We heard you liked blogs, so we’re microblogging the blog. On the suggestion of Benjymous, the blog has been piped into Twitterfeed so you don’t miss a thing while er, rock climbing and that sort of thing. Follow us here: http://twitter.com/pandorablog
On the official blog, EvilDragon has posted renders of the back of the Pandora, which includes the various ports.
Yup, I found a bit of time… not that much, so there’s not that much to see on this picture.
Basically, it shows the back of the Pandora with all the ports (which we haven’t finished designing in that render).
From left to right:
Mini USB, EXT Port (where TV Out, etc. will be connected), USB 2.0 and DC in.
Of course, in the finished version those ports will have their names or symbols printed below.
Render of the ports
We’re already working on the keymat since last week, don’t worry wink.gif
Also, we’re researching about the TV Out cable production, so this is also covered.
But there’s not much to show
Source
Thanks to board of trustees overseer, astronaut, and well rounded person mali for the link.
Don’t forget to check out the discussion thread on GP32x for an e-zine in the works!
We now have tomvas (Tom` on the forums), thebutterman (Butterman on the forums) and poisonedv (same name on the forums) on our blog team!
Good luck to the new members!
All places have been taken.
As some of you may have noticed, TaG and I have been posting less and less on the unofficial blog lately. We don’t really feel this is fair on the community, but we have other commitments. TaG and I are unfortunately unable to order from the first batch, as well as having our own separate commitments. As I am the admin, I therefore invite anyone who feels they want to make a meaningful contribution, can write fairly well, and doesn’t mind reading forums, to come forward and put their names down.
As a member of the blog team, you will be able to post, edit and delete your own posts on the blog, but I as admin can also edit and delete the posts if they are inaccurate or a repeat of what we already know. As a general rule, post any news which has not already been covered by others in the team – this way, we keep a good flow of news coming through all day.
The addition of 3 new members should cover for our less frequent postings, as well as giving the frequency of posts a slight boost. I should mention that the existing blog team are doing an amazing job already, but I didn’t think it was fair to put the bulk of posting in the hands of just 2 people. So the situation will be 4 regular blog contributors and 2 who post infrequently (me and TaG).
So, if you think you have the commitment to step up to a task, post away, and I’ll add you to the blog team on a first-come, first-serve basis.
(The blog team have said time and time again that Mali would be great to have on the blog, often beating the team itself to news, but it doesn’t look like this is possible).
Edit: Don’t get your hopes up on this one. Earlier today ED posted that OpenGL 2.0 drivers were available. It is now thought this is not the case and it was a communication misunderstanding. When it is confirmed for sure I will update this post again.
Original post:
Wow, another blog post from EvilDragon:
There are some good news, indeed.
TI has released the 3D Drivers for the OMAP to the public – so expect some videos on the Pandora soon!But the best is: Those drivers are OpenGL 2.0 – NOT OpenGL ES! Yep, a fully working OpenGL 2.0! This will make porting a lot easier! Joy!
For anyone who is unsure about what this means, Chip elaborated a little here:
“Most (nearly all) open source 3D games use OpenGL as their 3D graphics API.
OpenGL ES is a reduced-functionality subset of OpenGL. In order to port a game that uses OpenGL to a system that uses OpenGL ES (what we all thought would have to happen for the Pandora), it requires quite a bit of work. Now many of these games (and applications and 3D engines) can be ported with much less effort, as the full OpenGL 2.0 library is supported.”
Or maybe not…
ED just posted this:
The link is here, but…https://www-a.ti.com/downloads/sds_support/…3530/index.html
PLEASE NOTE!
There might’ve been a misunderstanding!
Craig did a quick post to me that TI published drivers and we got FULL OpenGL working!
It might’ve been that he wanted to tell me that we got the drivers fully working, not that it is in fact OpenGL 2.0 and NOT OpenGL 2.0 ES.We’ll update as soon as we know more! Sorry about that, I was really in a rush as I needed to go to work after posting the long long long post before… so I didn’t have much time to think about it more!
That’s what happens if you only sleep 3 hours and wake up with people demanding for news
EvilDragon has made the lowing blog post:
Hi there everyone,
I’ve seen some guys being angry about all the delays and keep asking “what’s going on”… and yes, I can understand them.
If it were for us, we’d have the Pandora released already, believe me. I can’t sleep well since a few weeks since these delays really make up a bad mood, and I don’t think it’s much different for the rest of the guys in the dev team.
