“Long time no blog post – and a lot has happened, really!

First, let’s start with some OS development.
The OS is getting better and better. We will probably add another minimal menu, similar to gmenu2x with no fancy effects and graphics but PND-Support.
This is for all the purists of you.

Also, notaz and DJWillis are slowly stepping forward in getting WiFi working.
While it’s not perfect, the packet loss is decreasing and things are getting better.
It might still be a long way (or it might be finished soon, you never know with such things), but it’s improving.

I also successfully managed to setup a Bluetooth PAN connection to my mobile phone. I got an IP address via DHCP, I got DNS resolving and I could ping the phone.
Pinging websites outside of the phone didn’t work yet, but that might be my mobile phone (custom cooked ROM, never tried Bluetooth PAN before).
As I did use the terminal to set that up (it only takes a few lines to do so), the next step is including this into the Network Manager.

Next let’s go on to the Mass Production:
As most of you already know, we moved the assembly from US to UK – we’ll do it ourselves!
This is because the company in US finally gave us a price for doing this – a ridiculous high price.
The boards will still be populated there, but we will assemble the units ourselves. Craig is currently setting up the village hall to turn into a proper place to do this, including buying everything needed (ESD stuff, etc.)

Our current roadmap is like this:
(note: It still depends on the case production and on the board production. This is based on the dates they did tell us – but as we already experienced a few times, we are a small client for them and therefore have low priority… let’s hope they keep their dates this time!)

March 18th: Production of 1000 cases is finished and will be shipped to UK.
March 22nd: 1000 cases will arrive in UK and will be inspected. If all is well, the next 3000 will go into production.
March 22th – March 26th: 500 populated and tested boards and all parts will be shipped to UK.
Approx. April 1st: Assembly will start.

Yep, another promise broken – whereas the company in Texas told us they can test 1000 boards a week before, it’s now down to 500 boards a week.
At least they kept their shipping dates for all the prototypes and testing boards so far, so March 22th – March 26th should hopefully be fine.

Some parts already started to arrive in UK, e.g. the PSUs are there.

We decided to start on April 1st to have a small bufferzone for the stuff to arrive.
It doesn’t make much sense if we all sit around in the village hall without having any parts to build together

The complete assembly process will be broadcasted live via Webcam. That will be fun!

BTW:
The Pandora stirred up a lot of interest in Germany currently.
I’ve been at the CeBIT in Germany doing a presentation about the OpenSource gaming handhelds and of course the Pandora.
It was crowded.
Thanks to Radio Tux, you can listen to the presentation.
You can also download the PDF I used for it here.

They also did another interview here.

And if anybody wants to watch it, we’ve got the full thing available as video on Youtube here.

Beware, it’s all in German!

After the presentation, a lot of guys (some from the community as well) could get their hands on the Pandora and play with it.
They all loved how well the controls and the keyboard work. Looks like our design is working well

That’s it for today – hopefully we have good news within the next two weeks!”

Looks like those Power Supply Cables have arrived! Craig just tweeted a couple of photos of the newly received cables both in and out of the box. Hit the jump for the pretty pictures.

Source

Everyone’s favourite mythical beast will be making an appearance at CeBIT computer expo shortly to show off his mythical beast. EvilDragon, aka Michael Mrosek will be at one of the largest computer expos in europe to talk about his experiences with open handhelds. I’m willing to bet our favourites the Wiz and Pandora, especially the latter will be getting a large shout-out here. We’ll keep you updated, but for now, good luck Michael, and send me one of those awesome T-shirts!

Source

Throughout the day, EvilDragon has posted some more Pandora videos to YouTube. There’s not a lot much else to say, so enjoy!

Check all three out after the break.


Things to do when you’re NOT playing

Changing themes in the OS

Developing on-the-go with PyGame

“Looks like everything will have arrived here by the 22nd. How exciting.”

From Craig’s Twitter

“Production, here we come! Just confirmed with Fatih, cases will arrive in UK March 22nd. We’ll have the assembly site [Craig's village hall] ready by then! Go!”

From ED’s Twitter

“(The 22nd) is when everything should be here, including the cases. To be on the safe side we probably won’t start until a few days after that.

I feel a lot more confident about this now we are back in control.

Our own assembly line, this will work far far better for batch 2 and so on. It should always have been like this.”

