A few more images have slipped onto MWestons photobucket, the first is of the silkscreening. Check out the rest, along with MWestons commentary after the break.

Needs improvement on alignment and ink deposition. This proves that they can print the labels where we need them and I think that was the point of sending these parts early. I hope the next ones are better. Also, they used the wrong file as we can use the official BT logo since registrations was free

MWeston

The next image is of the improved factory finish on the case.

There is a definite improvement in the finish of the plastic. Also, holes are better and have fewer jagged edges but some discoloration and uneven cooling marks remain. Again, these parts are an intermediate test that fixed numerous problems to the structure, but are not final.

MWeston

Finally, we’ve got a bonus picture from Craig’s inspection of the power brick.

Just checking the Pandora PSUs are good quality. They are.

Craigix

That’s all folks!

I’m not sure what’s happened to Grusos usual awesomely fast posting, but seeing as he doesn’t seem to be active I’ll try and match his speed until he’s back.

Evil H. Dragon has blogged up a big one. If you’ve been reading PandoraPress you’ll know a lot of this stuff already, but it’s always nice to get a meaty serve of words from Pandora HQ. Images and video have been snipped to conserve pixels; you can find the post in its original form at the source. Oh, want to know what the above pic is all about? Don’t let your raging inner nerd miss the links at the bottom.

Hi folks!

We got overwhelmed with eMails, so it took a while to answer them all – and also to find a few minutes to post at this blog again.

Quite a few things have happened, if you followed the boards, you might’ve seen most of them.
If not, here are the latest news for you:

1. WiFi is working!
Yep, finally, after months of hard work by mostly DJWillis (with help from other devs), WiFi is working!
WEP, WPA, WPA2… including one of the best GUIs, the Network Manager are working fine!
Additionally, XFCE is shaping up, so you might even get a REAL cool desktop manager!

2. Cases will ship sometime this week
According to the company which creates the moulds, the first samples of the cases should ship within this week (they didn’t say any exact date).
That does mean that they should arrive latest next week – and if everything is fine, it’s CASE MASS PRODUCTION time. Yeeeha!

3. First preview of Silk Screening for the case
Michael released a very first version of the silk screening for the case which led to this gp32x.com-Thread. You guys did provide a lot of good ideas there which we will implement into a final version. Thanks! You’re a really cool community.

<images snipped>

4. Emulation goodness
Devving for the Pandora continues. There’s now a first version of a MUPEN port already – an N64 emulator.
Thanks to Ari64, Pickle and all the devs involved (you can find out more infos about it on this GP32x.com thread) (Don’t forget Adventus, ED!)

Here’s a nice video of Michael playing Super Mario 64. The sound is stuttering as emulation is not fullspeed yet, but it’s really really promising already.

<video snipped>

5. CE Testing documents and shielding
As I promised in my last blog post (though a lot of time passed), everybody who’s interested can take a peek at the documents.
Michael already shielded the LCD cable, so everything should be fine now.

Anyways, here are the documents. You can clearly see a few peaks which were too high. But, luckily, not too many

a. Angström Image GUI booted up and idling.
Horizontal testing
Vertical testing

b. notaz testing FW running SNES9x with Bluetooth and TV Out enabled
Horizontal testing
Vertical testing

c. notaz testing FW running SNES9x with Bluetooth and TV Out enabled, connected to original PSP power adapter and USB2.0 stick inserted.
Horizontal testing
Vertical testing

Forum discussion | That blog link again

It was all devs on deck today, with a little video-fuelled excitement on the boards and a bevy of questions answered. First up, a word from the Dragon.

Well, some quick news (I didn’t have time to do a blog post, as I was in Leipzig at the GCO and needed to catch up on everything).

The 105 boards are finished, though I have no idea whether the MP company did take some pictures or if we have to wait until they arrive at Michaels place.
The review of the case is complete, mould creation started.
The TV Out Cables are being built, as soon as Michael gets the first final one, there will be pictures for sure
WiFi is getting better, everything works except reading the calibration data, the rest is fine. DJWillis is still at it.
And Michael is currently putting the new firmware on all of the nubs… joy

Source

On reading that, the observant Pandorian might be asking why the case mould is starting now, when we previously reported that it started two weeks ago? Just for you, it’s been asked and answered already.

It was about 30 days for just mould creation and about 45 days for mould creation including the review.
It might change if they need to change something, but that’s something we don’t know yet
The first review went pretty good, so we’re positive about it

Source

Winner. Not only was our reporting correct (which it isn’t always, as you’ll see soon), but ED has confirmed that we’ve begun the 30 day approach to the first real Pandora cases. Could we see some early next month? It’s plausible.

Now to the recent PSX video. We had assumed by the video title that we weren’t seeing Zod’s PSX4all, but another Linux PSX emu. Wrong! Fire that guy. It is indeed PSX4all, and MWeston goes into some detail here:

Zod hasn’t figured out how to properly use the audio buffer in the Pandora kernel (Zod and I think) plus there appears to be some vsync timing issues since all of the audio seems to rely on timing. The LCD is set to 67Hz because the settings Notaz tried at 60Hz caused some flickering on the display. No one has gone back to try and play with the registers to find the magic setting and so PSX4all ends up a little out no matter what Zod does. That would account for the crackling in the audio. The entire audio tends to be a good second out of time with gameplay and it doesn’t matter if the clock is 500MHz or 800MHz. There is something missing in how the audio should be buffered and passed out during emulation. I can’t help him solve that one unfortunately. I did ask around but it may take more eyes on the code when more people have their own devices.

Zod works mostly on his iPhone versions and only recently has had a second platform powerful enough (3GS) to keep up with video and sound going full out at the same time. It’s still a work in progress. The fact that it runs pretty smoothly for me at 550MHz (just a number I like to use) and the audio doesn’t change with the clock increases means that there is something being handled incorrectly in the code. Again, I think it is timing because vsync doesn’t change no matter how fast you set the processor clock.

Oh, and this is still completely software emulation except for using the hardware scalar to make it full screen. Exophase has helped with adding NEON instructions which is supposed to help with screen blitting, especially in 320×240 games. Zod can correct me if I’m wrong but I think it provided up to a 6x improvement in blitting, but it’s still experimental code and not always stable so I don’t have a build that uses it.

Source

Also working on PSX4all is lad named Tinnus, who drops a few hints as to what’s in store for the emu:

Running too fast: it just doesn’t have a framerate limiter yet. Obviously it will before release For now it’s interesting to let it run as fast as it can so we can easily see how something added or changed helps out in speeding things up.

Rendering: yep, and that’s still pure software (not for long ). I’m very excited with the possibilities of the GL ES 2 GPU, not only for speed but also for the possibilities of improving the graphics–bilinear filtering and postprocessing filters for instance, like Pete’s GL2 plugin for the PC emulators does, not to mention rendering to any resolution (actually to a multiple of the original game resolution, but then that can be scaled down).

Source

Phew!