We spoke to the factory over night, everything is cool. Those errors were because the machine was not warmed up/tweaked/cooled. They would never mass produce something with such errors.
They just assumed we would know that.
So, green lighted.
(craigix)
Update: EvilDragon elaborates on the green light and reflects on one of the most tumultuous weekends the project has seen, in a new post on the official blog. Congratulations, team Pandora.
Introducing the Pandora Angst Coding Competition, an adventure in creativity/distraction devised and funded by the community. Entries are invited for GP32, GP2X, Wiz, and Dingoo (native or Dingux) games & applications, with a current prize pool of around $400AUD on offer. If you’re not a coder but you’d like to get involved, you can donate to the prize pool, offer your services as a judge, contribute splash screen artwork, or hook up with a coder and collaborate!
For full details & entry form, head to the 2010 PACC website!
[EDITORIAL]
It’s been a fun weekend, hasn’t it? Ok, perhaps showing us case samples on a Friday, giving us a whole weekend to wait for answers from the factory, didn’t work out all that well. But information has surfaced in the last two days that gives us cause not to freak out. To fully understand what happened here, you need to fully understand injection moulding – which most of us don’t. That means it’s time for a ludicrous cake analogy. The chef has been asked to do some quick tasters. He knows the recipe, and he’s got a totally sweet oven. But in his rush to please us, the cupcakes came out a little sloppy. And although we asked for icing, he didn’t want to mix up a metric ton of the stuff for a handful of cakes.
The case photos we’ve been waiting for have appeared in MWeston’s album. As you will have gleaned from the various tweets and forum posts in the last 24 hours, there are once again some imperfections that have left Michael and the rest of the team vexed to say the least. Before we get ourselves in a twist about further mould “tweaks” though (hands up if you now hate that word), it has been pointed out that the cases are structurally, and functionally, perfect. The source of vexation here is that the finishing on the cases appears to be no improvement over the revision 2 sample.
It would only be natural at this point to ask what in tarnation the case factory has actually been doing since rev2, if not improving the finish (and ask it MWeston did). But the answer to that is not necessarily nothing, and a couple of possible explanations are being explored. Production cases go through a finishing process after they’ve been moulded, to give them that nice, even matte sheen. It’s likely that the case factory doesn’t deem a small sample batch worthy of this extra effort (even if it’s been asked for). Another likelihood, and not a mutually exclusive one, is that recycled plastic pellets have been used to make the samples; a cost saving measure which can result in uneven colour. If both of these scenarios turn out to be the case, we can pretty well say that they won’t be issues when the factory makes a “real” batch. But they are questions that still need to be answered. Fatih and his trusty translator will no doubt be doing some overtime on this one. (Update: They will be seeking answers on Monday.)
Read on for photos and all the words from MWeston. And just a little bit of advice when you’re looking at the photos – be careful how you judge them in super high resolution. Not many moulded plastic cases will stand up to scrutiny at this level, not even from the big guys. Check out the details by all means, but zoom them back out to “normal” size for a more realistic indication of where the issues are.
From the bucket of Weston.
Update: EvilDragon elaborates on the official blog. A little.
Wow. Actually, there’s something that happened earlier than expected: The cases did arrive, including the final keymats.
Here’s a picture of the final keymat. Now please give Michael some time to thoroughly test everything out.
Update 2: Mr Weston will be putting together some photos (and hopefully a video) later today, detailing what went right and what went not-so-right with this batch of cases. At the time of writing this, it’s some time before dawn in his neck of the woods, so the next few hours will probably a waste of your F5 miles. Sit tight.
“Ah, breaker one-nine, this here’s the Rubber Duck. Looks like we got us a convoy.”
Missed a few status updates of UPS it seems. Anyways, the most important (and current one).
Loc.: WINNIPEG, MB, CA — Date: 05/02/2010, 5:46 — Description: REGISTERED WITH CLEARING AGENCY / RELEASED BY CLR AGENCY. NOW IN-TRANSIT
A micro update from EvilDragon’s Twitter account.