From Craig on the boards

So still a little while to go before we get our grubby paws on that elusive console, but the gap is getting very much smaller. There’s still room for surprises, but Pandora before the end of April? I think it’s a definite possibility.

Uploaded by Skeezix.

“Some real-world stuff here. When EvilDragon posted some status updates, some folks loved it, some did not — its a new device, a niche target, for hackers and joe public alike. Some features are rough around the edges, but most of the device works great. Still, thought I’d show a few real world scenarios – run a couple games and apps.

Things are starting to pad out a little, even though general devs don’t have devices yet; we’ve got Picodrive for Genesis emulation, Hatari for Atari ST, UAE for Amiga, MAME, Vice for Commodore 64, and a really groovy port of DosBox with full touchscreen mouse emulation, for instance. We’ve got Abiword built in, along with some little utils — djwillis crammed quite a bit into that firmware space! Some ports are coming along .. Quake 1, 2, 3 — with Quake 3 running at like 20-30fps so far! GemRB, Descent..

Anyway, here’s just a few things I thought I’d show off — video, my new Kronos interp, and BattleJewels. If you want to see Quake 3 or something, let me know..

Video playing is one of those things we all just want, day-zero; we don’t have hardware supported decode yet, so are relying on pure software decoding. This can be troublesome for some video playing software, but others handle things much better. It will struggle _right now_ with software decoded full high def …. but watch the video, and you’ll see full speed no framedrop playing of a standard def ripped right from my DVDs. So its not all bleak like some people think — I can watch my med-quality DVD rips of Firefly no problem! Want to watch animated stuff.. no problem! ITs hyour high def rips that are a problem right now, and we’ll get hardware decode sorted out eventually.

I then pop into my new Kronos application, which is a player for interactive fiction games (Magnetic Scrolls, ZMachine/Infocom style, Scott Adams, and possible others.) We’ll also port over TADS and others standalone I’m sure. But for now, let me just fire up a couple moments of The Guild of Thieves, a classy game I’ve been meaning to work on for oh, 15 years or so.

Further, I run the pnd-file version of my BattleJewels game.. a rather cross between head to head action RPG and puzzle games — cast spells, chop down your opponent, buy some gear and level up! pnd-files are working great .. just double-click to run, pick them from the menu, or run them from your own organized directories using the file browser.

Lastly I show the pnd-file auto-discovery as the SD is ejected/inserted — no work installation of the games.

Bear in mind – no overclock here, this is 500mhz default!
Also bear in mind it is hard to tap on a screen or fiddle with buttons, while your other hand is holding a tiny camera.”

This video brilliantly demonstrates that the Pandora will be relatively simple to use for “The Average Joe” (you don’t need to be a sysadmin!), and also shows off our great progress on the PND file system. You can also see some pretty cool multimedia functions and touchscreen action.

From PandoraApps:

Source

EvilDragon has been privy to some new information about the upcoming appstore for the Wiz. Apparently:

“1. FunGP Developer Test in Korea

The first test for FunGP will start today in Korea. When the testing is finished, it will fully open.
After that, the next step will b top open it up to the rest of the world.

2. More Games

Propis and Deicide 3 were just the beginning – more games will follow.
The next game will be similar to Zelda – I’ll keep you informed.

Additionally, GPH has licensed about 30 classic arcade games until now, so expect more fully legal arcade emulation soon!”

Fingers crossed it’s a success, the Wiz deserves some more!

The latest tweet?

“PicoDrive 1.0 – Megadrive / Genesis / SMS / 32X / Mega CD / Sega C[D]“

Let’s keep things rolling!

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So you like the Pandora. That much is obvious, unless of course you browse oX solely for the Wiz news. I’m therefore gonna go ahead and assume that this is the perfect phone for you. Check out the feature set:

D-Pad and action buttons
Qwerty Keypad
600MHz processor
8GB of built-in storage
WiMAX
microSD expansion

I’m not sure how open this baby will be, and details are scarce regarding price, OS, etc. If I had to guess I’d say it’s going to run Android, but I’d rule nothing out at this stage. We’ll keep you posted.

Source | MOBLIC Website

“Chinese mould factory are back at work ”

Splendid! Now, I don’t know whether this means that the workers are now busy making our cases, but fingers crossed! Something coming early for once maybe?