Hotfix number 4 is live. It’s the usual swag of tweaks large and small, notable inclusions being improved wifi stability and bluetooth connectivity. Full details and download on the official support page (scroll down for the hotfix).

And a bit of news too for those still in the queue:

Just a quick message we got from the Nub company: The new nubs that have been produced and tested last week were already more stable than the ones we had before.
They are doing a bit more tweaking and have new prototypes ready within the next few days that will be tested anew.

We’re getting there. If all goes well, Mass Production for the new nubs can probably start at the beginning of next week

(EvilDragon)

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

A promising development from the US of A.

Michael had a looong conference call with the board production company today to discuss about how to proceed and speed up production.

Here is a short summary of the results of the discussion with them and the current plans of both us and the company:

Basically, they built enough boards now to know what things they have to take care of during board production to produce high quality boards – which means: They know how long they approximately need for producing and testing them.

Additionally, to speed things up, they agreed to produce and test the rest of the remaining boards even if there are no nubs ready yet!
So as soon as the new nubs are finished (probably sometime in September), there will be a lot of working boards waiting to get the nubs soldered-on.
We will most likely get a massive batch of finished boards in September… and we’ll make sure we have enough cases prepared when they come.

The company wants to have the first batch finished mid-October. Our original plans before we knew about the nubs was to finish everything end of September – so we’re not that far behind.

The parts for Batch 2 should also be available mid-October – so Batch 2 should start directly after Batch 1 is finished. That does mean: Batch 2 should be finished by Christmas.

Please keep in mind that these guesstimations are not our guesstimations – but actual plans of the board company. Will they be able to do it? We don’t know yet, but we’re optimistic. We also hope all parts for Batch 2 will arrive in time. With such crazy leadtimes (12 – 14 weeks), you never know.

So, once again, the plan in short:

Board production will now start in fullspeed, finished probably mid-October (Batch 1) or by Christmas (Batch 2).
Until the new nubs are there, the boards will be produced, fully tested and stored. As soon as the nubs arrive, they will be soldered onto the boards and everything will be shipped to UK.

While that happens, I will solder tons of LCD cables, while Craig and his helpers will prepare the cases and the lids for the big batch of boards.

Then all we need to do is try to keep up with the board production speed… wish us luck

(EvilDragon)

Source

Hands up if you got an email! Lengthy debate on the correct plural of Pandora if you didn’t!

80 Pandora shipping today.

(craigix)

Source

Click here to view the embedded video.

EvilDragon is pumping out the new material today, with two new videos and a roundup of the nub situation. The gist of the blog post is that we may be about to see the last of the nub holdups, and a more consistent flow of completed boards out of Texas. Amen to that.

Well, quite a few things have happened, so here is another update for you.

1. All about the nubs

In case you didn’t know yet: Quite a few nubs had problems right from the beginning (a failure rate of 20 – 25% is just inacceptable!) and even some of the working ones have failed a while later (though not too many, thankfully).

Therefore, the manufacturer got a pile of non-working nubs back from us to find out what’s wrong and test them.
It didn’t take too long to find the problem: Mostly a tolerance issue. That’s why most were working, but some failing.

The first workaround: Doing a mechanical test all of the nubs, a quick thing that allowed us to ship more Pandoras out to you, but not the final solution, because it still slows things down – and is not 100% reliable.

So I’m very happy to report that the first samples of the (hopefully) fixed nubs will be finished within this week, ready to be stress tested. If testing goes well and it proves that those nubs have no issues, they will go into mass production. This will hopefully mean the end of any nub problems.

What does this mean?

We will continue production of the boards and Pandoras with the tested nubs until the new ones are there. Basically, there should be no difference between tested ones and newly produced ones as long as they work. But the newly produced ones shouldn’t have such high failure rate.

When the new ones are finished, the testing process (which slows production down, too) is not needed anymore and things should go more smoothly.

2. All about the boards

Right after we met in UK to assemble the very first Pandoras, we had to stall board production because we had so many broken nubs.
Replacing nubs does cost us money (and a lot of time). If it only were a few, we could’ve continued – but with that high failure rate, we first had to find out what was wrong here.
Even though the manufacturer was working very fast on this issue, we first had to desolder some non-working nubs so that the manufacturer could test and find the error, so that did cost us a few weeks.

Since the manufacturer started to test the nubs, production has been started again. First, we only got 100 boards to test if the nubs work fine. Then we got 200 more (currently being assembled) and the next batch that has been announced will be a whopping 500 boards (don’t know exactly yet when we’ll get them).

Also, as the board production company now knows the amount of work that’s needed and seeing that new, working nubs are on the way, we’re currently discussing with them to sign a contract about a minimum amount of boards per week.
At the moment, all they do is produce as many as they can in the time they have (as long as production wasn’t reliable, they wouldn’t have done any other contract).
A minimum-per-week-contract would be the best thing – as then we finally have some realistic figures on when your Pandoras will be finished and how fast it all goes. And bigger projects wouldn’t interfere with board production anymore.

