Pandora's Box

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.

Also 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! Pics after the break.

Direct re-post from felipec.wordpress.com about DSP libs.

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 D?az!
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.

Pics and a Quake 2 Video after the break. 

Read more...

Blog, Community, Pandora, Software Video, Drivers, Game, Prototype

Craig's new blog post about Michael's prototype :

Here is a quick and much requested video of the white Pandora which was built a few days ago. It is the first fully working, portable, near final unit. Still some things to tweak up which we are not happy with, but we are almost there now.
You can see use of the keyboard, the nubs, the dpad, the action buttons, the LEDs and the touchscreen.
The game is Quake@800*480 via the SGX (solid 60FPS with dynamic lighting), the OS is Linux (Angstrom). We will do a video with Quake3 soon.

Additionally there was couple blog posts by ED :

So, what has happened during the last days, you might ask?
Well, besides me starting to make the Pandora Matchbox theme to be more finger-compatible (so you can use it without stylus), Michael finally got his case and he began to assemble it properly.
I also had to do a lot of boring stuff... finding out a lot of the legal stuff and doing phone calls.
If you're not interested in legal mumbojumbo, you can skip the rest of this blog entry.

Have you ever thought about how complicated it would be selling a battery within Europe? Firstly, you need to make sure nothing serious can happen... and if there are any special infos about how it has to be wrapped up. A lot of phone calls were needed to find out anything about that, as nobody seems to know much about that — not even the guys that are supposed to check if everything is fine. Well, I found everything I need to know. Even if some stuff is weird. Even the size of the «don't-throw-it-away»-icon on the battery has to be correct...
Another thing about the batteries is that you actually need to take care about the recycling... I did also take care about that.
Similar stuff for the Pandora itself: Recycling is something that needs to be taken care of... that's fun, eh?

Anyways, after those boring legal stuff, back to the really important things now: Finishing the Pandora and the OS!

I don't think I need a lot of words in this blog entry — I just posted a video (HD again) where I assembled a Pandora prototype case.
Two things are important:
1. I broke my flat ribbon cable, so I can't show the unit running (a new one is already on the way to my place).
2. The motherboard doesn't fit perfectly, as the final case is for MK3 and the board I have is MK2, we moved around some stuff.

Apart from that: Enjoy :D

Video is after the jump.

Read more...

Blog, Hardware, News, Pandora Video, Game, OS, Prototype

EvilDragon has uploaded a new video, he demonstrates MPlayer, Picodrive, Quake 1 and Battle For Wesnoth. He also shows working d-pad support in Picodrive and Quake 1.

Just four days ago we were shown the Dreamcast BIOS booting up on a Beagleboard. Today, we get Prince of Persia. This ride is fun already. Take it away, ZeZu:

Please note the framerate in this game is 30fps or so, the cpu percentage is correct and the RPS is similar to the framerate.
[ as in 8 / 30 would be 14fps+ PAL or ~16fps NTSC (if it worked out in that fashion)]
You might not label it “playable”, but its looking up from things a few days ago.

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Blog, News, Pandora, Software Video, Game, Prototype

We’ve got some more good news from Turkey, the rest of the Parts for the CNC case have arrived and it’s been assembled. At least, that’s what I can decyper from the Turkish blog. Anybody else really, really excited?

Hardware, News, Official, Pandora Case, Prototype, Photo

A new blog post to start with :

Hello everyone, Craig here,

Here is a video which Pickle made showing the classic Quake engine running at 800*480 with the SGX first at 55Mhz then at 110Mhz. (Video is after the Jump.)

The results with Quake2 are almost exactly the same, we are also able to use full screen antialiasing in Quake2 at 800*480 while still getting over 30fps.

These early results show that a) the 3D hardware is up to the job at our high resolution and b) there is a lot more power to extract once we move to OpenGL2ES (this port is using 1.1ES) and begin to experiment with using the NEON command set to speed things up further. The final ideal situation would be full OpenGL2.0 somewhere in the future.

Then there is a Tweet from Craigx that he recieved his case.

And a Quake 3 video!

Demo with some bots running I guess, it appeared to me the average framerate was around 40. This at 600 Mhz and 110 Mhz.

