EvilDragon presents EvilDragon at CeBIT! Sadly there is no English version, but it’s surprisingly watchable as it is. ED appears to speak German quite fluently too, good for him. Tidbits of translation can be found in the forum link below.
Video Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
So, here it is; assembled, booted, sitting there winning. It’s lacking the final matte finish the next 3,895 will get, and we have to wait until tomorrow for the highly anticipated Big Green Light from Michael Weston. But we’re told the hinge works beautifully, and more assembled units will appear in the coming hours, to be shipped out to various dev team members. If any vapour hangs in the air today, it is the outward breath of a thousand satisfied sighs.
[Update] Moving pictures have appeared on Youtube.
posted by: PlopperZ
Andrewe1 has been hard at work on his embroidery machine making some very nice Pandora and Wiz softcases. He plans to sell some in small quantities, assuming he gets permission from GPH and the Pandora team.
These are just prototypes he whipped up in a day, and he’s looking for input, so post in that thread (source link) if you’ve got any ideas!
More pics and Wiz case after the break.
Posted by: PlopperZ
Craig uploaded a neat video showing off an unrelated Chinese PSP clone and an early cardboard mockup Pandora (starting at ~1:40)
EDIT: Oh yeah, and there’s also an assembled (real) Pandora in there too 
Video after the break.
Got a burning need to know where your fellow Pandorians hang their hats? Of course you do. B-ZaR has answered the call by whipping up a Google map for all and sundry to leave their mark. You don’t have to advertise your home address or anything; a suburb, state, princedom or local jazz hall is more than enough to pinpoint which piece of Pangea you’re floating on. The instructions go like this:
1. Click the map link below
2. Click the Edit button on the left
3. Right-click on your location
4. Add location
5. Add your name/nickname/alias, and a snappy text description if desired
The Pandora People Map | Forum discussion
Oh, forgot to say: A Google account is required if you want to add yourself to the map. If you’re not into the Google thing, hit up the forum link and ask a friendly GP32Xer to help you out.
Posted by: PlopperZ
JavaJake:
We’ve come a long way from where we started. Six months ago, neither viridior or I had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Nevertheless, we survived, and in the meantime we’ve created our first truly usable Gentoo release.
If someone could boot it up and play with it and make sure the essentials work (emerge can build new packages, internet works, and so on) we’d be extremely grateful. We want someone to pick through it like the average Gentoo user might, so knowledge of Gentoo would be helpful. If Gentoo experience is lacking, that isn’t a big deal. Simply trying to emerge (install) a package we haven’t already installed or pre-built would be great!
So, whoever wants to try it out can get a copy of the latest release here. Since the latest is 0.0.3, you probably just want to go straight to 0.0.3’s page. Pandora testers will want to select the plain 0.0.3 “base” variant, while BeagleBoard users might want to use the “base-beagle” variant. Be sure to read the “Install a Pre-built Image” page for installation instructions.
We’re looking for feedback on your entire experience! Was the website easy to use? Where might we improve? How about the image itself? Are there any tweaks we should’ve included? Everything is still under heavy development, so it will be relatively easy to change things now rather than later.
Here’s a big thanks to the testers who use precious time out of their day to test our images! We really appreciate it!
Posted by: PlopperZ
From MWeston:
I’m told production samples of the A/V cable are being built next week so whenever they are done, some will be shipped to me to review and destroy (well one of them for sure to check the internals and make sure they followed my guidelines). It doesn’t look like there will be a problem shipping these cables with your initial orders and as I mentioned before, we had to place a minimum order of 5000 cables so there are plenty out there if anyone wants to add it to their order.
I wish we could have just thrown these in for free like you get with those Chinese MP4 players but this thing was pretty expensive to make using the custom connector and the price even went up after the initial quote because they were obligated to use more expensive materials that meet environmental safety/recycling rules or something like that. At least the Pandora project is doing its best not to destroy the environment with its product!
From Craig: (add the usual grain of salt)
I’m prepared to say July.
Update: More July talk.
I’m pretty sure on July. Unless something goes wrong with the dpad redesign we will be good to go.
Edit: What I can’t promise is 100% wifi compatibility, that’s still a work in progress, but it won’t stop us shipping as I’m pretty sure you are all capable of installing an updated driver.
Pandora’s Box?
