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on Feb 12th, 2007 15:51:30.
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Hi, it's time again for the weekly report on what has happened.
Craig finally resolved the customs issue, so the parts (parts for 2000 Pandoras) finally are moving towards their destination.
The other 2000 parts did pass the customs without any problems a few days earlier, btw.
So, first test mass production is still due to be finished on July 20th (you know, the ones we ordered a while ago) and all the parts are also on their way - which means: COMPLETE mass production of the boards could be happening soon!
The final puzzle piece for the final unit is the case. What's the status with that, you might ask?
Well, as said a while ago, Dave doesn't have too much time at the moment, as he is very busy with his normal job. However, he continues to work on the case, day by day. And I'm really happy that the To-Do-List has really grown short.
So short, that he might even finish it within the next few days! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! Finally, I can see it!
On to some other questions and stuff I've seen on the boards: A lot of guys are asking what happened to the video craig promised to you.
Well, as you all know, he planned shooting a long one. That does take time, though. And during that, the custom problems happened. Craig spent all days trying to resolve those issues... so he couldn't spend any time on the video.
- And I guess you wouldn't want more delay because of the video, right?
Also, there's not too we could show you: You've seen the working prototype... and that is the last status before the FINAL unit is ready. I know you love videos... and the time between the protoype and the final unit seems endless - but there's not much we can do except wait for it. Those things do take time and we also have to wait for the boards and cases to be finished.
Heh - you know what's funny? I read somewhere on the boards that for some time moves so slowly while waiting for the Pandora... it's the complete opposite for us. Time seems to fly by. Whoops, another week gone.
Let's wait together, shall we? I know there are some OMAP3 devices coming - but none will be as open and supported for homebrew and Linux as the Pandora is.
A feature i did a few years ago and one im going to repeat now is the DCEmu Interview, a unique idea in which questions are asked by me to the Whole DCEmu Community its a way to learn more about each others and find out what our interests are and much more
Todays Question is Whats the Best Console for Megadrive Emulation ?
Give your Answer via Comments.
We want your DCEmu Interview Questions, Post any good questions Here
Remember to check out our DCEmu Interview Site to catch up on previous DCEmu Interview Questions
Heres the other DCEMU Questions - Answer as many as you can
Today the openpandora blog posted 2 new items of news, here they are:
At least I'm not dead.
Things are always a learning curve the first time you try them. Apart from maybe suicide.
Anyway, the point is the last couple of weeks have had delays caused by a most unexpected event - US Taxes and UPS.
See the thing is we ship the parts to the USA, Dallas to be exact, they put them on a PCB and then all that comes back to the UK. But here is the weird part - UPS keeps wanting us to pay taxes on these parts - even though they are to be re-exported soon after. We have tried the recommended routes 'Temporary export' and 'Controlled goods' but still, randomly, a huge tax bill arrives. It's frustrating stuff which we are having to try to deal with yet UPS keep moving the goal posts.
Now, here is the community involvement part - does anyone out there know the real way to deal with this? The real rules? As UPS just keep changing the story every time.
So is there anyone out there who can shed some light on how we should be doing this to avoid those taxes? An expert on US customs and taxes maybe? You can answer over on the forum.
Aside from this we are very pleased and happy to have chosen to manufacture in the USA rather than China - I hear, alas, that's a pretty rare thing these days.
It has begun.
Well, sort of. We placed our order for the production run of the first 105 boards today!
Yes, it's really happening. Production of the boards does take about 4 weeks from now on, around July 24th (they need to be shipped to us), the first REAL boards will arrive. One of it could be yours, as those boards will be used in final units!
On the case side, things are still being worked on, but the to-do list is getting shorter and shorter.
It's really hard to say how long DaveC still needs to work on this, as he has very little time, but he is barely doing anything else except going to work and working on the case... thanks for that, Dave!
That's our short snippet for today, I'll keep you updated when more stuff happens.
