own this case, keep your eyes on our blog!

Oh, some might think Painting is cheating... well, not really.
A lot of companies actually do it that way - and it doesn't wear off. Remember the old Nintendo DS? Not the DS Lite, but the old silvergrey one? I got one. Never had a carry case, it's really scratched (even the LCD is scratched).
But only on one corner it can be seen it's painted - and only because the base plastic color was white.
So black with black won't wear off - don't worry. It will simply LOOK better.


3. The software

I'm currently doing a lot of neat scripts while DJWillis prepare the image for the NAND.
Today I did create an LCD Gamma Manager - a small tool where you can create, load and save various LCD Gamma settings. I also created one that looks like an old CRT TV. Really cool - emulation on a handheld has never looked better!
To check out what's happening on the OS, simply go to http://git.openpandora.org

As Midori was a bit unstable and FireFox eating up RAM, we changed browsers once again. Arora is now included in the OS. Fast, without any rendering issues and it didn't crash yet for me.
The OS is getting more and more complete.


That's it for now - as soon as I know any more information (shipping dates for the cases, dates when we all meet in England, etc.), I'll inform you!
And sorry to my German readers: I'll translate the post tomorrow, it's 5:50 am now, I want to go to bed...

Ik denk dat hij er gewoon nooit komt

van mweston

quote:

Geez, I'm sick of these blog posts with suggestions as fact. Nothing is going to Turkey. Fatih suggested it. ED promoted it. Craig shot it down. End of story. Thousands of dollars have been spent setting up the hall in England and more shipping means more delays, more cost and possibly more taxes. It was a nice idea to spare my sanity having to solder 800 boards (don't forget all those rev4s still ready for devs and the Press) but that is just how it has to be. I'll do what I have to do to get it done faster and that is the reality of my life for the past two years. After reading ED's blog post it doesn't look like he actually said anything other than suggesting things but it's not a fault of the forum to read something and not at least consider it to be the plan. It's not.

The parts from Texas are in the air already and they are going to England. The cases will be shipped on Saturday April 17th (unpainted) or on Tuesday April 20th (painted). Silk screening would mean shipping them on Friday April 23rd and we saw more samples that were a bit better but still not great. Why is that so hard to do? Why haven't they made thousands yet? It baffles me too but from what I hear, they know we are unhappy and keep trying to impress us to no end...and it isn't happening although I have to say seeing the painted cases was the first time I started to feel like this could actually work. I'm pretty picky and perhaps more so than many forumers but I just want a professional product. We'll see what we get in the end. We actually never asked them to keep trying things like they have done. They've just sort of forced that on us by never having anything ready to ship. I'm not sure ED really understood that from Fatih and saying we told them to keep taking their time making it perfect is so not true. It was more like "well, um, if you think that is best...I guess we have a wifi issue we could work on while these delays happen".

The current problem with the painting idea is that they need to take a PCB I sent them and put a painted unit together to be sure that tolerances still exist. Unlike those pictures you have seen of the black and pink one, doing thousands will be done in a professional and dust free environment should we chose to do that. A few extra days while we prepare other stuff like opening up boxes and soldering resistors? Hmmn, it might actually be worth it.

I asked Fatih to ask them about the durability of the paint. Yes, I go through Fatih again because going direct seems to go no where these days. They answer to the one making the purchase orders. He said they tried applying stickers and scratching the paint with a knife and were happy with the test results. I mentioned that we were more interested in more general rubbing and finger grease/salts. I also asked him to find out exactly what kind of paint they will use so we can research its durability. If this all gets done before Friday, no time will be lost since I guess they are still building final cases themselves this week. Can I get a collective: WTF? I hear ya.

So the deal is still that I fly to England as soon as I know those cases have taken off. I will make sure the hall is prepared as I want it and maybe double check the wiring to be sure stations are properly grounded. Craig and I will go through the boxes from Texas and be sure it is all there and okay. I'm also going to ship lots of stuff from my own office here so that I am certain I have the tools I've used all along. I'll do the resistor mod while the cases are in the air and when they get there, we'll throw hundreds together immediately following that. As long as the case company can finally get it together this time, we can still start shipping these out to customers at the end of the month. That's the real plan.

