Posted a number of days ago (and shot a number of weeks ago, evidently), Craig gives us a speed run through a day on the floor at assembly HQ. Yep, the entire British console industry in that little room – it’ll either warm your heart or give you a start. Tell us which below, it’ll be fun.
When a new device arrives, it’s only natural to plug everything you can into every available port. Well, hopefully it is, because that just what many Pandora owners are doing. This latest roundup comes courtesy of Alerino, who did his best to try them all at once.
A little update on production progress, which has been tiptoeing along since 100 more boards arrived last week. Quality checks on the nubs are still a significant slowdown, although it looks like things could be possibly thinking about looking up soon.
The last 25 of the 100 will ship today and tomorrow. It does look like this nub issue is solved for 99% of the units so we can get back on track. Over 700 Pandoras have now been shipped.
(craigix, yesterday)
I know things are going slow but 170 more boards are arriving soon and things will start to really speed up and those units should be very good quality due to this lengthy test process.
(craigix)
And on the cases:
we decided to order 7000 last month. 1500 are coming by UPS the rest by boat (4-5 weeks).
The 1500 are due here next week sometime (well, due in to customs!).
(craigix)
My Pandora has landed. This isn’t a review, but a tale of the first day experience. If you’ve toyed with an open device before, it will be a familiar journey. If not, it should give you a fairly good idea of what’s in store – although you can probably expect slightly fewer hiccups.
EvilDragon sure is busy for a guy on a beach.
Hi!
As said, I will write a couple more lines today.
I got some more Pandora infos for you. Software only, as I didn’t follow anything else out here.I think I never told you what will be included in Hotfix 4… here is a small preview. You will get the beta for testing in the following week.
Just yesterday I was working on the pnd_run-Script. sebt3 cleaned it up a bit and added a first support for the clockspeed settings of PND files. I enhanced the clockspeed stuff.
Now, if you run a PND which has a recommended speed setting, the system will first check if your current clock speed is higher or lower than the recommended one. If it’s higher or equal, it will simply run the game. If it’s lower, it will ask you if you want to change the clockspeed to a recommended one, to a custom one or if it should stay the way it is.
After you finish the game, the clockspeed is set back to the value it was before.
It was hoped that 200 more boards would arrive in the UK this week, but there is nought to report. The problem seems to be between the nub factory tightening up their quality control, and the board factory getting in step with them. Throw in some dud UPS promises and pinch of misc, and you’ve got yourself a regular old Friday in Pandoria. EvilDragon elaborates somewhat in the forum posts linked below.
A question that’s been asked a thousand times, finally answered. Intrepid plugger-in of things Raman has managed to squeeze a VGA signal out through his Pandora’s USB port, courtesy of a Startech USB2VGAPRO adapter (pictured above). His second display is rocking a modest 800×600 “not very sharp” 1280×1024 for the time being, and is functioning as an extended desktop – so he can run different apps on each screen. As always, hit the source link for the dirty bits.
A couple of packages from daniel3000 for the pixel pushers. GQview is a versatile image manager & viewer, and mtPaint is a lightweight but very capable image/pixel editor. Both PNDs are available from his download page, which is also home to some other goodies that have flown under the radar.
It’s not an official announcement yet, but word on the forums is that the original File Archive (Pandora section only) is set to be retired, with all content now headed for Pandora Apps. The faithful File Archive, established by EvilDragon as the scene’s first app repository outside Korea back in the GP32 days, will continue to host files for the GP32, GP2X, Wiz, Caanoo and Dingoo.
A classy new vid from EvilDragon, demonstrating the current state of Pandora software (thanks in no small part to the Pandora community, who are pumping out the releases). Sadly it’s just going to make you want your Pandora more, but never the less it’s worth heading straight to the source to watch it in 720p. Also, a word from Craig on the next lot of boards, which are set to turn up on Monday again.
203 boards arriving on Monday with the nubs tested (if UPS don’t mess up).
There are 203 cases ready for those boards to go straight in to so they will ship next week too.
Then we hope it’s all go go go for Aug/Sept.
Every few hundred we make we improve the build process, this is very important to get right since we plan to use this case and system for a couple of years.
(craigix)
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