Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
March 12, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Battery covers with the final matte finish
Didn’t we all dream about that the case mass production should become reality?
Well, it has. We got some brand new pictures for you.
The mould has been successfully calibrated and mounted on the machine.
The pieces you see are the first that has been spit out by the machine, so those are testing ones which are being checked.
Not all have the finishing applied – one nice picture (above) that does show how it will look like with finishing applied is the one with the battery lids.
Those samples are being checked – and if they are okay (and they really do look fine), they will continue to spit out the cases and apply finishing.
Enjoy!
(EvilDragon)
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, evildragon, production | 15 Comments »
March 10, 2010
Posted by: gruso
The UK’s newest assembly line is showing the first signs of life, with the arrival of several boxes of PSUs and one very tired pigeon. (A few Twitterers mistook the boxes for something else from China until Craig cracked one open for a closeup. Arrgh!) Note that a UK mains plug is shown, but you’ll be getting something to suit your region.
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Uncategorized | Tagged assembly, craigix, power supply, psu | 41 Comments »
March 3, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Silkscreening looks to be off the table for the first batch. Over to MWeston, who doesn’t mince words:
These cases will not have a silkscreen as that would push delivery out into April and even then Craig worried they would screw it up and stiff us with the cases. The problem is the mold company outsources the work and so they all have to be packaged up carefully, sent to this other company, printed, repackaged carefully and sent back to the mold company to be shipped to Craig with everything else. It could cause as much as another month of delays with the way we should trust them.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged labels, mweston, silkscreening | 98 Comments »
March 3, 2010
Posted by: gruso
A triple treat on Youtube today for those who ticked the UMPC box on their Pandoria visa application. First up is a solid ten minutes of OS bits and bobs, delving into office apps, audio & battery settings, and multitasking. Tacked on to that is a further two minutes devoted to themes and colour schemes. No matter what operating system you’re coming from, there’ll be something in here to make you feel at home. To cap it all off, ED toys around with some Pygame source code and launches it from the terminal – all on the Pandora. Hey, stop giggling up back. Barbie Seahorse Adventures is awesome.
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Software | Tagged abiword, barbie seahorse, evildragon, pygame, xfce | 37 Comments »
March 2, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Craig tweets:
Looks like everything will have arrived here by the 22nd. How exciting.
EvilDragon tweets:
Production, here we come! Just confirmed with Fatih, cases will arrive in UK March 22nd. We’ll have the assembly site ready by then! Go! 
Craig elaborates:
(The 22nd) is when everything should be here, including the cases. To be on the safe side we probably won’t start until a few days after that.
I feel a lot more confident about this now we are back in control.
Our own assembly line, this will work far far better for batch 2 and so on. It should always have been like this.
Perhaps not quite the news you were waiting for today, but solid information beats cold silence in most cases. This gives Craig ample time to set up the new production line with things like ESD protection and business hammocks, and ED the opportunity to set up the best webcam feed this side of the Thames. Whatever that means.
Sources: [1] [2] [3]
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged assembly, craigix, evildragon, fatih | 97 Comments »
March 1, 2010
Posted by: gruso
It’s set to be Panarchy in the UK in the coming month, as team Pandora descends on a sleepy village in the north of England to finish what they started in Texas. This change of plan has come about following an exorbitant quote from the factory in Texas (think six figures) to case up the first batch of Pandoras. It seems that MWeston’s stringent assembly procedures were a little daunting for the Texans, who expressed their concern with zeroes. So MWeston sent the procedures to Craig instead, who just happens to own suitable premises for the job.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged assembly, craigix, evildragon, fatih, mweston, Shipping | 91 Comments »
February 24, 2010
Posted by: BackAssward
We all want news, and many of us are waiting with baited breath. So, when we have a bunch of news at once, we can wonder. Is this really good news, or are we just hoping? Well, we have some news from the Official blog. I hope everyone is as excited as I am.
EvilDragon
Chinese New Year holidays are over – work has begun at the factory!
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Pandora, Software, Uncategorized | Tagged Blog, evildragon, Manufacturing, mass production, Official, OS | 83 Comments »
February 24, 2010
Posted by: gruso
We still haven’t been let in the front door of the app store (name pending), but as of today we can follow progress from a slightly different angle. Craig was wedged a Twitter API into his store code, giving followers a live feed of new additions to the catalogue. You can follow the dedicated Twitter account, or if you think Twitter is dumb, just grab the RSS feed.