Oh, I should also add that production of the remaining boards from the 4000 has been resumed. Once the wifi fix had been verified to make wireless transactions work and reliably so (maybe not at break neck speeds but I still think there is some software work to do as download rates are totally variable based on CPU speed), I emailed them to continue on with the part change as part of the remaining build process.


Michael

Reactie van ED

quote:

Wow! A lot of new informations I didn't know yet!
I did ask for recent stuff happening via mail, but it looks the replies didn't make it in time when I did the post, so all I knew was what we were evaluating.

Thanks for clearing up Michael and sorry to anyone who was scared or pissed off by my blog post.
I should stop posting and do more scripting for the time being...

[ Bericht 6% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 13-04-2010 14:32:44 ]

Hier blijkt de batterij tijd ook maar weer eens uit

#
in reply to: alerinofilho wow, 12 hours ans 22 minutes battery life left? ARM rox!

EvilDragon1717 (uploader) @alerinofilho
Yep And that value is accurate. With full display brightness it's about 9 hours, with just a bit less it goes up to 12 hours (and that's bright enough for me to use it in normal daylit rooms)

uit de youtube comments

de cases worden de 17de verscheept of als ze voor de geverfde gaan de 20ste.

Mag van mij wel een keer gebeuren. De andere onderdelen waren gisteren in de lucht dus ze zullen vandaag of morgen aankomen, meer dan een ton aan hardware

quote:

Behold, a painted and assembled Pandora. Click to zoom and enhance, and be warned, they’re large. As outlined in Tuesday’s festival of edits, the only verification needed on these painted cases was that they would fit together nicely. The factory has had a set of Pandora internals on hand for some time, so were able to throw this together and confirm that none of the finely tuned case tolerances are upset by the lick of paint. (They’ve also sent MWeston a painted review case, but only because it was easier for him to to say yes than no. He doesn’t need to wait for it.)

Now all that needs to be decided is whether 1,000 cases ship out of China on April 17 unpainted, or April 20 painted (dates provided by case factory, grain of salt and all that). In the meantime, a literal ton of boards, LCDs, nubs and other ephemera will be dumped on Craig’s doorstep any day now. They’ll need several days to unpack it all and prepare the assembly hall for action, days which may be well spent getting those cases painted. With the 17th only two sleeps away, we should expect a decision to be announced very soon.

quote:

[Update] EvilDragon tweets:

50% of the case parts of the Pandora are produced already. So of some parts already exists 1000 pcs and the rest is in production. Woot!

Clarification on that second sentence: There are already 1,000 pieces of some case parts produced.

Laatste nieuws van de onofficiele blog

h1
Painted samples are shown, one unexpected.
April 16, 2010
Posted by: BackAssward


MWeston has favored us with some new pics of the Sample Cases, assembled. The pics show the regular unpainted case, one painted black, and surprisingly one painted a dark shade of grey. Sure it’s no pink, but you can’t make everyone happy.
(Click for larger version, but they are big so be careful if you have a slow connection.)



MWeston likes the Grey but the chosen color is still black:

Grey is actually like a black/silver looking thing but not at all as nasty as real silver would be. I like it. The final color is still black.

In the pic they are arranged: Unpainted Case, Painted Black, and Painted Grey.
source

MWeston goes on to provide pictures of the assembled samples in their open position.



(arranged from Painted Black, Painted Grey, and Unpainted)
source

Plus a pic of just the lids themselves.



(arranged from Unpainted, Painted Grey, to Painted Black)

In MWestons own words:

New case samples
Unpainted/Grey/Black Interesting choices. Grey is actually like a black/silver looking thing but not at all as nasty as real silver would be. I like it. The final color is still black though. This picture was taken outside in the sunlight.

source

[ Bericht 0% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 20-04-2010 12:35:51 ]

quote:

Op maandag 19 april 2010 00:02 schreef SinofEnvy het volgende:


En nee, ik verwacht niet dat het ding een volledig OS draait,

Dat doet hij dus wel tenzij je linux (in welke smaak dan ook) een onvolledige OS wilt noemen.

quote:

Okay, now for some real news:

As you probably already found out, there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland which caused chaos to the european air traffic. No flights are currently going to and from UK. As the boards in Dallas were already picked up last week, we hoped that they were already in UK, maybe sitting at the customs, when that all happened.
Well, unfortunately, that was not the case. They didn't go on a direct flight from Dallas to UK, but were routed via some other airport in USA. And that's where they are still waiting for the moment. I guess 1t shipments do not go the same routes a small packages

UPS is currently rerouting their shipments, we don't have an update yet when the boards will arrive, but I'm sure UPS is working as fast as possible to get it all sorted out. The production of the remaining boards is still going on, of course.