Craig has posted an interesting poll on the forums. He asks us if we would be interested in a “Pandora Cube”. Identical hardware to the Pandora (bar the keyboard, speakers and screen) . You would have to plug in your own controllers and what not, but Craig sees it working as a home entertainment system. He quotes a rough price of $200 – $220, that’s $100 off the current Pandora asking price. The standard definition TV out may put many of you off, considering we live in a high definition age.
Head over to the forum and take a peek, I’m sure Craig is looking for lots of feedback.
EvilDragon has posted a new entry on the official blog.
Hiya!
Sorry for so little news during the last days, I did have very busy times.
I quit my job, so from April 1st, I’ve got more time for Pandora and my other job (which is TV commercial production).
However, this means I got more to do during the last week, as somebody needs to take on my old job.Well, anyways, back to Pandora stuff. I received three new ribbon cables from Michael on last Monday but didn’t have time until today to rebuild my Pandora devboard and put it into the case. But, it works now. So (except for the keymat I’m still missing), I also got working board in a case now.
I hope I’ll find some time making a nice little HD video with Quake 3 and some other new emulator (you’ll like it) during the next days. You will also get to see a more finger-friendly matchbox-theme I designed. Give me some time, though, still got a lot of work in real life.
Now, onto some other issue you already heard on the boards: The case. You’ve seen it and you read it, it fits quite good (better than we expected) – but not PERFECT. There is SOME stuff to be fixed, but nothing that major. We don’t want to deliver a non-perfect case to you, though (and I’m sure you all agree), so we’ll work on it for the next few days.
I’ll also post the final keymap for you soon, so stay tuned – and thanks a lot for being so patient.
JayFoxRox has posted some information about the PSP emulator he’s working on for the Pandora. It’s currently very early in development, but he already has a few screenshots. He’s aiming to get commercial games running at a reasonable speed and believes it to be very possible. The PSP has a very impressive line up of games, from GTA to LocoRoco, these would definetly be a very welcome addition to my Pandora games library. More screenshots and information at the source!
It looks live we’ve got our first video from MWeston. He’s assembled his final prototype (including the lightpipe). In this video he shows us the unit from boot, to a warm cup of Quake.
You can’t say you’re not excited now.
Update: A few people have been asking about the small gap along the front, where the case doesn’t seem to go together fully. As MWeston explains, it’s due to the chunky prototype keymat:
. . . that stiff, basically unusable keymat is pretty unforgiving inside the case. The PCB should line up with the top of the SD card slot holes but it sits low and you can see the board edge a bit through the slot opening so that right there creates a gap in the two halves. More proof of this can be seen with the nubs that are sitting a bit low and that is because the keymat keeps the board from getting close enough to the top plastic (and sitting flush on its mounting pegs).
A tweet from Craig, going something like this:
CNC case arrived but the light pipes were not clear, not a show stopper. I’ve also arranged to manage an iPhone and Pandora commercial game.
Never mind the light pipes, just put the thing together gosh. And dare we ask about this cross-platform game? No, we do not. Sounds suitably intriguing though.
Stay tuned to the twitterix here, if you like your tweets wrapped in bacon enigmas.
Craig has posted a new deadline (friday) for first batch orders on the forums. He’s also stated that the production boards are going to be ordered this week.
Looks like the production board (the MK4 if you like) will be being ordered this week.
Thus we need to bring the reorders to a close, if you have not made your payment you will get an email asking you to confirm or cancel you order this week.
Tonight we will be emailing the next 6000 or so on the mailing list telling them they can place an order, first come first served, we have waited much longer than we said we would to do this to give people who promised to reorder a chance to do it, but we must move on.
So let us bring this ordering to a close at last, please get your orders in for the first batch this week.
I am sure you know the details, openpandorasales@gmail.com or +44 (0)191 243 2253
Hurrah!
Craigix has posted an interesting question in the forums. He’s asked what commerical games we would be interested in seeing on the Pandora and why.
After reading thought the Gizmondo liquidation details I was surprised to see just how cheap they obtained some of their game ports for the console. Of course having those games didn”t save the system in any way but…
If we could throw some money at having a commercial game or two ported over which ones would they be and why?
Which do you think would get the Pandora the most attention or the most sales?
Or is the money better spent elsewhere?
Could we see some commercial games coming out on the Pandora? Or is it generally a bad idea taking ideas from the failed Gizmondo?
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