RetroChallenge commences July 1st, 2009 and runs until July 31st, 2009
In order to qualify, computer systems must use a pre-pentium processor... in general, this means 486 or below, 680x0 and pretty much everything with an 8-bit processor, but we'll also let you in if you have an old Cray kicking about.
Gaming consoles and PDAs qualify if they are at least ten years old as of July1, 2009.
Where appropriate, replica hardware and emulators may be used.
Entrants are responsible for adequately documenting their projects and submitting occasional updates during the contest.
Projects may encompass any aspect of retrocomputing that tickles the fancy of the individual entrant.
Winners will be arbitrarily chosen and crap prizes doled out during the first week of August 2009.
Have fun.
DCEmu is as it has been since i joined all the sites under the DCEmu banner a network which concentrates on Homebrew, Hacking, Development and Commercial Gaming and Hardware News.
All Homebrew/Emulation Coders once we verify them (and i spot them) have the ability to post in all our Console News Forums and the news automatically shows up on not only the site to which that news forum belongs but also on the main DCEmu Portal Site. We always like to have an onsite mirror but gladly welcome the linking to your own site.
DCEmu can be used by coders to become their release centre and with the Homebrew Scene across so many scenes being so massive now you can quickly get noticed by a lot of sites including mainstream networks.
Now with the News forums, normal members cant start topics in them but you can reply to any topic, Normal Members can post as Normal in any None News forum. I get so many emails asking why he/she cant post in whatever forum.
And heres one for people using private messages to ask Questions, Please Use the forum to which the question would be easiest to get an answer as quick as possible. I get so many and i just ignore all of them (not to mention i have a massive amount of work anyhow). Also the users on DCEmu who use homebrew every day are tons better than me for remembering how to do homebrew on that particular console.
How Can You Help DCEmu
This site like any site is a massive undertaking and we need help on every console scene. No site in any scene is 100% perfect on what they cover and totally up to date. In homebrew methods change all the time and only you the users can help others join in the fun. If your a specialist in any console area and you want to see all the news appear its a great way of making sure it happens.
We are always in the need of Tutorials and Guides and FAQs not only for Homebrew but for hacking and Development and even just for gaming on consoles.
Our DCEmu Reviews Website is also in the need of reviews of both Hardware, Homebrew and Games Reviews so please review as much as possible.
Newsposters are always in need especially for WIP and Release News of Emulators, Homebrew etc and across many languages, i am English and to be honest the the translation apps on the net are crap, but the more help we get the better we can become, ive also no doubts that there are releases in places like Japan, China and Korea etc that never reach the likes of DCEmu and others because of language barriers.
Console News
Another change thats going to happen is that our Console News site will now post as much retro homebrew, Game Translations and also Modchip/flash cart news as possible, bringing much needed coverage to those communities.
The DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network
To those of you who are new to the DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network our Network Covers all these consoles.
As you can see theres quite a few consoles we cover
But thats not all we cover we also have a range of websites that arent totally Homebrew Related.
The Joypad.Net - http://www.thejoypad.net/ - The Joypad.Net is the premier place to find news on controllers and joypads etc.
DCEmu Interviews - http://interviews.dcemu.co.uk/ - Interviews with Coders from many Homebrew and Emulation Scenes and Home of the DCemu Interview, join in the biggest public interview
DCEmu Guides & Tutorials - http://tutorials.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is the place to submit any and all tutorials and Guides for any scene and they can be homebrew and gaming related. Once we verify them they will show up across our network.
DCEmu Reviews - http://reviews.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is the scenes biggest independant collection of reviews and is the place for both hardware and Software reviews. Get your reviews noticed by submitting them to DCEmu reviews. We now have the sister site Games Reviews
DCEmu Console History - http://console-history.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is where you can find Dark Watchers Collection of Console History, a great place to catch up on old consoles
PC Gaming & Homebrew - http://pc-gaming.dcemu.co.uk/ - Our PC Gaming site covers PC, EEEPC and PC Homebrew and Emulators.
DCEmu Blog - http://blog.dcemu.co.uk/ - This site covers anything that doesnt fit above and is our rant/current affairs/funny stuff/Movies News site, all the off topic stuff goes in here.