Next, onto the cases:

Since the volcanic eruption gave us some more time, we decided to tweak the cases some mor.... naaaah! Just kidding!

The first 1000 cases have been fully produced and will be painted black!

I'll let you know as soon a we get more information from UPS on when the shipping will continue. As long as the cases aren't finished painting, we won't have lost any time due to the volcano. Let's just hope it REALLY decides to stop spitting ash into the air and the delivery services will catch up with the lost days soon!

Vulkaan

quote:

Op dinsdag 20 april 2010 02:30 schreef Clownbaby het volgende:
Wat een lelijk chinees namaak uiterlijk heeft dit apparaatje, de specificaties zijn ook niet bepaald bijzonder te noemen, wat een tijdverspilling. Erg gênant dit voor de TS.

Verre van genant hoor ik wacht graag op dit apparaatje. Als je het niks vindt is het ook goed.

quote:

cragix twitter:

I'm in a state of absolute rage. UPS left all the Pandora boards outside at a neighboring business - anyone could have walked off with them.

Met andere woorden de 'ingewanden' van de pandora zijn in engeland

wtf het mag ook nooit meezitten

quote:

Here is what happened this morning:

I get up early, watch Educating Rita, have a bath, do some work, go to leave and see a UPS note in the porch. I assume they called while I was in the bath.

The note just has the name of a local garden centre on it (a place which sells plants).

I assume that they have thought I was the garden centre and messed up. I decided to drive up to the garden centre and give them the UPS note.

But then on the outside of the door is another UPS note with my name on it.

At this point I was confused. I'm not expecting anything today... well apart from the Pandora stuff... but that's not until next week.

So what does this all mean? One with my name, one with the name of a local business?

Anyway by time time it's 2pm and I know the garden place has lazy friday afternoons.

Suddenly a horrible thought comes to me... I'm not in... garden centre up the road... they would not have done that would they? But if they have it will be safe, right?

So I take my two notes and drive up there.

WOW.

Place is deserted - friday afternoon after all.

Just as I'm about to turn the car around... what do I see in the parking spaces? A pile of boxes.

Yes - outside.

No one around.

At this point I'm shaking with rage. I park. I walk over. Yes. They are our boards. Outside. Where the public can just walk up.

There is no one else around.

I wander about looking for some staff, finally I go over and open a door and there is an old guy there.

He says he guesses they are mine. I tell him how much those boards are worth. He looks amazed. He tells me I'd better phone UPS.

I agree.

I take the boards and drive home.

Now I'm chasing up the REST of that delivery....

PS I just realised the old guy had no way of knowing who I was - I could have been anyone.

PPS no - it didn't rain today, although it looks like it might now.

aangekomen in engeland

Meer dan 500 plankjes

[ Bericht 30% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 27-04-2010 14:03:27 ]

opzich lijkt mij dat nog best wel comfortabel muizen zo met die 2 nubs.

quote:

I've chased and chased those cases but the courier said the factory were unable to give weights or number of boxes last week.

Chasing that up with the factory just resulted in the usual apologies and more promises to sort it out.

Anyway, eventually Fatih spoke to someone higher up and they promised to get them all packaged and weighed correctly so the courier can collect them.

This just seems to be the 'way' with these Chinese companies, I've never had a good experience with one, it seems you have to go through this baptism of fire with them all. I just wish we could have found a company in the UK which we could afford to use. But alas it had to be China with our budget.

You have to understand they just lie and lie and lie to us. It may well be that the person telling the lies really believes them to be true because it is what he is told. Who knows. It's all smoke and mirrors constantly. This is just how they seem to do business.

Anyway the good news is that all the final case samples have been absolutely superb.

I'm also very glad these cases were the only thing done in China. The rumour that the PCBs were made in China isn't entirely true, the (American) PCB company had them made for us, and used a facility in Asia (which they may well own) for some of the work. We know no more about it than that. They were certainly populated and tested in Texas.

The decline of manufacturing in the west is all due to this smoke and mirrors Chinese crap. I bet most companies go though it, save very little money, but stick with it because they invested so much. It's one big long con by China.

