Pandora (Open Hardware) now available to pre-order

[pubzombie]

@Henrycase,
Well I never thought I would say this!!!!!! But I find the Atari ST to be my fave emu on the little machine. I use uae for a few games like the AlienBreed games and some exclusives, but the sheer number of different crack/rom/settings combinations often means it easier just to fire up multiplatform titles in the great little ST emu. Also some titles like Paradroid 90 have very aggressive AI on the miggy, an are a little more forgiving on ST, which is a definite plus when playing on a small screen with limited controls. I also use mame a fair bit, and use the cradle and tv out setup to have some lunchtime battles in the office at work. All in all its a great machine but hampered by lack of a keyboard.
@Tomcat - yep feels about right, hopefully it arives on my doorstep before the retail release of the quantum pc :-/

[stainy]

ok got mine stuny car racer on the train! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

[minimiger]

i think you lot are crazy waiting you can do all this on a cheap 100 pound ipad clone running cortex 1ghz with nvidia gpu , there cheap and it will play anything pandora can,
and has a 10.1 display , proper usb to man plug in you pad ,i do its great all the emus run whats up with you guys?????

UAE4Droid

[T_hairy_bootson]

Not everyone wants a tablet with android, some people want a tiny computer you can hold in your hands with proper gaming controls and a full desktop distro and not some tablet you have to balance on your lap while using a gamepad.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by minimiger

i think you lot are crazy waiting you can do all this on a cheap 100 pound ipad clone running cortex 1ghz with nvidia gpu , there cheap and it will play anything pandora can,
and has a 10.1 display , proper usb to man plug in you pad ,i do its great all the emus run whats up with you guys?????

UAE4Droid

You've just pretty much proved that you're not the target audience for the Pandora, as you really don't understand the attraction.

Off you toddle, there's a good chap.

D.

[stainy]

Originally Posted by Dunny

You've just pretty much proved that you're not the target audience for the Pandora, as you really don't understand the attraction.

Off you toddle, there's a good chap.

D.

heh

[minimiger]

well i dont think so my friend , number 1 you can get a 7 inch which would be 4 x as big as your willy and your brain capacity, 2 an 8 inch or ten the choice would be yours, and also you can hold a 7 inch in your hand whilst using the onscreen joypad but hey , you go spend all your money for something you have to wait for and maybe not turn up , whilst ill be playing my lovly amiga games enjoying myself lol ,some people.

[TCD]

Okay, not really sure what to do with that post above right now, but everybody else please refrain to comment in the same 'manner'.

[T_hairy_bootson]

A tablet and a pandora are not the same thing at all. So your argument is invalid. If you cant see the difference then you are the one with the problem.

People who want a pandora want something small with proper gaming controls.

I already have two and others posting in this thread already have theirs. So I don't really understand why you keep posting. But from the way you type I can see you are a "bit special" so I'll leave you be.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by minimiger

well i dont think so my friend , number 1 you can get a 7 inch which would be 4 x as big as your willy and your brain capacity, 2 an 8 inch or ten the choice would be yours, and

I can see you have issues with envy, so I'll let that slide.

also you can hold a 7 inch in your hand whilst using the onscreen joypad

Why on earth would I want to use an on-screen joypad when I have one of the best D-Pads ever made? And twin analog nubs? Not to mention the other controls...

And I'd love to see you get your 7" tablet into your trouser pocket

but hey , you go spend all your money for something you have to wait for and maybe not turn up , whilst ill be playing my lovly amiga games enjoying myself lol ,some people.

1. I didn't spend all my money - I spent a small fraction of a month's wages.
2. It turned up, I've had it for months.
3. You can bet that the Amiga games I play on the Pandora right now run a lot more "lovely" with the real keyboard and proper gaming controls. Not to mention the full RTG workbench I run on it with large HDD full of apps and WHDLoad games!

Lol, some people indeed! Who'd want to emulate an Amiga on a Tablet with no physical controls?

D.

[Mr B]

A lot of fuzz, over very little. I was at the GP32x site when the developers started talking about features, what to include, what to not include and so on. I was very much "on" until they decided to make it a clamshell. It pretty much all came down to the hinge, there was talk of sliding boards, twist and turn hinges, and everything, to try and make it a bit more table top like, but it was sort of a losing battle, a clamshell was the way it turned out in the end. It's not the most touch control friendly design, if i say so, even if it has the nice feature that it protects the screen from scratches.

