A rolling stone gathers no mould

Posted by: gruso

Case moulds. They’re slow old things to make. When will the moulds be done? Soon. What are we waiting for? The moulds. Thanks blog people, big help. But maybe not everyone out there knows exactly what these moulds are? If that’s you, pull up a pew. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll just tap into some existing educational resources. This technology students page offers a (deceptively) simple overview of the moulding process. They’re not making a gaming handheld, but they are making a blue hedgehog… it’s the best we could do. (You don’t have to take the test at the end). For a more serious read, there’s the slightly less fun Wikipedia page. Pandora’s moulds are currently in the machining phase.

Twitterix: “Oh, I forgot to tell you…”

Posted by: gruso

Craigix: Oh, forgot to tell you all, the battery was upped to 4200mah and our tests are showing this monster is going to give something like 14 hours

A device that allows you to watch a 10 hour Eurovision marathon, then clock Mario 16 times? Finally! A nice win for frequent flyers, mountain climbers, and anyone who doesn’t carry mains voltage in their backback. Thanks to calc84maniac for spotting it first.

Source

Official Blog: Did somebody say “Let it begin?”

Posted by: gruso

A new (well, day old) post on the official blog from EvilDragon. If all the desktop environment talk (Matchbox vs E17) leaves you feeling a little lost, never fear. We’ll pull together some information and give you a roundup soon.

Did somebody say “Let it begin?”

Yes, we did.

You’ve seen some requested videos during the last days, now it’s time for some more facts and information, eh?

Well, the review of the complete case and the keymat is finished. There were a few small issues that we already corrected and on Monday the company did tell us “Everything is ready, we can start when you are ready”.
And guess what – we were ready! Finally all issues of the case and keymat have been resolved and they are now working on the mould.

DJWillis has also made some progress with WiFi. Basically, he can communicate with the Module, only calibration doesn’t work yet. As soon as he gets this to work, WiFi will work completely – including WPA, etc.

Regarding software, we were discussing about using cpasjuste’s GUI as minimal launcher, since it is so much nicer than matchbox and it’s just a program you run, not a complete WindowManager.
So we’re currently thinking about using E17 as fully fledged desktop and cpasjuste’s GUI as minimal mode for the gamers who don’t want to use a complete desktop.
That way we don’t need two window manager and starting the minimal GUI is easy – just use it as autostart program.

I know there are still plenty of things to do – and the worst thing is that there won’t be many pictures while waiting for all companies to finish… but we’re still getting there, step by step.

A host of posts on case news and emus

Posted by: gruso

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.

Photo: Testin’ mah nubs

Posted by: gruso

Remember the mysterious nub tester we saw a little while back? A new photo has surfaced in MWeston’s album showing the rig in action, with the following caption:

Testing the final nub firmware to be loaded into 8000 chips!

I thought it worked well before, but now it is jitter free.

Craig is also enthused about the final firmware, if this tweet is any indication:

The final nub firmware is amazing. The new code is tight. Should make for a great experience on the Pandora and whatever else…

Wait, “whatever else…”? Intriguing, that.

Thread | Tweet

Ask nicely, get. Mweston plays some PSX.

Posted by: gruso

Here there be Playstation! MWeston comes to the party again, with a range of PSX games on the show reel. The Youtube description says this:

Michael made this video of the Pandora running a Linux PSX emu.

The sound problem seems to be file access or timing related as it stays the same from 550mhz up to 750mhz.

Given the description “Linux PSX emu”, it’s probably fair to assume that we’re not looking at PSX4Pandora, the emulator being worked on by Zodttd and Tinnus. Which in turn, is reason not to worry about that choppy sound. Follow this one in the forums for more details. Correction: This is indeed PSX4all. Check our more recent entry for details.

Video: MAME! I wanna live forever.

Posted by: gruso

An actual video from actual Craig. Craig’s Youtube account anyway; it’s actually MWeston behind the camera. The team has heeded our calls for some Pand-only content and thrown together ten solid minutes of MAME, nicely framed for the d-pad lovers to boot. It looks… splendid. For the newcomers, this is not a final Pandora but a transparent CNC prototype that’s been around for a while. But it’s what inside that counts. ❤

New keymat photo. The only way is up.

Posted by: gruso

From the depths of MWeston’s bucket comes this shiny new photo. At first glance it doesn’t look that new, just a glossy keypad peering out from an old FDM prototype case. There are important tweaks underneath though. Compare it to the last one we saw, and you’ll see that they keys now sit higher in the case. The membrane tweaks apply to both the QWERTY section and gaming controls. Note that this isn’t a font or character map update (MW heads this off at the pass by noting the “non-final silk screening”).

(F5’d by OpenXile)

Dare we go there again? Another video on the way (TM)

Posted by: gruso

It must be said, last time we announced an impending video based on a passing comment, it didn’t end so well. But here at op.wp we’re addicted to mayhem, and if you’re reading this, you are too. Go on, admit it. This little sequence of craigix communicoids goes from promising to amusing to promising again, and seemed worth sharing. First came the tweet:

Doing a new Pandora software roundup video with the latest wares. Going well.

Then a comment on the forums. It turns out a certain fruit-emblazoned box of tricks took issue with Craig’s ext2 formatted SD card.

I just made the mistake of putting one of the Pandora SD cards in to a mac. It seems the mac, being a mac, thought it would be a good idea to do something macish to the SD card which has now caused it not to work in the Pandora anymore.

Great. Let’s see if I can solve this on the PC.

Official Blog: The calm before the storm

Posted by: gruso

Another official update from EvilDragon. 🙂

Hiya folks! It’s been a bit calm around here in the blog, right? Well, that’s for one good reason: Everything is going smoothly right now.

The first check of the case data is finished, the company started creating the moulds. As soon as the first rough mould is finished (which will surely take a while, the case is a pretty complicated mesh), they are gonna do a first rough case and check that everything fits (with a final board, so that nothing can go wrong here!)

In the meantime, the PCBs are still in production. It will take them a few days longer, as they optimized the machines a bit more in the beginning. This does mean, that the boards will probably ship 10 days later (beginning of August). But it does also mean, that the build quality will be better and the failure rate is way lower. No time lost, as the case company won’t need the board before August. And if the failure rate is lower in the beginning, mass production itself will be faster. So when the cases are ready, we can go full speed ahead!