If I can I'll move that case production to the west at the earliest possible opportunity because I'm not falling for it.

Op het forum zweven data rond dat de eerste pandora verzonden gaat worden op 4 mei, maar ik moet dat nog zien. Ze gaan wel de pandora's per dag versturen dus ar gaat de komende weken een stroom pandoras op gang komen. Aankomende week vliegt de hardware dev naar Engeland om de wifi van de eerste 700 boards te modden (met de resistor). Alle dingen op de cases na zijn in engeland dus het hangt nog steeds op de chinezen.

Waarschijnlijk gaan ze de vervolg productie van de cases bij deze fabriek weghalen. Ze zijn nu bezig om de daadwerkelijk mallen (eigendom van pandora ltd.) te halen en de rest van de fabrikatie bij een andere fabriek onder te brengen. Dit heeft iig geen gevolgen voor de eerste 1000 cases want die zijn gewoon in china gemaakt.

Dit is allemaal er speculatief en er zal vast meer duidelijk worden. Het openpandora team is duidelijk not amused door de chinezen.

quote:

Op zondag 2 mei 2010 23:40 schreef Maanvis het volgende:
lol ja gek he als je voor een chinees dubbeltje op de 1e rang wilt zitten.

Dit was het enige onderdeel dat ze inderdaad om die reden in china hebben laten maken de rest is allemaal in de vs of uk geproduceerd wat tegenwoordig zelfs al uitzonderlijk is.

quote:

Op maandag 3 mei 2010 08:21 schreef Fe2O3 het volgende:

[..]

Die 'mallen' zijn tools van enkele duizende dollars in waarde, maar ook een paar duizend kilo zwaar ook. Ze mogen in ieder geval niet zomaar China uit (wetgeving) dus dat gaat niet zo 1 2 3. Hooguit een nieuwe leverancier in China.

Het is voor ons meestal zelfs goedkoper om tools te scrappen voor oud ijzer en nieuwe te maken op een andere locatie dan het gezeul en gesleep tussen een leverancier A en B. Om over het papierwerk en partijen die eigenlijk helemaal niet met elkaar willen praten toch dit soort dingen te laten regelen maar te zwijgen

één van de devs heeft eerder van dit bedrijf mallen terug gekregen dus ik neem aan dat ze weten wat daar mee gemoeit gaat. En met vrachtjes van een paar duizend kg hebben ze ook ervaring (zie enkele posten hierboven)

Overigens gaan ze er wel eerst 10000 laten maken door deze chinezen.

De chinezen zeggen nu dat ze het 7 mei verschepen dan zou het er 12 mei moeten zijn. En dan zijn er ook al extra boards ingevlogen zodat er totaal 1500 boards in engeland zijn.

Er is nog een ander probleem de batterijen liggen bij de duane in engeland en die moeten daar nog weggehaald worden.

quote:

Here’s a video showing my ammeter in series with the Pandora battery. I wanted to double check the fuel gauge calibration because with lite settings, 15 hours is being presented. I thought that was crazy, but it’s true. With an average current of 278mA and a battery testing at 4200mAh, that really is 15 hours (under specific settings talked about below of course).


Testing was done at 500MHz and the screen brightness set just about as low as it will go before shutting off. Increasing the screen brightness to 100% upped the average current to 398mA which is only 10.5 hours of continuous use.

In the second half, I upped the clock to 750MHz using the little menu option but I’m not certain if it actually did anything. Some stuff seems to work better for other people than me but this little program is one that seems to bug out on me.

This video also shows the power consumption with wifi running. You can see the power go way up when web pages are loaded or when new cover art is loaded in Mplayer. If you load pages and then spend a long time reading them before loading the next one, perhaps 10 hours is still possible. At the max I saw of approx. 600mA, that would be 7 hours and you’d have to be hammering wireless hard to maintain that as you can see. Notaz did a fantastic job of getting the power management for wifi working and it will really help battery life for normal use. I guess it’s like any other device you would buy now, but for the developers it’s such a thrill to see it working

mweston

[ Bericht 74% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 06-05-2010 11:02:13 ]

quote:

So dos some Boards arrive in the Gardencenter until the Cases arive??

And dos UPS knows where to took the next boards??