The concept over all is still a great one, but, it took to darn long. Sadly. At the point when shipping started it was already outclassed by mobile phones in memory & CPU power, and when all the "first batcher" orders are delivered, it's going to be a obsolete unit.
I understand that the developers need to turn a back, to keep working on a new design, but the fact that they started selling higher priced, identical units, with the exception "faster delivery" sort of taints their honesty in my mind. It just ain't "OK".
And why they put two analog pads on it i never could figure out. Everyone only ever use the left one. The argument was made that it was for Playstation compatibility, but then, where is the stick click then?
B!

[Dunny]

Yes, it is getting long in the tooth. But then I play on my NDS with its 33MHz CPU, or my PSP with its 333MHz CPU and lame GPU and the Pandora doesn't suddenly feel quite so bad.

The upcoming PS Vita might be worth a look if we're able to run whatever we like on it, but that's not a Clamshell design so is unappealing to me at present. I'm not well up on phones, and have only really compared the Pandora to an iPhone 4 - and the Pandora wins that hands down for speed in like-for-like emulation. I'd like to test against some Android emulators. I always assumed that the twin analog was implemented because the community bitched about it so much It certainly doesn't get used very much (apart from Super Geometry Dust, of course).

And you're absolutely right about Craig's "premium" order system, which was a f*cking disgrace.

I realise that I'm probably starting to sound like a bit of a fanboy here, but I cannot enthuse enough about this handheld. I own a fair few from the GP32 up to the latest PSP and NDSi (not got 3DS yet) and the Pandora soundly spanks every single one of them. The fact that it's a full linux PC to boot is just the icing on the cake, and the hardware although dated is more than fast enough for anything you care to try doing with it.

D.

[Mr B]

It's funny you should mention the iPhone as a yardstick. The iPhone 3GS use a 800MHz Cortex A8 ARM CPU, underclocked to 600MHz. The Panda uses a 600 MHz Cortex A8 CPU, and has a slight headroom for overclocking. Again comparing with the iPhone 3GS it has 256 MB ram, DDR SDRAM. Guess what, except for speed which i don't know for the iPhone 3GS, it's identical. By now, it's not that much of a supprice that the graphics for the iPhone 3GS & the Panda is the same, PowerVR SGX. Again, i simply don't know the speed of the chip in the iPhone, but i think it is a 520 flawor, the 530 used in the Panda is the second slowest in the series.

I guess i could go on, but there really isn't much point. The iPhone 3GS and the Panda is pretty much the same hardware in different skin. The iPhone 4 is a slight upgrade from the 3GS, with a 1GHz CPU downclocked to 800MHz, 512MB RAM, and a PowerVR SGX 535. (It's the same CPU, a Cortex A8, and the same GPU family, however Samsung stuck the two under the same roof, and the chip is called Apple A4.)

What i'm trying to say is that over all, the iPhone 4 is about 20-25% faster then your Panda. The reason that emulators and alike is more enjoyable is more down to ease of accessing the hardware for the programmer then the speed of the hardware.

Don't get me wrong, i think it's great that they managed to get something out the door at all, and the hardware is more then enough to pull most emulation needs of with ease. But still, they charge a fairly high price for a unit, and worse yet, first batch buyers are still waiting for a unit, and a lot of the hardware parts used to build the darn thing is starting to get so old that you cant buy em any more. Ethics, or lack there of, have made first batch buyers still have to wait, long after the first batch was sold out.
Yeah, we already agreed on that. It's just not right, and it still pisses me of, even as i didn't bought a unit in the first place.

And to put things in perspective. If all you want is a emulation device, the GP2X Caanoo is about 100 Euro. The Panda is about 400 now, and then some. I believe they are switching to a German production plant for the mainboards, and i don't expect prices to drop, so to speak. (The Caanoo is in most aspects 50-75% of what the Panda is, 533MHz ARM CPU, only got Open GL ES 1.1 where as the Panda has 2.0 support, half as much memory, and so on. Just as the Panda, there is a small space for overclocking, in the case of the Caanoo, it seams most hit 720-750 MHz.)

I wouldn't get either, as you said, the Vita is a lot more promising.
B!

[Dunny]

Oh, I agree with pretty much all you're saying there - though my Pandora runs constantly at 1GHz rather than 600MHz. I can take it up further, but I believe it will drastically shorten the lifespan of the CPU

As for the Canoe... I have one, and to be honest it's a disappointment. It's far slower than the Panda and only has a very low-res screen (part of which is hidden by the case!) and now rests in a drawer gathering dust with my '2X, Wiz and GP32. The development scene is all but dead now, especially since GPH announced that they were discontinuing it.

