As announced via Twitter last Friday, and heartily discussed all weekend on GP32X, the Pandora now has its own official forum. The new forum is a slimmed down version of the Pandora section at GP32X, and will largely serve as an official support channel and news feed, also catering for the team’s other project, the iControlPad. EvilDragon is administering the new site alongside GP32X, and will ensure that all official news is posted on both sites. For y’all, the usual flow of news (official blog, Twitter, Pandorapress) will remain unchanged, so you don’t need to check yet another source if you don’t want to.

As you’d expect, a move like this does not take place without a healthy dose of drama and uncertainty. For those wondering, this does not mean the community is expected to migrate. Home to years of history and a mountain of archived material, GP32X is considered by most to be the home of the community, and for them, that’s how it will stay. But if you’ve been hesitant to jump into the deep end that is GP32X, this might be your chance to get involved in a forum where even the mods are still newbies.

The link: www.boards.openpandora.org

This may well be the first (unofficial) store to sell USB accessories tested on a Pandora, and as part of their launch, they’re giving away the Pandora the accessories are being tested on! To be in with chance, you’ll need to spend at least 10GBP/10EUR/15USD or 500THB (before shipping) at www.panda-usb.com before September 16th. The catalogue is a bit thin at the moment, but they’re testing and adding more things by the day. Note: Before jumping in with your cash, do read this forum thread for the complete story behind this promotion, and what exactly is being given away.

EvilDragon seems to be sleepless. He looks to be over-joyed with the support the team has received, and seems a bit saddened by some of the negativity.

We sometimes forget the magnitude of what each and every member of the Pandora team has done; It can be easy to be jaded, or lose sight of the point.

In the end: The Pandora is a device born from a community, made by people just like you or I, and it is gorgeous… have some faith, there is a lot of good going on.

As usual, I’ll let EvilDragon do the rest of the talking:

A big Thank You!

What? No news? Dammit!

Well, the boards (200 AFAIK) are on the way to UK due to arrive next week and will be built then, no more news in that area.

BUT I wanted to make a big thank you post!
Not another of those boring “thank you for waiting”-posts (we are thankful, REALLY thankful, but I think I thanked you for that for quite a few times already… and I think you know we are thankful )

No, I wanted to personally say thankful for all the encouraging eMails, messages and words I (and the whole team) got from you during the last few days.

You might’ve seen there was some negativity on the boards – and sometimes, I had some harsh answers for them. If anyone feels personally attacked by them, I want to apologize. I was (well, am, to be honest ) really quite stressed.

These are no easy times for us:
Imagine you have thousands of people sitting in your back, waiting for their Pandora – you basically owe them a lot of money. You got a lot of work to do (like working on fixing existing issues, answer questions on the board, doing your normal real-life job for earning your food, try to get various companies on the phone to find out what’s happening, etc.). This really is a heavy burden for you.
If you’re in that state, every post that does sound a bit negative actually sounds way more negative, demotivates you and puts you in a bad temper… then, if you press the Reply-Button, you will most definately choose the wrong words for your post.

If that happens – please, don’t take it personally. We’re just humans – and sometimes, we’re pretty much worn out, too

However, I was very happy to receive some encouraging words and find some encouraging posts on the board (I really like the “I could sell 10 in an instant if I would have them here” or “I would never part with my Pandora!”-ones – it shows the concept of our device really has worked well, so all that’s left is speed up the production).

So, THANKS for your encouraging words! It really makes life easier for us – and motivates us to work on things even more.

I don’t want to say that you should not post if your Pandora has any issues.
EVERY device has issues – especially new devices from small companies
Tell us what problems to have to encourage us what things we need to improve and take care in the future.
This will not only help making future units more reliable – it will also help making YOUR unit better. i.e. if any part of your Pandora like your LCD cable or a Nub fails sometimes in the future, the replaced one will be made better based on the feedback we get.
The best thing to help us is to drop an eMail to your distributor what you think is an issue with your unit. There’s no need reporting the same issues over and over again at the boards – but it sure helps us finding out what can be improved.

Believe us: We are as eager as you speeding up production and are working together with the company, and seeing that they did 300 in the last two weeks is a good start after the stallment because of the nub issues.
It still is not as fast as we want it to but this is the main priority we’re working on, that’s something you can be sure about.

Oh – and I’ll still do the happiness dance when production is finally going steady, as promised

So thanks for reading… no real news this time, but this really was on my mind and it did good just writing it down.

Let’s meet at the boards and keep them a fun and happy place to post

source

Brace yourselves, we have had two official blog posts in no less than 33 minutes!