Yes, the driver allegedly lost his job for what he did (although I highly suspect he was temp staff).

bij ups is iemand ontslagen

quote:

The 4000 batteries have been released by customs. I'm expecting them to get here on monday.

quote:

Evildragon wrote:

Look! There! It's a plane!

*ducks and hides*

Naah. 12 Cartons with 207kgs alltogether are ready. The flight they will take (they need to be transported to the airport first) will be on Monday.
Yay! Hopefully no lie (though they never told us any number of packages with weight before, so I doubt it), but we'll know for sure as soon as we really get the tracking number from UPS (which, as said, did take a few days in China last time).

zouden de cases volgende week dan echt aankomen spannend

quote:

The OS and some software

The OS is also coming along. We installed an image to the NAND a week ago - it runs well and rock solid so far.
I tried quite a few things to break it - hard reset while it was running quite a few times, etc.
The OS survived. The only thing I managed to do was making the bootup hang when I did four Hard Resets while booting in a row - guess a hardware driver hang. Was solved by powering off and reboot again - and still the filesystem was fine and intact.

Looking good here. Bootup is still a bit slow (55 Seconds at the moment), but that's something we surely try to improve in the near future. As a test, I simply removed some services that won't be needed AFAIK and got a booting time of 33 seconds. It won't make it in the first release (as we don't have time to test if my removed scripts REALLY don't break anything!), but it's a nice view of what can be done. Switching to Upstart (a tool which enhances bootup by running scripts parallel instead of serial) will also make a difference. Stay tuned for OS updates!

Power Management has become better. The WiFi driver now supports power management - so with the standard OS settings, 7 hours with WiFi are possible. Without WiFi, it goes up to 13 hours at the moment.

For a basic OS, this is all pretty advanced already. There will surely be some settings that can be enhanced (i.e. Browser layout, MIME types, etc.), but we'll wait for suggestions from you guys and will include the best settings in future firmware versions.

Also, in case you want to meddle around and break the OS (you should only do so on the SD Card, but some probably still mess around with the NAND I guess )
I will create a recovery bootsystem which allows you to restore the config files on your system or backup your home-directory.
Aditionally, notaz created a flasher (it's the same one we use to install the OS for the first time). With that, you can copy some files on your SD Card and restore the image completely (don't do this too often though, it will wear out the NAND over time )

Various devs (me too, though I don't think you can call me dev) are packaging up games, apps and emulators that are ported so far.
We have Stella, Hatari, UAE4ALL, DOSBox, Vice, Colem, Exaile, Free Heroes 2, Commander Genius, Angry Drunken Dwarfs, BattleJewels, Battle for Wesnoth, Super Mario War, C-Dogs, Pandora Panic!, Quake 2, etc. and more coming up...

Some stuff needs more work (notaz wants to improve PicoDrive more before Pandora release, UAE4ALL is just a direct port of the GP2X Version, runs fullspeed Amiga 500 games, but is not as compatible, PSX and N64 also need more work), but I guess that stuff will keep you busy for a while.

MAJOR thanks again to ALL the devs who have helped us with the OS - despite them having few time... THANKS!

I also suspect there are some devs among the preorderers who also like to port some games (or code their own ones).

I can't await to see what's coming from you guys - I'm sure it will be worth all the trouble we went through.

quote:

Op zondag 9 mei 2010 21:38 schreef Maanvis het volgende:
eindelijk een bericht zonder dat er iets fout gaat.. het begon al op een vlemmixje te lijken

Nouja ze zijn wel eerlijk de meeste bedrijven geven alleen maar goed nieuws ik heb het idee dat openpandora wel alles verteld ook al is het kut.

quote:

Op zondag 9 mei 2010 21:52 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Bosbeetle heeft er nog flink vertrouwen in

achja waarom niet wat ze laten zien is nogsteeds niet niks alleen een beetje laat

quote:

EvilDragon tells us that the shipment from China has taken to the skies, and is due to arrive at its UK destination on Wednesday. This shipment should include 1,000 deliciously painted cases, including all buttons, styli and other moulded parts, along with at least 1,000 keymats. Enough other parts (boards, LCDs etc) are reportedly waiting in the UK to build 1,500 complete Pandoras, so when the cases arrive they should have the first 1,000 built before breakfast. Or not. Now we just need to convince MWeston to fly cargo class, so we can get a tracking number. Come on Mike, be a sport.

quote:

Craigix: Finally, the cases should arrive in Newcastle tomorrow!

als die vulkaan zn mond maar houdt

quote:

I'm hoping they will be though customs and delivered by friday so I can do some photos and video of everything here.

quote:

Yep, this is it, building will start next week, probably on Wednesday.

