Anyone been following the Pandora development? (No not, the PSP battery thing)

sneef · July 31, 2008, 03:32:22 AM

yeah, atom processor with some form of *nix OS would be awesome..

[edit] so long as it has a terminal function, and I can ssh to my server, and don't have to carry a laptop around my workplace! [/edit]

socket · July 31, 2008, 09:15:26 AM

Yeah, oh well. From what I understand TI is supposedly embracing this kind of development using their chips. I think they have decent dev tools out there, too.

Anyway, here's some more:
PS1 (FF7): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sx8CrVLW8
Size comparison with DS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-mOxhQwr6Q

DeVS · July 31, 2008, 11:31:16 AM

I can also see a problem occurring with the touch screen. I like the idea of it having a touch screen, I dont like the idea of having the touch screen on a hinge,lol. Seems like it would be easy to break the top screen if you were touching it all the time and not giving it the support of an entire hand holding the back of the screen.

Altor · August 01, 2008, 10:17:49 PM

Hmm... don't know about that... it depends on what sort of hinge they've got. There have recently been "umpc" gadgets that look sort of like

\
\
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(from the side. pardon my drawing)

I forget what their specific names are... regardless my point is, they make the hinge only turn to a certain point and then they have a hard stop there that's not part of the hinge. That way there's no stress on it.

I hope they make a second generation unit with a "real" processor. As nice as the ARM might be on battery life or whatever else, an XP box a little larger than my DS would be awesome. Need I mention that "homebrew" for XP is already pretty advanced?

socket · August 02, 2008, 01:11:53 AM

I'm talking out of my ass here, but I don't really see that much of a problem with the processor choice. From what I remember from posts over at their forums, the battery life should be amazing, might have to do with the proc choice. As long as there're enough decent emulators out there I think it will generate enough development interest. From what I can tell the devkit stuff they linked doesnt seem too bad.

DeVS · September 01, 2008, 06:50:33 PM

When is the launch date for this again? I can't help but keep checking out info on this damn thing, thanks alot Socket,lol.

socket · September 01, 2008, 07:23:26 PM

Preorders are supposedly starting on the 31st as stated in a recent Pocket Gamer interview... There are also rumors of there being a pre-presale (on the 15th) to GP32X forum members. From what I recall they weren't setting a presale date until the mass production was set so it sounds like the hardware has been finalized. Some of the emulators are looking really nice from videos posted on the forums and whatnot. I'm guessing they're now working on the default interface and other software things... The first run is limited to 3000 to gauge interest and they plan on doing at least a few more runs after they make some of their thousands of dollars back. In the above posted interview they blew $20,000 on a pcb design firm that they didnt even end up using. I know it's a business venture but these guys kick ass. I already put my money aside for it.

socket · September 02, 2008, 08:59:17 AM

Oh yeah, I meant to say: the only date they've given for a release is "Before Christmas"...

socket · September 25, 2008, 10:31:25 AM

Official preorders start on the 30th (shipping in Nov). Supposedly this is a pay up front preorder which is pretty steep at $330 USD, but whatever.

DOSBox is supposedly completed, along with full speed PS1 and multiple other emulators. I'm an idiot and MUST HAVE this thing so I'm putting in a preorder. One problem I forsee getting people to preorder is that there have not been videos of the OS or anything actually running on a completed unit. The community is very strong and I don't see much risk as I'm sure the first 3000 will eventually get made...

I'm thinking it could be intentional to let the hardcore followers get their shot at the initial batch, but who knows.

jmr · September 25, 2008, 11:12:16 AM

it does look sweet but my wife would kill me if i bought one of these
she says im to old for a ds & wii...........

tennisgy · September 27, 2008, 10:34:06 AM

Being a kid at heart is awesome :p

socket · October 13, 2008, 02:18:14 PM

Quote from: ratx on June 17, 2008, 04:42:49 PM
I've been following it with interest - I'm thinking of it being as more of a UMPC than for gaming too. Please someone port a decent mod tracker to it

Awesomely Milky was ported to the GP2X. Hopefully someone picks it up and expands it for the much larger Pandora screen.... Would be freaking awesome.

ratx · October 13, 2008, 02:42:34 PM

It would indeed be awesome... use Milky a lot on my HTC phone. Also though I saw GpFrontier on gp32x.com the other day... looks mega uber awesome

( I'm a massive massive elite / frontier fan though )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz_9V4tUXOY

Now that would rock on Pandora. I'm going to wait until the hardware/scene has matured a while though - I got badly stung imho being an early gp2x adopter. I just wish they'd put some form of 3G modem in there and ideally for someone to port windows mobile to it to

* remembers when firefly ( the guy who made wifime ) was porting windows CE to the gp32 - awww memories...

socket · October 13, 2008, 03:28:48 PM

Yeah, I decided to take the risk this time. I kind of want to get in on some early development. I waited forever to get a GP2X, it was a bad ass device, but just wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I really got into DS so I unloaded it a while ago. Never even tried gmenu32 or whatever it is called. The default "OS" was terrible. There was a lot of discussion going on whether to have a full blown linux distro (ubuntu - due to brand popularity) as kind of the default OS or for them to continue to develop their custom gmenu32-ish menu system and still try to fine tune an optional linux install. I hope they are focusing on a fine tuned simple OS. I'll surely mess around with linux, but I don't really thinking having all of that bloat is necessary - it only has 128mb of ram.

Destro · December 01, 2008, 11:16:30 PM

The success of this thing will be completely dependent on the controller, not the CPU. None of the previous GP whatevers had a decent controller (I've owned all of them except the latest one with the touch screen).

Have you seen the GP2x wiz? Another disastrous controller : http://gp2x.co.uk/

They've delayed the release of it for a couple of months, supposedly because of the initial bad feedback about the buttons... (which look like a d-pad)