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Blog, News, Pandora, Software Blog, Video, Game

Official blog update from ED :

Well, some people may have met me at the Olymptronica during the last days and played around with a Pandora devboard
ALL people were amazed by it, that's for sure. I'll post more about it (and a little video) soon.

You might have also read and seen that Pickle got Quake 2 running using OpenGL ES on the Devboard! He's currently working on Quake 3 — and it's looking good already.
So expect some more hires videos from me within this week.

Yep, the prototype case is finished (and WHITE, it will surely become something special :D)
When it arrives at Michaels place, he's gonna build a nice working Pandora for you... expect more soon :)

Blog, News, Pandora Blog, Case, Prototype, Photo

German festival of gaming Olymptronica has not only kicked off, but kicked off in style thanks to EvilDragon and two tasty prototypes: a truly showroom worthy perspex mounted Pandora, and GPH’s upcoming Wiz. Forum member OrR went along for a hands on, and reports that even without a case, Pandora was a beautiful thing (giving a special shout out to the analogues).

In other news.

Cpasjuste has posted an updated video of the menu system we saw the other day, showing some more UI polish and some application action.

And Quake 2 running OpenGl with full 800×480, sadly with only 55\500mhz on the chip (standard clocks are 110\600), but still managing 32fps with no optimizations.

Like allways, Videos after the jump.

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Community, Hardware, News, Pandora Video, Prototype, Developers, Photo

New blog update from EvilDragon :

Well, all the errors of the case files have been fixed — and the final prototype cases are now in production!
They will be finished and shipped out on Friday, huzzah!

After that happened, we need to do stability and CE tests as quickly as possible, and if everything is fine, the moulds will be produced.

The production of the moulds will take about 30 — 35 days, however, once they are finished, the company can produce 50.000 units a day... should be enough for us. The good thing is, that the company that produces the moulds and the case is exactly the same company that made the prototype cases, so we won't have any file export errors this time.

The last pieces missing for the board productions have also been shipped and are on their way. This means that everything should be ready for the mass production of the boards. If everything goes well, we can start producing the boards shortly before the cases are finished so we can begin to ship early / middle of April!

Oh, I (EvilDragon) am at the Olymptronica this weekend — with Pandora devboard as well as with a WIZ prototype. So, if you want to come over and have a little chat or test some stuff on the prototypes, you're welcome. I hoped I could take the case with me, but as the show starts one day after the cases are finished, there's no chance getting one to me in time.

Blog, News, Official, Pandora Blog, Case, Production, Prototype

A new post from EvilDragon on the official blog…

Hi,
I told you, cpasjuste is currently working on a simple and clear launcher, using skeezix libpnd to work with PXML.
cpasjuste just posted a small sneak preview of the menu, you can see how PXML works (showing icons in categories, preview pictures, etc.).
skeezix libpnd is already pretty advanced. Together with vimacs, he made it possible for EVERY dev to easily use PXML and therefore, automatically add games and programs into the right categories as soon as you put an SD card into the slot!
We will show a video with that feature included into the matchbox UI as well soon!
Now onto some news on the case: The company is working on it already, however, a few files got errors while exporting them. We are working together to fix them, should only take a couple of days.

Watch video after the jump.

Viridior and the Gentoo team now have their own news blog. Check it out.

We started our own news/blogs site to help us keep track of Gentoo Pandora development. We are charging forward at full speed to get a nice small and functional image well before the Pandora ships, if your interested check out http://gentoo.openpandora.org, it has a RSS feed.

PXML, the ‘ID Card’ of all Pandora applications, has just been updated.

skeezix together with cpasjuste implemented PXML into his lib_pnd (yep, every dev can use that lib and easily read out all PXML stuff).
PXML has changed slightly to be more easily read by his library, so I updated the specs.
For those who have no idea what PXML is:
It is basically a file which devs include within their games archive. The Pandora menu reads out that file and can automatically sort the game into the correct category, show descriptions or preview pictures and associate filetypes with. So basically, the user puts all his games onto the SD Card, inserts that into the Pandora, and the menu becomes automatically populated.

Download: PXML v1.5

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Blog, News, Official, Software Blog, OS, Prototype