Official Blog: A bunch of updates
October 27, 2009
Evil H. Dragon has blogged up a big one. If you’ve been reading PandoraPress you’ll know a lot of this stuff already, but it’s always nice to get a meaty serve of words from Pandora HQ. Images and video have been snipped to conserve pixels; you can find the post in its original form at the source. Oh, want to know what the above pic is all about? Don’t let your raging inner nerd miss the links at the bottom.
Hi folks!
We got overwhelmed with eMails, so it took a while to answer them all – and also to find a few minutes to post at this blog again.
Quite a few things have happened, if you followed the boards, you might’ve seen most of them.
If not, here are the latest news for you:1. WiFi is working!
Yep, finally, after months of hard work by mostly DJWillis (with help from other devs), WiFi is working!
WEP, WPA, WPA2… including one of the best GUIs, the Network Manager are working fine!
Additionally, XFCE is shaping up, so you might even get a REAL cool desktop manager!2. Cases will ship sometime this week
According to the company which creates the moulds, the first samples of the cases should ship within this week (they didn’t say any exact date).
That does mean that they should arrive latest next week – and if everything is fine, it’s CASE MASS PRODUCTION time. Yeeeha!3. First preview of Silk Screening for the case
Michael released a very first version of the silk screening for the case which led to this gp32x.com-Thread. You guys did provide a lot of good ideas there which we will implement into a final version. Thanks! You’re a really cool community.<images snipped>
4. Emulation goodness
Devving for the Pandora continues. There’s now a first version of a MUPEN port already – an N64 emulator.
Thanks to Ari64, Pickle and all the devs involved (you can find out more infos about it on this GP32x.com thread) (Don’t forget Adventus, ED!)Here’s a nice video of Michael playing Super Mario 64. The sound is stuttering as emulation is not fullspeed yet, but it’s really really promising already.
<video snipped>
5. CE Testing documents and shielding
As I promised in my last blog post (though a lot of time passed), everybody who’s interested can take a peek at the documents.
Michael already shielded the LCD cable, so everything should be fine now.Anyways, here are the documents. You can clearly see a few peaks which were too high. But, luckily, not too many
a. Angström Image GUI booted up and idling.
Horizontal testing
Vertical testingb. notaz testing FW running SNES9x with Bluetooth and TV Out enabled
Horizontal testing
Vertical testingc. notaz testing FW running SNES9x with Bluetooth and TV Out enabled, connected to original PSP power adapter and USB2.0 stick inserted.
Horizontal testing
Vertical testing
super cool
Great news !
Just two more months!
It’s almost there!!! Going to order my Pandora when I come home this evening
Hey, so is it now ” Two Weeks™ “? (j/k)
Great news indeed
no, it’s already been that. now it’s “This Week™”
Except it’s still “something’s happening this week” not, “we’re finishing and shipping this week”…
i was hoping for a November ship but it’s looking more like an early December now.
Yeey! Everything is going well!
SO when are we going to see that post card saying “fooled yeah” with ED. MWes, pickle and co. on a sunny beach wearing hawaiishirts?
sorry double post
SO when are we going to see that post card saying “fooled ya” with ED. MWes, pickle and co. on a sunny beach wearing hawaiishirts?
In only two more months, I guess.
“… connected to original PSP power adapter…”
¿Any news about Pandora own power adapter?
all they have to do is buy a bunch of psp power adapters and ship it with the pandora
I want my pandora NOW!
And a pony.
But the pandora at least is paid for.
and the pony? Dx
its out there waiting in the cold for you to buy it !
/sarcasm
Can anyone tell me if the CPU of the Pandora can be judged higher than the Atom Z 520 @ 1.33 Ghz ?
No. Trust me.
You cant tell or you mean it cant be higher judged ?
It’s not higher than the Atom. The Atom is considerably more powerful, but it also uses a lot more electrical power.
then … if the intel rides windows 7 or xp .. will it be faster than Angstöm on Pandora ?
(I know its hard to answer but I’ll take personal opinions as happily as well)
alright, I’ll be honest, Ive got my vaio p with atom Z @ 1.33 Ghz and Im considering the Pandora though I’m not sure which ones better (money isnt a prop .. I just want something that serves me good )
First of all Atoms x86 is not pandora’s ARM architecture.
Second, although not really true because I already pointed out they are different, the specs say the pandora runs at 600MHz (can be overclocked 800MHz or higher) and 1.33GHz is a bit faster…
Objectively speaking:
Pandora 2.0 MIPS/MHz (running 1GHz)
Intel Atom 230 2.44MIPS/MHz (1.6GHz/could not find Z520 benchmarks, but I guess it will be better)
And the linux/windows comparing can’t be done. You want to play games on the pandora, and it will! Also video/audio. And it will probably do it very good.
“Intel Atom 230 2.44MIPS/MHz (1.6GHz/could not find Z520 benchmarks, but I guess it will be better)”
After some searching I found that the Atom-Z series are actually slower then the previous atoms :S?
The Z-series uses less power.
So to compare:
) would give you:
Atom 230 @1.6GHz Passmark: 314
Atom Z520 @1.33GHz Passmark: 252
This implies that the 230 is actually 25% faster then the Z520!
Recalculating the MIPS values according to that (really?! how unprofessional
Pandora 2.0 MIPS/MHz (@1GHz)
Intel Atom Z520 1.95MIPS/MHz (+/-80% from 230 @1.6GHz)
This proves _nothing_ but I guess the pandora is just that awsome.
I wish me an EDIT button ….
Im mostly concerned if mkv and flash will be supported ..
It’s impossible to do comparisons between different operating systems, running on different architectures. Your Vaio is more powerful than Pandora, but it’s also running a more power hungry operating system. Linux can be power hungry too, but it can also be run on old PDAs, ADSL routers and iPod Nanos. In other words, it’s very scalable and can be stripped back and optimised to suit what it’s running on. Angstrom will run on Pandora just as well as Windows 7 runs on your Vaio.
You can expect Flash and MKV support, perhaps not out of the box, but before too long.
Im happy to hear its at least possible on the Pandora
The mkv format is supported by VLC, so that is probably okay. I also read that flash9 is supported for arm-linux.
If these are already on the pandora, I don’t know.
But if not, they will be.