ED has given us a quick update on the FCC and CE status. For those of you who won’t know, FCC and CE are official certifications that a product has to pass before it can be sold. FCC for the U.S and CE for Europe.
Just phoned with the CE / FCC guys.
Testing does take two days, CE can be done with the CNC prototype, only for FCC the final unit is needed (by american law).
However, as the final case won’t change any of the stuff we need to test to pass, we can be sure that FCC will be fine when we have the CE, so as soon as the final unit is out, it needs about a week after testing to receive the licensing. So US guys might get the unit a bit later, but that’s the american law.
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!
Let’s call this what it is: a direct re-post from felipec.wordpress.com.
It took some time but finally tiopenmax 0.3.5 was released. It’s essentially 0.3 plus DSP binaries that actually work.
I verified with gst-openmax (git omap branch) and they work just fine Thanks Daniel Díaz!
So people with OMAP3 hardware (beagleboard) can already try D1 MPEG-4 decoding using less than 15% of CPU.
Read the full entry for a Beagleboard powered DSP demo, and a link to the dowload source. If you need some background, check out FelipeC’s previous post on the topic.
To see what it all means for Pandora developers, jump into the GP32X forum discussion here.
If you’ve just landed here because you saw the word Quake trickle through your RSS tubes, you might have thought to yourself, do we need another Quake video? Well, there are two answers to that. First, it’s never a matter of need. Second, if Pickle takes some time out to throw together a new video, there’s not a frog’s chance on Stroggos that we’re going to complain. This time around we get a nice chunk of intro, and some snappy keyboard & mouse gameplay for the desktop purists.
You may notice some familiar graphical glitches, such as the desktop flickering into view here and there. This is not a Quake issue but a framebuffer issue, a minor wrinkle that the kernel guys have on their ironing list. So cast any concerns aside and enjoy all 110Mhz of SGX-rated action.
Chip has posted as final dead line for pre-orders at April 1st. Yes, this is the 3rd or 4th “final deadline”, but Chip assures us that if you haven’t paid for your pre-order yet you lose it. Which leads us on to the fact that if you’re still wanting a Pandora, you can get one very soon, apparently there are about 300 un-paid for Pandoras. Hurrah for you, good sir! Just keep an eye out on this blog for information about ordering one those Pandoras!
There are a bunch of people who have contacted us saying they wanted to reorder but still haven’t paid. We’re basically cutting them off on April 1 (they’ve had a couple months) and opening up those units for pre-order.
If you’ve pre-ordered a Pandora but haven’t paid yet, now is the time to do it.
If you want to get in on the first batch but thought you were too late, there will be somewhere between 100-300 units available for pre-order in about a week.
There will be an announcement made here once we’re ready to accept pre-orders for those units. We may send out emails to the next batch of people on the mailing list as well. It depends on how fast the pre-orders go.
From the lair of forum member Hessiess comes Quad-Ren, a 2D graphics engine designed for- well, some things are best left to people who know what they’re talking about, so let’s continue down that path, shall we?
Quad-Ren is a resolution independent 2D graphics engine that aims to ease the development of bitmap-based applications, primarily games. Applications using Quad-Ren will function the same regardless of screen resolution or aspect ratio, windowed or fullscreen.
It rectifies many of the issues with older methods of 2D game development such as colour key transparency (which inevitably leads to aliasing) and having to draw sprites in a specific order, which Quad-Ren handles using alpha transparency and layers respectfully. Quad-Ren is programmed in, and usable from C++, with a simple object-oriented API and a small, well documented, easy to edit code base.
features include:
* Resolution independence.
* OpenGL hardware acceleration.
* Anti-aliased graphics.
* Built in support for frame based animations.
* Unlimited layers (draw order independent).
* Object oriented API.
* Small elegant code base.
* Highly portable.
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).
Do recursive acronyms have you reaching for your rifle? Then it’s your lucky day, punk. The game currently known under the working title TINCS (TINCS Is Not CounterStrike), headed by Butterman, has reached the naming stage and in true TINCS style it’s being put out to the community. In recent weeks, forum members have voted on both artistic style and back story (congratulations to Muzz and Dutch Cap, respectively). Now Pandora’s first fully home-brewed online FPS is throwing a naming party, and everyone’s invited. Dutch Cap’s complete text and more of Muzz’s concept art await you after the break.
Thanks Daniel Díaz!
mazza558
PlopperZ
TaG
gruso
Butterman
tovmas