[ Bericht 49% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 11-05-2010 12:29:44 ]

vandaag van de twitter van craigix

quote:

Off to pickup the Pandora shipment from the airport this afternoon!

quote:

Op donderdag 13 mei 2010 09:45 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Woeeeensdaaag!!! Ik zit bijna zeker in de eerste 1000, ik hoop dat hij voor mijn verjaardag komt (31 mei) maar denk het niet
Ik hoop dat de kwaliteit van de cases goed genoeg is, het is niet de eerste keer dat ze nog willen tweaken op het laatste moment.
Leuk om te zien dat er meer Nederlanders ermee bezig zijn :-) Goed gedaan Bosbeetle!
Two More Months (c)

Jaaa ik zit bij de eerste 300 maar ik las net dat de pandora's die ED naar duitsland gaat sturen later verstuurd worden ik hoop dat de nederlandse wel gewoon in cue verstuurd worden. Ik hoop ook dat ik hem voor mijn verjaardag heb (11 juni )

quote:

Op donderdag 13 mei 2010 20:59 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Heb jij het gewoon gevraagd hoeveelste je was of kun je dit uitrekenen? Ik heb de mijne op dag 1 besteld :-)
He? Later versturen??? Whyyyyy??!!
Heb jij ook last van vrienden/kennissen/familie die denken dat je bent opgelicht omdat je al zolang wacht?? haha

ja daar heb ik ook last van

en ik heb uiteindelijk gewoon gevraagd welk nummer ik was ja

Twitter de twitter craigix:

quote:

20:13 I now have the cases.
0:16 I'm happy with the cases and all the parts are here. Now it's going to take a weekend to just organise all this kit.
0:47 I built a MP Pandora and all went well. This should be an interesting week to come
0:58 Michael arrives here on Wednesday morning, which means a 4:30am start for me! Arrghh!
1:06 I know you want photos but I want, well, sleep. I'm planning video tomorrow. Let's drink to the good times, red wine, going to my head...

En eentje van de middag ervoor

14:02 Last night, after a long day, I was in bed reading, I realised I should get some sleep when I clicked the top of the page to change the URL.

quote:

Op vrijdag 14 mei 2010 14:29 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Bosbeetle, waar heb je dat verhaal gelezen over ED en het verzenden van de Pandora's? Ik heb ook bij zijn winkel een Pandora besteld.. Waarom zou hij ze later versturen?

http://www.gp32x.com/boar(...)rders-shipped-later/

maar het is nog niet duidelijk of dat ook zo is voor mensen in nederland

wat nu het plan is dat er per 100 units een doos naar duitsland verscheept wordt en dan vanuit duitsland naar de kopers

woensdag begint het bouwen

[ Bericht 28% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 15-05-2010 11:14:55 ]

quote:

Op zaterdag 15 mei 2010 13:16 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
JEEJ! Nou maar hopen dat ze direct naar Nederlandse klanten versturen als ze klaar zijn, maar denk het nieee :-(

Nouja een paar dagen extra wachten daar kan ik inmiddels wel tegen

Er zijn trouwens volgensmij nog wel behoorlijk wat nederlanders die een pandora besteld hebben.

van de twitter

quote:

For all the people asking about the cases - they are superb. It was worth rejecting all the previous ones. We now have absolute top quality.

Evildragon is trouwens dit weekend in korea om verschillende indie developers warm te maken voor de pandora

En nou maar hopen dat Mweston woensdag in engeland kan komen

quote:

Volcano ash cloud needs to clear by Wednesday or Pandora people are going to be delayed, will still do everything we can...

quote:

£250 of food and drink and that didn't include the fresh stuff. The preparations continue.

quote:

Op maandag 17 mei 2010 14:57 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Ja, maar ook al kunnen de vliegtuigen richting Engeland vanaf Woensdag vliegen; wie zegt dat Mweston ook die dag gelijk mee kan?