Cross & Taylors Chefs - http://personal-chef.dcemu.co.uk/ - This site for all those who wonder is my brothers site who is a top chef, again not homebrew related but he cooks a mean meal :P
DCEmu Developer Sites
These are sites where we have some of the Homebrew scenes best coders release their emulators, games etc to the world:
I think thats all, one last thing is to say thank you from everyone here to all the visitors, guests, coders and staff who make DCEmu what it is today.
For those who preordered the Pandoras, please be patient whilst the consoles are nearing completion,
Heres the latest update from the official blog:
Hiya, it's EvilDragon again.
I got some more fresh news, and those are not about delaying or anything like that.
As you have all read, the only driver problem is WiFi. To put things short (and as they are pretty complicated), here is what was our problem:
There's a closed-source driver available for the WiFi chip, but we didn't at all want to use it (hey, we're OPENPandora, not ClosedPandora). Then we found an OpenSource project for that WiFi chip - we used it and it worked well at the beginning (you might remember some WiFi testing videos).
But that driver was poorly coded - and it did have more and more problems. We can't even get to work it anymore with the latest Angström image, only with our testing rootfs (which is good, as we do know that the hardware is fine.
Well, DJWillis wanted to take on the WiFi task - and it's already looking really good. He found another driver which should work way better - and it already compiled with our latest kernel.
So basically, that WiFi issue MIGHT be solved faster than we thought. There's still a lot of work needed, but this has been a HUGE progress.
Evil dragon posted this status report over at Openpandora:
Geez, I just got some up-to-date news I don't want to hold back.
The TV Out cable design is also finished and a prototype can be produced within five days. Nice
Hi there,
forgive me for not posting any updates for a loooong time - first I have been rather busy with shipping out 200 WIZ (and I'm just one single person doing all that), then there's the typical daily work like managing the File Archives, checking the boards... well, and I have to do all this in my spare time since I (like anybody else in the project) still has to earn some money as we can't live from the Pandora.
Anyways, I've just been able to check up everything that happened and where the status is, and during the last weeks A LOT of good stuff has happened.
Shall we start?
1. The boards
We had to fix one minor fault a few weeks ago and already received and tested five new ones - and the good news is: They're ALL working fine (no soldering problems, all our hardware tests were sucessful). So we got a 100% rate from those.
We'll do more testing, but the planned first mass production run (100 boards which will actually be used for final Pandoras) is on July 13th, though it might be a few days earlier or later. Of course we'll try to get some pictures of the first 100 boards for you.
2. The analogue nubs
You might've read that there were some problems with the analogue nubs. Well, they had serious firmware problems and the company went bankrupt... so we had two problems: We need to pay TWICE (the new company we got has to be paid again) and the firmware had to be fixed. Both has happened already. The new firmware is already there (Pickle showed the new nubs in a video) and it is working without an problems. Another issue solved
3. The Keymat
It was pretty perfect already, however, the pressure and gaming controls could be enhanced. So we did that - and the new version is already at the moulding company, so the new mats shall also be finished very soon. As there were some keys misaligned, we used the time to fix that up, too.
If you want to know what exactly happened: wider holes around screw pegs, made game button cups wider to make them softer, slightly more travel to 1mm, keypad buttons raised 0.5mm, a couple of other little guide holes moved.
4. CE and FCC
CE tests will happen as soon as I get a finished board and prototype case, which should happen while the case moulds are being done, so there's no time problem. I've got a few CE testing companies around the corner where I can just drop-by and test everything. We shouldn't have a problem with FCC either - as we only need FCC if we sell WITHIN the US. We don't do that yet, we sell from UK and Germany, so FCC is not necessary. It WILL have to be done once there's a US based reseller, but that's nothing to worry about for the first batch.
5. The case
That's our only issue for now, we're still working on fixing minor issues. It really does take a long time making something near perfect - and that's what we plan to do. Another problem is that neither CNC nor SLA cases are good enough to check if everything fits perfectly. Don't worry, there's already a solution for that.