EvilDragon has also been turning over the tweets, with a string of OS updates over the past week:
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Software | Tagged app store, craigix, evildragon, pandora apps, twitter | 13 Comments »
February 24, 2010
Posted by: gruso
When a photo of the latest board revision was posted a few days back, a handful of commenters pondered the possibility of a labelled version. The GP32X trainspotters had actually done this before, on a much older revision. So a new request went out on the forums, and the community got busy once again. And how! Click the image above and you won’t just get a high resolution version, you’ll get a space-age interactive experience with enough hotlinked reading material to sink a brick shiphouse. Thanks go out to all contributors, with special honours to wea0 for digging up the bulk of the part numbers, urjaman for putting together the clicky version, and LeChuck87 for re-hosting it.
Please note that this is 100% unofficial. It has not been endorsed or confirmed correct by OP Ltd. If you’re planning on building your own Pandora from this diagram, you’ll have to figure out what’s on the other seven PCB layers. Ha.
Posted in Community, Hardware | Tagged Board, labels, omap, pcb, rev5 | 22 Comments »
February 20, 2010
Posted by: BackAssward
We expected the worst; Chinese New Year would be two weeks, but, a tweet from Craigix:
Chinese mould factory are back at work
Source
Could it be? We have production before we hoped? I can’t say for sure, but this is good news.
Posted in Hardware | Tagged cases, craigix, new year | 43 Comments »
February 18, 2010
Posted by: gruso
It’s the last nagging detail of the Pandora accessory suite. We’ve seen the AV cables, we’ve seen the power supplies, but where are the cases? No, not the ones in China. We know where they aren’t. The carry cases. Finally, Craig has posted a picture in the forums that believe it or not, introduces another question. Craig describes this as “the hardcase which will probably come with the carry case free.” This could mean that the case you ordered is larger, with this one thrown in for free. Or that the case you ordered is this one, and it comes with a limited edition Tote Bag (with Craig screenprinted on the front). Whatever the case, it does look pleasing. Better get one for Justin.
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged carry case, cases, craigix | 34 Comments »
February 17, 2010
Posted by: atomicthumbs
MWeston’s Photobucket account has revealed a new picture: the Rev 5a Pandora board. This includes some new solder pads (serial pads near the EXT port, and I2C pads near the wireless chip), and various other thingies.
Update: Never content to leave a question unanswered, pandoratoday.de blogger Screeny dropped Michael Weston a line to ask what this 5th board revision is all about. The reply:
Hi,
There is not much to say. We made 105 rev4 boards. I tweaked a couple things and added a lot more test points, then called it rev5.
Rev5 is the paying customer’s board, rev4 [was] for testing and for devs to work with.
Michael
In other words, the thousand(s) we know to be in production already are the same revision that we see here.
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged Board, Boards, mweston, pcb | 54 Comments »
February 17, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Thanks to notaz, we now got a working battery meter. You can also configure warnings and automatic shutdown 
(EvilDragon)
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged battery meter, evildragon, notaz, power management | 27 Comments »
February 13, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Let’s cut to the chase – there will be no mass production cases shipped before Chinese New Year. Despite the keen promises of the factory (4,000 before CNY) and the more realistic quantity requested by OP Ltd (500), employees giddy for the impending break did not meet the target.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged craigix, new year, production | 81 Comments »
February 10, 2010
Posted by: BackAssward
Just as a child can’t wait to open his presents on Christmas morning, so have most of us been sitting here, trembling with anticipation, waiting to open up our Pandora. Some people have claimed ‘Vapourware’, or that is an outright con. Well, some lucky children have received a late Christmas present, and their excitement is palpable!
For those who follow Craigix’s Twitter, you might has seen the following and wondered what he was talking about:
Craigix via Twitter – Some threads showing up on gp32x of people receiving their Pandora. I can’t stop smiling at them.
source
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Posted in Community, Hardware, Pandora | Tagged cases, psx4all, skeezix, zodttd | 52 Comments »
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