Now, I know you are asking yourself… how can this be? Two official blog posts, both right away? You might think to yourself, what could they possibly say in such a short time? Official blog posts are few and far between, usually weeks apart. Right?

Well, I’m here to tell you that they contain a very welcome and descriptive insight into the current state of the project. The most recent post is on the software currently available, the software in the works, program updates, and some work on the OS, (plus an extra special feature you will have to read the post for). There have clearly been contributors who went above and beyond, but I don’t want to spoil it for you, and EvilDragon says it so much better.

In case you missed it, here is our previous article about the hardware news. Wait no further:

EvilDragon on the official blog:

Software: What’s happening

Wow, what amazing six weeks!

The Pandora has just been delivered to the first 600 users – and software comes flooding in.

Besides the official hotfixes (where a few contributions have come from the community, too) which fixed most of the bigger problems, quite a few ports, games, emulators, etc. have been released.
So all of you still waiting for your Pandoras: You will have a LOT of cool stuff available ready to play! I know it’s hard to wait – but just think about what you can do with it once you receive it…

The Games

At the moment, there are 63 files in the freeware games section already – which basically means: At least one free game a day!
Not only casual games like Spout, Ceferino or Alienblaster, but also games which can keep you busy for a looong time like Battle for Wesnoth, FreeCiv, Gianas Return, Numpty Physics or Clonk Planet.

And if those games aren’t enough for you, why not replay some classics like the Secret of Monkey Island series or one of the other countless adventure games ScummVM does support?
Or do you rather want to play Baldurs Gate? Well, we have GemRB in beta testing… Hexen? Rise of the Triad? Yep, all out there, waiting for you to be played.

There are also some multiplayer games out there – wanna play BomberClone against 11 other gamers…? Or try OpenLieroX…. there’s a lot of fun coming.

Of course, a lot of other classics can be played using one of the Emulators…
There are already 27 files in the Emulators section – covering the real retro ones (Atari 2600, 7800) as well classics (C64, Amiga, MSX, Speccy, Atari ST, SNES, Genesis, etc.) and even weird ones like the SIMH where you could emulate a PDP-1…
Those are all fullspeed with sound – even in the unoptimized state some of them are in (a few of them are just quick ports).
PSX and Nintendo64 are getting there. PSX runs pretty much fullspeed with sound with a lot of games if you overclock, Nintendo64 is still a bit slow. But both are under heavy development right now – and will become better.

DOSBox is also running well for an unoptimized version: It plays games like Pirates! Gold or MadTV… so choose your classic and PLAY!

The Apps

There’s a lot more than just gaming on the Pandora. You can listen to music, browse the web, do office work, etc.
Therefore, quite a few nice apps have been released here, too.

You don’t like the built-in browsers? Well, Fennec, Chromium, FireFox… they’re all available.
Want to follow RSS feeds? Liferea will help you.

Have a VNC server somewhere and you want to connect to it using the Pandora? Remmina will do it for you.

Want to listen to music? Choose your player! Besides MPlayer, you can download Audacious, GMU, OMMPC, Exaile or Deadbeef. Some even support classic game formats like SPC or NSF – so if you’re up for some classic chiptune sound, you won’t need much space.

And if you rather want to compose music – Milky Tracker and Schism Tracker are already available.

The OS

Quite a few things are happening around the OS right now. As mentioned, a lot of stuff has been fixed using Hotfixes during the last weeks.
At the moment, we are working on official Pandora feeds (meaning: You don’t need to download and install hotfixes anymore – you can use an online updater on your Pandora to update your machine).
It’s already being tested. There will be stable and unstable feeds available – so if you want to help us test and bugfix the latest stuff, you can do so (risking a reflash in case something goes really wrong).
Of course, there will also be regular Hotfixes released in case you don’t want to do it online.

BTW: Did you know SDXC is already supported? Apparently, it just works

The community has also started to work on improving the OS. paeryn is currently working on SDL – that would speed up games and eliminate tearing.

If YOU want to help out with the OS, check out the current open tasks or take a look at the bugtracker. Maybe there’s a task you want to work on and help improve it?

Other Projects

Beside programs or OS works, there are also other Linux flavours available – and some teams are working on them.
A mobile version of ArchLinux is already booting into X and can do updates via pacman, while a Pandora version of Gentoo called Neuvoo is also reported to boot and emerge already in IRC.

Also, did you know you actually run Debian within the Pandora OS?
So without rebooting or using any speed, you can actually use all the programs from the Debian repository…

Isn’t that nice?