So I thought I’d tell you a story… because, yes, back in September 2008, we really thought we could release the Pandora until the end of the year!
However, there was one bad thing that happened… which caused all the mess and nearly did kill everything: In the beginning of October, right after the preorders had been paid, craigs bank froze his account (as you might know). However, not only the money from craigs preorders was on that account, but also the money from the rest of us which was meant to develop the Pandora boards, etc.
Everything had been set: We had the complete circuits (I posted videos before September), we had the nigh complete case (we did post pictures of the FDM case) and we had fixed appointments with the company in mid October to do the first mass production testing of the boards. However, we couldn’t access the money anymore for actually STARTING the mass production – that’s why it didn’t happen.
Also, we couldn’t pay the hinge, the prototype battery, the LCDs, the prototype of the flat ribbon cable for the LCD… and without all that, we couldn’t continue to work on the case. And without any prototype boards, the devs couldn’t work on the software.
It was scary. Everything we had setup so far didn’t work out – simply because of a frozen account. And this was the beginning of all those delays…
It took craig about one month to unfreeze the account – and yet, not all reorderings of CC orders haven’t taken place. At least, we had access to some money and could continue to develop that thing – about mid-November.
Luckily, mass production test run did go pretty fast, so by the end of November, most devs got their boards. It didn’t work so well with the LCDs though – ours had been reserved but sold elsewhere as we didn’t have the money at that time. We had to wait until January to get them all (and yes, we have them, as well as all major other parts needed!).
The company that does the battery also started to work as we paid them – and right in December, they told us they couldn’t fit that high capacity within the space they had planned for. So they needed to make it a bit bigger – and we needed to change the case.
That was what happened until January.
Now that it’s mid-January, we’re basically back on track – just a bit late. We got the parts, the design of the case has been finished according to our deadline on January 15th, it’s currently being FDMed and right after that (if everything is okay, which really should), the case will be being CNCed.
The keypad is also ready for mass production as well as the boards.
The first prototype will be used to do FCC and EC testing, so don’t worry about that.
Then mass production will finally begin – yes, we know it’s a few months late, but believe us: We didn’t want that. Still, we’re just right before the finish lane, so we won’t give up.
Thank you all for your patience – and again, sorry for the delay!
Maybe now you can understand a bit more what has been happeneing!
In response to a question about the roadmap timing, ED has just posted this:
The Case design and case prototyping, yes, they are valid. Final production will probably take a bit longer, as the company is pretty busy at the moment, so my guess is March, latest April.
The blog theme and layout has been changed repeatedly based on the desires of many different readers, and yet some people are still not satisfied – some apparently so unsatisfied that they’ve stopped reading the blog. To remedy this, I’ve posted a poll on the forums asking which layout/theme you’d prefer, and I will go with whichever has the most votes. You’ll find that each option has a compromise, whether it’s not having a custom image at the top, or being forced to read a page just 800 pixels wide. Choose wisely!
UPDATE: The people have spoken – the majority appear to be in favour of keeping the current blog, at least for now. We’ll keep it as it is until the Pandora’s out in April/May or so.
Just a heads-up, I’m doing some more tweakage to see if any themes allow custom header images simply by design. So if something looks awry, never fear: things will settle down later.
EDIT: Enjoy! Here’s an initial blog header. TaG is apparently also working on one, so I may just host a competition for the best blog header.
It’s been a very slow couple of days in terms of Pandora news, and the blog stats and the number of posts seem to reflect that. However, there are two very small snippets of news that may interest some of you.
Firstly, Chip has confirmed that the LCD response time is “30ms black-to-black” (source)
Secondly, Squidge has recently asked which stylus people would prefer to use. Post your opinions here and on the forums!
Which one looks crappy and which looks smart?
I felt that the old theme was far too busy – so I’m currently trying out cleaner looks for the blog. In addition, I’m currently rearranging and changing some widgets, so things may looks slightly bizarre for a time, and the entire theme may change as I experiment. Please give your feedback and suggestions!
I should note that this isn’t the end of tweakage. If we can find a way to easily add a header graphic, that’d be great – note that we’d have to purchase the custom CSS upgrade for the blog.
In addition, what do people feel about removing the tag cloud? I felt it was redundant given that you can simply search them using the search bar.
EDIT: Has anyone else noticed how much faster the blog is now? 🙂
mazza558
PlopperZ
TaG
gruso
Butterman
tovmas
The unofficial Pandora Blog 