Beter begint Craig gelijk al met in elkaar zetten

Waarom zouden ze eigenlijk op hem moeten wachten? Of zijn er meerdere Pandora mensen die vast zitten?
Ik zal wel weer iets over het hoofd hebben gezien

Mweston moet de eerste 500 pandora's modden er moet een resistor ingesoldeerd worden om wifi werkend te krijgen op de andere boards zit al de juiste transistor. En Mweston heeft het hele assembly process ontworpen hij weet gewoon hoe het het makkelijkste gaat vandaar.

deze transistor

http://pandorapress.net/files/2010/04/notaz.tiny_.resistor.jpg

quote:

Op maandag 17 mei 2010 15:37 schreef Gehenna het volgende:

[..]

dat is een weerstand

maar wel mooi om te horen dat het heel dichtbij komt nu

Ohja resistor niet transistor

quote:

Op dinsdag 18 mei 2010 09:26 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Als het goed is zou MWeston binnen 24 uur moeten landen
Dat is wat ik heb begrepen van Pandorapress maar ik heb helaas verder geen bron.

Dat hangt allemaal om die vulkaan

Craigix: Going to try to get some sleep now. Big day tomorrow. Michael is flying from Toronto, so track the flight to Manchester if you're bored!

Craigix: How is it possible to be this tired? Right, time to get the old beast up and running, I've got some driving to do!

Craigix: This might be the first time I've seen the sun come up in years. Well the first time not including when I've not been to bed that is.

de enige rechtstreekse vlucht van toronto naar manchester is inmiddels geland dus als alles meezit zijn beide mannen nu onderweg naar newcastle upon tyne

Zeg dat hij dan rond een uur of 9 uit het vliegveld is, dan nog 2 1/2 uur rijden naar newcastle dat wordt na de middag, ik denk niet dat ze vandaag al veel units gaan maken. Morger daarentegen

Voor mij begint het langzaam optellen tot de 250-350

twitter

quote:

Craigix: Right, down to work.

Hello from Craig’s place.

We’ve been going through the boxes and making sure it’s all here and it looks good. Everything does look good to go so we can start setting up right away.
by MWeston May 19, 2010 at 7:56 am

http://pandorapress.net/2(...)age-1/#comment-14353

quote:

posting from a mp pandora!
by craigix May 19, 2010 at 12:48 pm

http://pandorapress.net/2(...)age-1/#comment-14434

http://twitpic.com/1pguvo

51 pandoras op een foto

quote:

@Entilzha35 at least 50 will ship tomorrow mid day.

[ Bericht 25% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 20-05-2010 23:02:55 (uote]) ]

speciaal voor notorious_roy

quote:

here are a few sundry snes9x ports around over the last 2 years, but I don't think anyone has a current one bar me.

I said it was a crappy port, but it works pretty darned well so I just did a bit more pollish and turned it into a pnd-file; I made a quick video (sorry about the quality, but what can you do in a hurry with a cranky baby around

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=QOxv7k0ydGo

Check the notes! ie: This is on my prototype pandora with a screwed up LCD cable (among other oddities), so expect everything to be blue; I fiddled around and got it as least-blue as I could (I'm living it with it being usualyl very blue, or very red, but its actualyl not doing too bad right now

The download is now up:

http://dl.openhandhe...i?0,0,0,0,71,63

So that means the 45 people filling my inbox can stop doing that now

--

Uploaded my latest Hatari build (may need to do some tweaks due to some recent firmware changes, but works well enough until I get a free moment); BattleJewels is up. Stella is up. I didn't make a pnd-file for Colem yet, but maybe ED did, so that'll show up soon. I put up Kronos too, though its still in a very early state, it does let you play Magnetic Scrolls games already. Hmm, what else.. dunno, but I've gbot a bunch of my pnd's up for download now, and a few more coming as I get free moments here or there

So you see, SNES is okay, and thats totally unoptimized (no asm blitter etc), and not running overclocked at all. Nothing to worry about folks

jeff

quote:

Guys, this is a port of SNES9x, using slow C-Cores.
The same version got about 3 fps on the GP2X back when it was compiled, and PocketSNES (a highly optimized emulator using ASM cores) runs a lot of games fullspeed on the GP2X.

The Pandora should EASILY be able to run all SNES games in fullspeed when someone takes the time to do a proper emulator.
We didn't have time yet, we were focussing on the OS

PocketSNES would certainly run way better, however, it has a really messy sourcecode and uses a lot of speedhacks that break compatibility to gain speed. That is not necessary on the Pandora. Porting would probably take about 1 - 2 weeks to remove all the hardcore GP2X-Related stuff.