Tutorials coming up

Well, using the Pandora is cool – but especially new users might have some problem figuring out how such things work. I will create some video tutorials soon which show how to set it up, connect to the internet, use PNDs, etc.

It will take a while, but it’s something I really want to do

source

Edit by BackAssward: Added links that were in the original official blog post.

The PandoraPanic! team around PokeParadox has been very busy in the past few weeks fixing the occurring bugs after the initial release. While the non-patched release candidate still is playable with all its joy and glory, you might want to consider updating to the NEW and IMPROVED bugfix4 titled release to not miss out on some of the (previously not attainable) achievements.

Additionally, you are invited to share your comments and ideas about the game and in case you are a C++ developer (or want to become one) you can create your own small game for the collection and carve your name in the Hall-of-Fame of PandoraPanic! contributors. Just hit the “More information” link at the bottom of the page and follow the instructions.

The team is constantly searching for new ideas for games and achievements, too! So in a case of sudden inspiration give them a shout by replying to the forum topic linked below.

Download – Mirror 1 – Mirror 2 (W32 and Linux releases here, too)

Discussion – More information

200 more patient Pandorians will recieve shipping notifications in the coming days, as the production line edges towards the 1,000 milestone. You’ve probably (heh) noticed that assembly has slowed since the initial burst, which is being attributed to more thorough quality checks after a series of first-week hiccups at the receiving end (ranging from sticky buttons to bowed LCD bezels and the occasional RMA). It’s also been revealed that there were a significant number of board issues in the first 400 (faults that were picked up by OPT prior to assembly) which has prompted Texas tighten up QC at their end as well. In addition, MWeston has built them a nub testing rig to futher weed out the problem children before they hit the UK production line.

Source

The reviews linked below tell the story of the early-early-adopter; lots of praise, a handful of warts, and good indications that the QC lessons are being learned quickly.

Coder Tim_T | Bosbeetle | MDave | 7zark7 | mindlord | rook

Also: A thread full of Youtubes

Snapshot only, obviously.

A source, a source, my kingdom for a source. You might have noticed the lack of activity on the Pandorapress roadmap of late; time & sanity constraints mean that it’s probably going to stay at the current “everything is in progress” status, and updated with major production milestones. Thankfully some more community help has stepped up to the plate; namely a mysterious forum signup called “pandoraproduction”. He/she has thrown together a little site which collates all known information into a neat graphic like the one above.

Note that it is not an official source, merely the best effort of the community to paint a picture (literally) based on OP Team posts. Updates, tips and fact corrections can be sent to the provided email address.

pandoraproduction.comze.com | Discussion

(Note: The free web hosting provider manually reviews all updates before they go live, so you will occasionally a “review pending” type message.)

Damn if this fella isn't wearing the face of the community right now.

Yes, we’re back, and no, we don’t want to talk about it. So let’s jump straight into a summary of Pandora’s best week so far (and Pandorapress’s worst!).

EvilDragon and Fatih have joined Craigix, MWeston and a revolving door of volunteers at assembly HQ, and production is still slow and steady. The last few days have seen the first lucky punters unbox their beauties and share the explicit details with an internet full of drooling onlookers. There has been the occasional first-run hiccup, which if nothing else has allowed the extended dev team to show us just how well they handle user support (very). We’ve also learned that the TV cables will be shipping at a later date, and we don’t yet know the status of the next 9,000 cases. Not much we can do or say about that now, so let’s check out what some new Pandora owners have to say…

Laurens:

Right, pics will come in in a bit. First boot is a bit slow, thought it was hanging. I logged in, filled out my details and now its finishing installation. I did orrder the TV out cable, but that’s missing. Case is nice, screen seems awesome. First impression is that it looks really cool, typing is very nice, but I find it kinda odd to have the screen that far back – I’d prefer it if was a bit more laptop-like, but I think I can grow to use it More in a bit.

First impressions: feels pretty nice, keyboard is pretty good, shoulderbuttons are a bit tight. Screen is awesome. Browsing works nice. I hope to get q3 on there to see it show itself off

I did try openjazz, was very smooth, wolf 3d, same, I started dosbox, awesome, ran battle jewels – looks great Cdogs also looks fun.

Nubs are feeling good too – by default, to my taste, they are set in xfce to be a bit too sensitive; the clicking which ED demoed in a video is a bit hit-and-miss affair for me; working most of the time but not always. I’ll probably print an overview for L, R, yabx, and right nub.