The only thing we had to fix is the height of the DPad (so it works better) and the hinge. The rest was already pretty good. So we most probably won't need another CNC case, just another DPad which can be done within a few days. We hope Dave will be ready will all that fixes until next week. Yeah, we know that's a long time... but because of the financial crisis (once agin...) a lot of guys at Daves work lost their job and he now basically has to do twice the work at his daytime job, leaving him less time to work on the Pandora case. We're really really grateful he does work on it making it perfect.
Now, onto the solution I mentioned above: The moulding company offered their help. Together with the final model data, they will receive basically a complete Pandora (all parts, LCD, hinge, board, keymat, etc.) and will check before moulding that everything will fit. They are very experienced with stuff like that, so that does help a lot. The downside is that this adds a few more days (moulding now takes approx. 45 days instead of 35) but it will ensure that everything fits and we don't have to start all over again.
That time frame also does allow us to do CE testing and change some stuff if need be without losing any time.
6. Software
Software and drivers are already VERY advanced. Mostly everything works fine, only WiFi is giving some issues. The hardware is fine, lowlevel tests with WiFi do work, but it doesn't work yet within the Angström image. If we can't fix it until the Pandora is ready, it will be fixed with an (automatic) firmware update, don't worry.
So, I hope I could show you what did happen. Of course, there were a lot more boring things going on (organizing between all the companies, signing NDAs, talking about licenses, etc.) but I think I did post the most interesting parts here.
Basically, to put it in a nutshell:
Board: Finished and working
Keymat: Finished and in production
Analogue Nubs: Issue solved, nubs tested and working fine
CE Testing: Pending (will be done during case moulding)
Case: Last fixes being applied, should go to case mass production company by next week
That's it for the status report, thanks for reading... and even more thanks for KEEPING with us
Comments like "We will rather wait a few days more but get a perfect device" has been what lead us to all those fixed - we could have gone into mass production with those minor flaws, but it should be a gaming console, so gaming controls shouldn't only be working but working perfectly. Thanks again!
We've come a long way from where we started. Six months ago, neither viridior or I had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Nevertheless, we survived, and in the meantime we've created our first truly usable Gentoo release.
If someone could boot it up and play with it and make sure the essentials work (emerge can build new packages, internet works, and so on) we'd be extremely grateful. We want someone to pick through it like the average Gentoo user might, so knowledge of Gentoo would be helpful. If Gentoo experience is lacking, that isn't a big deal. Simply trying to emerge (install) a package we haven't already installed or pre-built would be great!
So, whoever wants to try it out can get a copy of the latest release here. Since the latest is 0.0.3, you probably just want to go straight to 0.0.3's page. Pandora testers will want to select the plain 0.0.3 "base" variant, while BeagleBoard users might want to use the "base-beagle" variant. Be sure to read the "Install a Pre-built Image" page for installation instructions.
We're looking for feedback on your entire experience! Was the website easy to use? Where might we improve? How about the image itself? Are there any tweaks we should've included? Everything is still under heavy development, so it will be relatively easy to change things now rather than later.
Here's a big thanks to the testers who use precious time out of their day to test our images! We really appreciate it!
This is just a little note to say, if you have not subscribed to the youtube account, please do, if we get enough subscriptions we should be able to post longer videos.
A couple weeks ago on the other forums I posted a quick build of this port of ROTT. This new build has 16-bit colour support(thanks to Pickle!), 800x480 mode(and a resolution menu to switch between 640x480 and 800x480) and fixed the bug introduced by the 16-bit code that stopped cutscenes from coming up. However it will not recognise input from the ABXY and shoulder buttons due to a SDL bug. The attatched ZIP has a build for both registered and shareware versions.
There is a few weeks back, i compiled wesnoth for the pandora, but it was an old version ( 1.4.6 ).
I then hear around that latest wesnoth has a lot of great improvement, so i decided to give it a try.
So here it is, latest stable wesnoth version (1.6.2) built for the pandora, and working great, and it also work online (just tried) :