We got a tracking number! It’s not yet in the UPS system (always takes some time, even longer in China). Good news, I’ll keep you updated!
End micro update.
If you needed a reminder that China isn’t the only player in this saga, this is a nice way to get one. MWeston has informed us that 1,000 boards are being populated with components this week in Texas. Also interesting is the impact certain software developers are having on the hardware production process. What, you thought they just sat around porting Quake? (No offence to those who sat around porting Quake. You’re all doing a bang up job.)
It’s worth saying again that Notaz’s work on the kernel is clearly the reason the device is as advanced as it is today. Sure the hardware may have come along fine with minimal testing as the assembler learned how to solder the boards better but Notaz has helped me develop a comprehensive suite of test software that has helped the assembler perfect their process. So good in fact that they have started building a batch of 1000 this week after tweaking their pilot runs.
(MWeston)
Fatih and his trusty translator are making their presence felt in China, and they’re all out of bubblegum. EvilDragon reports via Twitter:
Fatih and his friend are constantly phoning up the chinese company to make them work faster. Not easy dealing with chinese companies…
Fresh news from Fatihs chinese speaking friend. He phoned with the company.
he wanted me to explain you that you will thank him when you see the case he had to make a lot of working on current mould. and tested a lot
“now they are 100% sure, it’s perfect. he will send the samples tomorrow morning.” It’s night in China already. Let’s hope…
Our favourite preserved vegetable has resurfaced, bringing with him nine minutes and fifty one seconds of glorious handheld gameplay. The titles in order of appearance are Ur-Quan Masters (aka Star Control II), Hammer of Thyrion (aka Hexen II), and Pandora Panic (aka Pandora Panic).
A long time ago, a guy called MarkoeZ began thowing together a cheeky adaptation of Joust for the PandoraPanic minigame project. As reported in the recent software roundup, Panjoust has now transcended its humble beginnings to become a standalone title, with a second graphic artist on the team and a sublime soundtrack by Nick May (if you like Ennio Morricone, you’ll like Nick May). The above video, though labelled as just a tech demo, is the first to showcase all these talents in the mix together. This is what homebrew collaboration looks like when it all goes right.
We’ve learnt something. Chinese English and English is definately not the same.
Good thing a friend of Fatih does speak Chinese. For the company, he’s now our official represantative. As he could speak with them in their native language, a lot of things cleared up.
It’s been an exhausting week for F5 fingers across the globe, and it’s only Wednesday. What the bloody ‘ell did happen to the cases? EvilDragon doesn’t have all the answers, but he does lift the fog for a moment to give us some insight into the whole China thang. If you’re all cased out for now, skip to the end for some nice OS news.
(Oh, for those concerned about the Pandora case received by Notaz in the previous post, don’t be. That case is the very one that Craig abused horribly for science, hence the various stress fractures. You too can have these cracks in your Pandora, but you’ll have to pay Craig in vodka and funny hats to do the damage for you. Keen?)
The time has come for another homebrew roundup. Many interesting projects have appeared since the last homebrew feature, including some frequently requested titles and some unexpected gems. Note that a number of entries are marked (WT) for Working Title – if you have naming suggestions for any of these games, get your word heard!
In this video, two men we don’t know play Quake 3 on their N900 Nokias, online, thanks to an oven fresh port of the ioquake3 engine. Why do you care? Because the N900 and Pandora share a heart & soul – the OMAP3530. “But we already have Quake 3, let me dig up those twenty videos.” Yes we do, but ioquake3 is a little more than that. Think of it as Quake 3.5, a feature enhanced animal that has been in active development since the Q3 engine went open source in 2005. This opens a welcoming door to MDave & crew’s Pandora port of Zeq2lite, and in theory, a range of other titles including Tremulous, Urban Terror and Smokin’ Guns (each of which would need to be ported separately). Oh, did we mention that Pickle not only reported this news to the forums, but already has ioquake3 running on Pandora? No? Yeah.
Pandora Press: The unofficial community blog is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache
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