And of course, the Pandora isn't just an emulation machine - it's a full linux desktop and all that entails, rather than just a games console. Though the price for a handheld games console is quite extortionate, what you get is a very capable PC in handheld form, and for that kind of ability I'd imagine you could pay quite a lot more.

D.

[Mr B]

Yes, the Pandora is a nice piece of kit, and it does a whole lot more then emulators, but com on, 400 Euro and counting? Thats just sad. Anyway, i think we are sort of getting away from the point. What ever that was :- )
B!

[T_hairy_bootson]

370 euro. How much does an iphone 4 cost off contract?

How much does a 3GS cost off contract?

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by T_hairy_bootson

370 euro. How much does an iphone 4 cost off contract?

How much does a 3GS cost off contract?

My point exactly

And of course, you can do so much more than those phones can. I've also noticed that emulators when run side by side with the Pandora tend to be faster and smoother on the Pandora than even the iPhone4 - which is likely due to iOS getting in the way, whereas linux doesn't.

D.

[Mr B]

Actually, the reference to the phone was to show that the hardware is dated, not that it is a competitive device that does the same thing. And yes. The reason emulators give you a better experience on the Panda even as it has dated hardware, is the same as why the Amiga gives you a reasonable gaming experience where as the same era PC's lag behind, or if you rather like, the same reason as why gaming consoles of today give a sub par performance seen compared to what the hardware "could" do if properly optimized software was running. Open and well documented hardware with a reasonably good devkit, with a unrestricted software suit on it, vs locked down hardware, with a locked down software suit... Heck, the Panda was built with the homebrew crews in mind, the phones aren't. I pointed this out as well, so i don't quite understand why it's made an argument...

If the Panda is "this" fast on dated hardware, what would it have been if it had used up to date hardware? I'm guessing we will find out, in 2-5 years... Again, to late, so to speak.
B!

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Mr B

Actually, the reference to the phone was to show that the hardware is dated, not that it is a competitive device that does the same thing. And yes. The reason emulators give you a better experience on the Panda even as it has dated hardware, is the same as why the Amiga gives you a reasonable gaming experience where as the same era PC's lag behind, or if you rather like, the same reason as why gaming consoles of today give a sub par performance seen compared to what the hardware "could" do if properly optimized software was running. Open and well documented hardware with a reasonably good devkit, with a unrestricted software suit on it, vs locked down hardware, with a locked down software suit... Heck, the Panda was built with the homebrew crews in mind, the phones aren't. I pointed this out as well, so i don't quite understand why it's made an argument...

We're not arguing, we're just reinforcing the fact :-D

What do you expect? We're utter Pandora fanboys! But with good reason... As far as handhelds go, this is the mutt's nuts until the Vita comes out. I'm cautiously waiting for that one and will be watching the homebrew scene with interest. I've heard mutterings that jailbreaking/CFW hacking won't be needed as it might run homebrewed software as-is, in the style of "Other OS" on the PS3 but given Sony's reputation in this regard I'm leaning towards the usual fight between crackers and firmware updates we saw on the PSP.

Time will tell, I suppose. I expect the compromise Sony will come up with will be "you can run what you want, but only paid-for developers will have access to the full hardware" which will of course result in another war between us and Sony.

If the Panda is "this" fast on dated hardware, what would it have been if it had used up to date hardware? I'm guessing we will find out, in 2-5 years... Again, to late, so to speak.

And again you've hit the nail on the head with that. It's taken so damned long to get the hardware that wasn't dated in '08 to production in meaningful amounts that it's of interest only to people who like to hack around; if they'd got production going early on then we'd be on more current hardware by now.

There is an upgrade in the offing (1GHz+ CPU clock by default, more RAM and a better SGX as a drop-in upgrade for the current SOC - so no redesign of the PCB necessary) but the forums pretty much erupted in righteous indignation at the perceived "splitting of the community" that would result in. So we'll have to wait for Pandora 2 for that

So long as they make the second iteration a clamshell design, I'll be happy.

D.

[T_hairy_bootson]

You claim its outdated yet you compare it to phone tech in a phone that costs more and then you complain its too expensive. So I was just pointing out illogical your claims look to me...

If feature creep was to happen then the pandora would never happen, the guys are having a hard enough time keeping up with manufacturing off the same design. No larger companies are willing to make a similar device so we have to take what we can get for now.

I agree completely on the premium thing by the way, that was a real dick move. I hope now that the UK guy is backing away from the project and letting the German guy run it things will go a lot smoother, if they dont run out of money first.