EvilDragon reports on firmware status
November 24, 2009As Pandora tiptoes its way towards public consumption, EvilDragon delivers a solid state of the nation on all things firmware related, giving first batchers a good idea of what to expect. Things have certainly come a long way, but there will be some beta-ish aspects to the firmware that will continue to be polished as units go out into the wild. Booting is on the slow side for now, and we shouldn’t expect the suspend-to-RAM function to be ready out of the box (see end of article for more on this). On the up side, USB peripherals, wifi, Bluetooth, .pnd recognition, and a first-boot setup wizard are just some of the things that are hot to trot.
As I did work with the latest image during the last day (and changing the settings to make it much more comfortable for Pandora usage), I can tell you how the status is:
The image is pretty stable so far. I haven’t had ANY crashes. I worked for hours and it was absolutely stable.
Customizing the desktop works nicely, working with it is very nice (good speed)
I’ll probably manage to make some video tomorrow, but don’t nail me on that, I’ll try
Booting is a bit slow at the moment, however, we’re booting a complete Linux desktop, so that’s nothing special. It boots about as fast as a standard PC, I’d say.
Suspend and Hibernation are not included at the moment, probably also won’t be for first release, but a firmware update should follow soon, so I guess in January (latest) you can simply suspend the unit like a normal PDA and then you don’t need to reboot each time you use the unit.Right Click (Tap and Hold) is currently being worked on.
I did connect a USB Hub with mouse and keyboard and that also did work without any problems.The first boot wizard (which helps you setup the unit with a user account, Autologin (or not), XFCE4 or PMenu as default boot, etc.) is already working.
PMenu works fine, cpasjuste and DJWillis are currently working on a bitbake recipe to include it automatically upon Angström image creation (at the moment, I had to copy the files over manually).
Bluetooth is also working fine via command line, a GUI will be included within the next days.
Network Manager also does work (with g_ether, WiFi and – AFAIK (haven’t tested it myself) UMTS sticks).
3D Acceleration (even in Windows) does also work.
PND-Files does work in readonly-mode, as there is a problem with AUFS which is currently being fixed.
For a first release this is really nice.
The only things that need some more work:
* Right-Click (Tap and Hold)
* Include Battery-Status (it charges, but it can’t read out the current status yet)
* Include Suspend (Hibernation doesn’t make sense at all, it’s not much faster than a normal boot and it needs to save the memory on SD Card)
* Some more WiFi-Tweaks (to make it faster)
* Some minor issues (i.e. permissions on files, etc.)
* Fix AUFS (so pndlib does work as it should)
* Speed-Up booting!
* Some more scripts (enable TV Out, etc.)That’s mostly it
Pretty usable already
Now that ED has stopped talking, a final note on the suspend-to-RAM function. It seems like a simple thing – close the lid, and a magnetic sensor tells everything to “freeze” until you open the lid again. In practice however, implementing something like this is surprisingly complicated. This forum post from Skeezix offers a peek into the rich tapestry of suspend functions, and is recommended mandatory reading. Oh, and don’t forget to raise your glass to DJWillis and Notaz this evening.
I salute the brave souls who spend their free time working behind the scenes to make Pandora actually usable.
Thank you DJWillis, notaz and Skeezix for your incredible work!
I’ll second this and thanks to ED for the nice big chunk of updated info too
+1
I’ve been following git.openpandora.org for some time now. I don’t understand much, but you get the feeling that these guys are very very smart when it comes to hardware and hacking code.
Good job!
>> 3D Acceleration (even in Windows) does also work.
I don’t think “windows” should be capitalized here.
That should probably read (even in windowed mode) as not to get people confused.
Damn Microsoft for using Windows as the name for the operating system too.
My point exactly. “windows” refers to the viewport/screen objects and “Windows” refers to the OS.
Unless it’s the first word in a sentence. Then you’re own your own to figure it out from the context.
I thought it was just a joke. I know I laughed.
I suppose windoze (that’s how I differentiate it) would work in qemu to some extent. Might be a bit slow. I guess windoze 98 would run fast enough though.
Sounds good to me…get the hardware done, software will be improved constantly after the fact.
It’s great news. Very impressive for volunteers and I’m sure we’re all very grateful to everyone who’s working on it (DJWillis and Notaz, as mentioned, included).
Excuse me sir! I’ve done my required reading.
Good work by all. You are super people with hearts and big as your brains.
If we have to wait for the suspend feature then can we have our Pandoras now. I’m only happy when I’m waiting for something. I think I may have a extremely rare condition known as CWD (Compulsive Waiting Disorder). Apparently there are only 4,000 sufferers world wide.
Of all things, I’d hope for a UMPC to have a way of fast startup/wake for between bouts of activity. I understand if a reboot needs to take longer, but suspend-to-RAM is a big deal, IMO. I’m fine waiting until January for that (as long as it doesn’t keep getting the two-month bump), but I hope it comes out soon. A lack of this feature could really destroy consumer interest.
“Your approximate queue position is 3100 – 3200″
I ordered in march.
Still awesome news though. Hopefully all goes well.
Sorry wrong blog post. lol
How do you find out your queue position? My email query went unanswered, so… meh.
It’s probably not very fair on the girls to bombard them with queue enquires right now. But the info in this thread might help you make an estimate:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/50467-your-place-in-line/
I hope that we will be able to run xcompmgr. I demand transparent terminals!
For those concerned about not having suspend-to-ram straight away, ED says:
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/50548-the-suspend-functionality/page__view__findpost__p__776752
that actually looks very nice, especially if you can choose what to turn on or off… that way you can choose to say leave wifi on so you don’t need to wait for a reconnect later. Backlight/GPU are big consumers so if those can be turned off that’ll save a ton of power (obviously CPU too but leaving certain things on may require more than 14mHz)
OK, Suspend is a big thing here, but I disagree that Hibernation doesn’t make sense. It’s not about differences in loading time. For me, hibernating my system is mostly for putting it to sleep and NOT consuming energy while sleeping (suspend-to-RAM has to keep getting power to the RAM chips in order to keep the suspended system from evaporating). I grant you that this is not an essential feature for a mobile device as the Pandora, but it does make sense, at least to me
Agreed, hibernation is useful. I will want to be able to save the system state while hibernating, in case I have not finished what I am doing. So maybe I’ll do some work on hibernation some time!
agreed, hibernate is a good feature to have just so you can save the machine’s state where you were, and resume later. Not top priority / essential though.