These are the things we’re currently working on – and if they work out fine, things should finally go smoother – and A LOT faster!

3. All about the Pandora

As posted, I had a Pandora at the GamesCom – and that definately was a good idea. Interest was pretty high, a lot of people came to see and / or test out the Pandora – and as far as I’ve been told, they all liked it. That’s pretty cool.

I’ve got another offer if you didn’t manage to go there: If you ever come near Ingolstadt (Germany), you’re free to come visit me to have a chat (or coffee) with me and test out the Pandora live! Just drop me a PM or mail if you want to come visit me.

Okay, that’s for todays news. Hopefully more good news on board and nub production soon. Oh, and I’m currently uploading two more videos for you

For anyone not knowing where to find my Pandora videos – check out my YouTube channel! There are a lot of videos there, might be especially interesting for newcomers.

(EvilDragon)

Source

For his second demonstration, ED plays some Sega games direct from the cartridge courtesy of the super cool Retrode.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The last mention of production status was back on the 14th, when EvilDragon told us there were 200 more boards on the way to the UK. Those boards are now making their way into cases, and out to customers. This will bring the total number of Pandoras in the wild to approximately 900. As for the next lot of boards:

Also we’re told to expect 500(!) boards in the next batch, so, wow, that will be a lot of work. Not sure we can manage 500 in a week but we shall see.

(craigix)

Source

ps. We’re trying something different on the old unofficial roadmap. No more tables or infographics, no more predictions, just a log of notable events. It’s not even a roadmap any more, but we’ll still call it that. Here.

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.

From the official blog, EvilDragon fills us in on his trip to GamesCom, and the child he left behind.

Well, today I was visiting the GamesCom to meet some press guys to talk with them about the Pandora.

GamesCom itself wasn’t that interesting to be honest (mostly online games I didn’t care of, on the Playstation Move booth you could try Sonys cross between a torchlight and a Wii-mote and pop virtual balloons with that… while XBox360 showed with Kinect that you can play with virtual animals… yay!) – but what was really nice is that actually five guys recognized me (or the Pandora). Even a sales manager of a big game company recognized the Pandora and congratulized me that we really did pull it off. Cool.

Anyways, most interesting for some of you guys is probably, that I left a Pandora for the rest of the exhibition at one of the best booths there is at the GamesCom:

It’s at the “Haus der Computerspiele”, that’s in Hall 08.1, Booth B050.

That’s a major exhibition of video gaming consoles and gaming handhelds. I sponsored them a GP2X F100, F200 and WIZ – as well as a Caanoo and Pandora (though they have to send the latter two ones back after the show).

So, if you want to see a real living Pandora and are the the exhibition, be sure to check out their booth!

(EvilDragon)

Source

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today we observe one of the rarest specimens in the Pandora ecosystem: the TV out cable. Coaxed from its lair by trained handler EvilDragon, it treats us to a dazzling display of light and magic before withdrawing once again from the piercing gaze of onlookers. Perhaps this season, if the monsoon is on time, it will multiply.

Fresh from taking out second prize in the GP32 Spain GP2X-Wiz Coding Competition, Notaz has now released GINGE for Pandora. GINGE provides a WINE-like compatibility layer enabling you to run many titles from the huge GP2X software library. At the risk of hyperbolising, it’s the best thing ever. Notaz explains that some support for Wiz software is now included, and although not thoroughly tested, it’s capable of running the Wiz release of PCSX4all (more on that below).

Games that won’t run include those that use the second GP2X CPU, such as Vektar and Egoboo. Some other software won’t run for various magical reasons (confirmed not working after some quick tests: B’lox, Cat Trap, Sleuth Slots, Simoniz). Touch screen is not supported for the moment either, but it’s early days yet. So what IS working? Lots! Here are some titles to get you started:

PCSX4all – A new PSX emulator for the scene, won first prize in GP32 Spain competition. (Congrats Franxis & Chui!)

gpSP – Exophase’s GBA emu (disable scaling or use software scaling)

Wind & Water Puzzle Battles (demo)

Payback (demo) (requires login)

Animatch

Snake On Dope

Noiz2a

Sqdef (tower defence)

Boomshine2x (set to F100 mode in options)

Read more in the release thread.

New to GP2X software?

Software for the GP2X comes in the form of .gpe executables. Generally you’ll download a game in .zip form, then extract to its own folder. This will contain the .gpe, along with any supporting files and subfolders. You need to keep all these bits together in this folder.

Your SD card should be set up as per any other Pandora SD card (a /pandora folder in the root, and four folders inside this: /apps, /appdata, /desktop and /menu). Drop the GINGE .pnd where it suits you. Then create another folder in the root of the card called /game. The GP2X expects to find games in the /game folder, and GINGE is no different.

Place all your GP2X software folders into the /game folder, and you should be hot to trot.