This is a one-day-compile of SNES9x. It's not optimized to the LCD (stutters when running PAL games, use the NTSC ones to get good emulation), etc.

Someone will port SNES properly, I'm pretty sure about that.

But why won't you wait until some developers received their units?
SNES did take a while to run properly on the GP2X, on the WIZ, on the PSP and also on the Dingoo... so give the devs some time.

quote:

Op vrijdag 21 mei 2010 11:02 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:

Ik zal wel niet bij de eerste 50 zitten

als het in dit tempo blijft gaan dan ben ik binnen 14 dagen aan de beurt

quote:

socket
Posted Today, 03:53 PM
WOOT. Just got my shipping confirmation!!!!

Hello,

This Is To Confirm Your Pandora Has Been Shipped.

If You Are In The Uk You Can Look Forward To Recieving Your Order In The Next 24 Hours (weekends Not Always Included), If You Chose Ups Shipping You Should Recieve Your Order In The Next 48 Hours (weekends Not Included). Airmail Will Take 2-12 Days.

We Want To Thank You For Sticking With The Pandora Project For All This Time. We Hope You Will Enjoy The Final Product. You Can Head Over To Gp32x.com To Talk On The Forums And Soon Enjoy Your Pandora.

Thanks So Much,

Craig And The Pandora Team.

pandora nr. 1 is weggestuurd

[ Bericht 43% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 21-05-2010 16:06:56 ]

quote:

Op vrijdag 21 mei 2010 20:00 schreef Maanvis het volgende:

[..]

Dat klinkt als een 519 scam, in dergelijke mails tikken ze ook elk woord met een hoofdletter

dat heeft deze user uitgeleged hij had een programma op zijn computer staan die alles in zijn clipboard omzetten naar woorden met hoofdletters

er zijn inmiddels veel meer mailtjes verstuurd zonder de hoofdletters

al lijken de nummers niet echt te kloppen er zijn mensen met nummer 500-600 die een mail hebben en mensen met nummer 1 ( ) die nog geen mail hebben.

quote:

It isn't, we missed the posting deadline, they won't deliver until after the weekend.

However I know at least one person is collecting in person today.

craig kan weer op gp32 posten, ze hebben nu bevestigd dat ze in ieder geval 50+ units per dag kunnen maken. Na het weekend komen fatih en ED ook, die laatste gaat ook een webcam ophangen bij de assembly line

Ze zitten nog in de opstart fase, het zal naar snel richting de 100 gaan

quote:

Turned up at 12pm, left exhausted at 12am

In between, there was a lot of prep work to do before we could start mass assembly. But everything is falling nicely into place now and has definitley took shape.

I'll be back over there shortly and Fatih is arriving later on today to lend a hand.

Can't say too much more at the moment, but will have some interesting pics to show you this evening

dat was een bericht van x86000 een mod op het gp32x forum die mee heeft helpen bouwen.

ik lees net dat ze morgen de volgende 100 klaar willen hebben 150 done, 200 to go, voor mij dan

Ze gaan de OSen namen geven net als bij ubuntu, en de namen gaan retro game gerelateerd zijn ze zijn begonnen bij de z en de naam is Zaxxon

Het is dus wachten op Ys of Yogi etc.

http://twitpic.com/1qc9l6

toch mooi om te zien 90 Pandoras

http://picasaweb.google.com/mfk.pandora/FromProduction?feat=directlink&fgl=true&pli=1#

vloedgolven met pandori

quote:

Op maandag 24 mei 2010 00:44 schreef Nick-GizMo het volgende:
Bosbeetle, als je hem binnen hebt ga je hier dan ook een review schrijven? Bedoel er zijn hier maar weinig mensen die er echt in geloven, daar kan jij wat aan doen

Ik ga zeker mijn bevindingen delen, maar ik denk dat ik nogal bevooroordeeld ben

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40865126@N06/sets/72157624133009940/

okay er zijn meer en meer mensen met een pandora, één van de eersten op het pandora forum is een nederlander (hopelijk komt die van mij ook snel dan )

het stikt nu van de fotos op het forum

Het is begonnen

[ Bericht 18% gewijzigd door Bosbeetle op 26-05-2010 10:28:42 ]