OpenPandoraTeam, you did very well. Very impressed!!! Both with the hardware and the state of the software!

Good times ahead

I really like it sofar IT feels very nice, buttons feel good; the nubs are a bit too sensitive, but that I can tweak (haven’t yet). The text on the screen for chat & websites are larger than I expected, it’s all very readable. The .pnd system works VERY nice, really awesome. As you can read above, there are a few minor things I came across, but nothing major. The thing feels great, and I’m glad I got it. The Quick start guide is a very nice touch; unfortunately I did need it (as I didn’t know how to reset it), so it’s great that it was there. It even had a (printed) signature from Craigix, so that’s always nice

But the cripsness of the screen is something to behold The keyboard & controls are extremely nice, it’s good to have a real volume dial etc

I do need to clip my nails a bit further, as the number keys are very close to the hinge and I keep hitting that

Awesome device, really worth the wait

(Laurens)

Stuckie:

I’ve got mine as well

Though I’m at work just now so no pics for the moment!
Really isn’t that much bigger than a DS Lite, and the weight is pretty decent.

Kept hitting the space as if it’s under “b” though, heh.. and the placement of the shift will take a bit of getting used to, but it’s all good
The nubs are interesting as well, the right one is looser than the left on mine, but doesn’t seem to affect anything and I’m sure the left one will loosen up after some use anyway!

All in all, very pleased so far.. just waiting for my lunch so I can have a proper fiddle

(Stuckie)

Puppydee:

My pandora has arrived and it’s a thing of beauty. I thought it would be bigger but it’s a tiny little thing and it’s awesome, I’ve not done anything on it yet bar test if it’s working and just briefly checked out the 2 gui’s. I’m gonna check out some games on it now, just popped it on charge to charge it up first. It comes with about a half charge so you can jump straight in.

The case is really good, I was wondering how it would turn out but it’s cool.

The carry case with it is really nice aswell but it’s a tight fit but I’m sure once it’s been in and out a few times it’ll loosen up a bit. I did order a tv-out cable b ut it didn’t come with my pandora so I can only assume they’re not ready yet, either that or they forgot. I did ring up but couldn’t get an answer. The sd card was a Kingston 32gb class 4 so it should be ok. There’s even a cool battery box to stick your extra battery in if you ordered to, I only got the one. As you can imagine I’m dying to have a play so I’m off. The pics where taken with my iphone so they aren’t great quality.

All in all it’s a FANTASTIC thing of beauty and I can’t wait to see all the games and stuff fill up the apps store. I’d like to thank mweston. craig, ed and all the other guys behind this, it’s been a wait but it’s been worth it thanks guys

(Puppydee)

Parag0n:

Parag0n lets his camera do the talking: Flickr Gallery

SteveM:

Steve compiled and released Fuse (the Spectrum emulator) the moment his Pandora arrived; a clue perhaps, to what we can expect from many quiet devs lying in wait for their hardware.

Having received the thing only yesterday, I’ve not tried out anywhere near everything as yet, but here’s a quick summary of the most noticeable points. Note that this is an honest review and contains my own personal opinion of what must be one of the first 100 units produced. Having a sample size of precisely one, I have no idea how other people’s consoles compare to mine.

The Case: The paint finish on the case is a very nice satin black, and the thing fits pretty comfortably in your hands. Working at a desk is also quite doable. The screen may not click in an upright position, but it does stay put where you leave it. There are some minor build quality issues, what they’d call “fit and finish” in the auto trade. On my unit, the screen bezel wasn’t pushed completely home, but this was easily remedied with a little tweaking. Unfortunately the way it fits has resulted in some minor scuffing of the paintwork near the clips. The L and R buttons are also a little wobbly, to the extent that the tabs which keep them from jumping out of the case can catch around the edges. This may be due to the screw at the rear of the case not being fully tightened, leaving a gap between the two halves. The battery seems to push to corners of the cover up a little. Hopefully it’s just a matter of flattening out the “sticker” (for want of a better word) around it a little better. There was also a rough spot on the tip of the stylus. Users may want to give that a quick test and sand down if necessary before using it on the actual screen! Overall though, an ergonomic and nice-looking case.

The Controls: The D-pad is good, with nice travel and feedback. The ABXY buttons are pretty close together, but work great when you get used to them. The nubs are like nothing I’ve used before – very smooth and, although I’ve not used them in-game yet, moving the mouse pointer around with them is fluid and accurate. The keyboard isn’t going to win any awards but considering the limitations of this type of keyboard, it’s good. There are some minor imperfections visible under the clear sealant. The layout is however pretty terrible. Except for the letters, numbers, and major keys like enter and space, nothing is where you’d expect to find it, instead being scattered apparently randomly over the keys. Typing anything more than a couple of lines is going to take some getting used to.

Audio/Video: The screen is very clear and very sharp – you will not be disappointed! The resolution is also very impressive for such a small screen. Not a ghost in sight, either. It has a slightly rough finish, so can feel a little scratchy when using the stylus. Sound is clear and pretty good considering the size of the speakers. I have not tested with headphones yet.

Software: Although still early days, the xfce desktop is light and snappy. Unfortunately I didn’t get the alternative Minimenu to work yet. Reflashing the firmware (not usually necessary, I have been hacking away at this thing) and installing updates was quick and easy. There’s not an awful lot else to try out yet, but so far the Pandora has coped with everything I’ve thrown at it with ease, including full-screen video playback.

Overall: Although let down a little by the build quality issues, as a gaming handheld and computer: it’s great. Technically speaking, it’s a nicely spec’d machine and I can’t wait to see what it can do when the software catches up. Well done, OP team!

(SteveM)

Next, a series of unboxing & first impression videos from astewardson.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And another one, and another one.

And there’s no better way to end this post, than with a huge thank you and congratulations to the entire Pandora team:

Craigix (Vision, ambition, madness)
MWeston (Electroguru, designed the internals)
EvilDragon (Project support & testing, soothing public voice)
Fatih (R&D, logistics, international diplomat)
DaveC (Case & controls design)
DJWillis (Angström OS, drivers, ScummVM)
notaz (Angström OS, drivers, PicoDrive)
vimacs (Angström OS inc. PND system)
Squidge (Angström OS inc. PND system)
cpasjuste (Pmenu, numerous apps & ports)
Skeezix (PND system, Minimenu, numerous apps & ports)
Pickle (tireless porting machine)

There’s some road to tread yet, but those of us still waiting for our precious can rest assured that they’re doing everything they can to get the whole batch out, and they’re doing it well. Thanks also to our benevolent blog host atomicthumbs, who in the last few days has battled through server meltdowns, school work, family birthdays and Grubot tantrums to get Pandorapress back online.

Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]

You saw it here first! Well, not first if you are a regular on the forums, but don’t let that lessen your excitement. If you saw this previous post, you’d know that GP32X.com forum mod X68000 has been volunteering at the assembly site. As a result, today he has walked away with the first End User owned Mass Production Pandora. Before nodding off, he decided to grace us with some pictures he took of his very own Pandora.

source

More pictures from X68000 after the break, plus another production photo from Craig.

X68000′s forum post

Again, a great big thank you to X68000 for the help in getting the Pandora out to all of us, and for taking these pictures.

Craig has also posted a picture of some partially-assembled Pandoras, just waiting to be completed and shipped to lucky Pandorites.

Some of today’s work, going for 100 tomorrow. http://twitpic.com/1q43gg

[1][2]

BackAssward Edit: I color-corrected the main pic by hand. It is one of the pics X68000 took, but with manual color naturalization applied.

BackAssward Edit2: “Mr.Confuzed” from GP32X did a better job normalizing the pic, so I put his in place of mine (after I cropped it and resized).

BackAssward Edit3: I hate to keep revising this, but Asmo in the comments gave us an even better edited pic, I had to use it (I cropped it and resized).

So, Michael Weston is due to land in the UK in around 24hrs. Cause for excitement? Maybe – but that volcano continues to do its spewing thing over yonder, so the situation may still be a little fluid. Murphies and doom aside though, it’s probably a good time to double check that your delivery address is correct. If you have moved house since ordering, or you think getting your Pandora delivered to your workplace is a better idea, tireless GBAX frontwoman Jacquelyn will be happy to help you out. If you do need to change your address, include your order number, original address, and new address in your email.

Contact Jacquelyn at: openpandorasales (at) gmail (dot) com

This could make for a very busy GBAX inbox, and there is only one person handling the enquiries. Please keep this in mind, and contact Jacquelyn only if you know your address needs to be changed. If you haven’t moved house or you are otherwise happy with the original delivery address you gave, please don’t email “just to check”. This will make things slower for everyone. Additionally, emailing to request your queue position is strongly discouraged. If you’re curious about where you sit in the line, post your order date below and the community should be able to help you out with an estimate. If you do know your position, let us know too so others can get a feel for where they are.

Note: This information does not apply to those who ordered from EvilDragon’s store (shop.gp2x.de).