How To Get A pandora Dev Unit

Posted By: argor

over at gp32x craigix posted this

Hello everyone,

For the first Pandora MK0 units we are looking for devs only. We especially want linux hackers or driver writers.

The aim of these first units is to make a really nice firmware for the first casual users and of course to find bugs.

We will make a loss on these units so we will only make as many of these as we need.

You will get full support and if your unit fails or there turns out to be a fault in the MK0 PCBs you will get a complete replacement Pandora. You will not get a substandard system in any way, we will make sure we take care of you.

You get to be some of the first people work with the cutting edge OMAP3 and be part of a unique project.

If you fancy it please email me with details of your plans and previous work via a pm or email via the board.

Thanks,

Craig

1 comments - Last Comment By ish420ism

Zodttd has a Pandora and Discusses it :)

Posted By: wraggster

Zodttd has acquired a developers version of the Pandora and posted this on his blog:

Today I am working with a very cool upcoming gaming handheld. It will run all the emulators you see here and much much more. It should be capable of fullspeed Sony Playstation 1, with the ability to beat out the PSP in performance of emulators such as N64. It's a beast, and best of all it's 100% homebrew friendly. No jailbreaking needed, no unlocking, no fuss.

Here's its specs:

ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
Wifi 802.11b/g & High Speed USB Host
Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
Around 10+ Hours battery life

Yes, that means a bigger and better screen, wifi, faster video chipset, faster processor, upgradable storage, and analog and digital controls with a full keyboard. The possibilities are endless.

With this beast is in my hands, good things are to come. More information as things develop.
ZodTTD

4 comments - Last Comment By pkmaximum

ScummVM already on Pandora

Posted By: wraggster

DjWillis gave a nice hint today that ScummVM is already working on Pandora, the touchscreen and keyboard should make the Pandora Port the Ultimate Version on Consoles.

I have had a basic version up and running on the OMAP3 for some time and there will be a Pandora optemised official version (rather then just a simple ARM cross compile) in time for release (I hope, depends on my own free time).

0 comments - Last Comment By wraggster

Pandora's Emulators - What Will Work And What Won't

Posted By: wraggster

Prophet (ex newsposter on many emulation sites) posted a rather interesting post for newcomers to the Pandora and should be interesting to what can be overcomed in the future.

As more people around the world discover the Pandora, we're likely to get many requests for emulators. This topic is designed to clarify what sort of emulators are likely to work very well on Pandora, what sort probably won't, and what *might* happen (depending on many variables).

Defining terms: By "work well" I mean full speed emulation with full sound and very little if any frame skipping at all. By "work decently" I mean reasonably playable but possibly without sound and/or with some frame skipping. These are all speculative! By "NOT work well" I mean too slow or incomplete to be considered truly playable. Again, this is speculative!

NOTE: Just because you see a system on this list DOES NOT mean it will definitely have an emulator on the Pandora. DO NOT EXPECT there to be emulators for everything on this list, even if it's in the "should work well" group. The systems in this list are only there as a guide.

THIS IS NOT A LIST OF EMULATORS BEING WORKED ON! EVERYTHING HERE SHOULD BE REGARDED AS SPECULATION TO SOME DEGREE!

Emulators that could work well on Pandora:

8bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to)
NES/GB
SMS/GG
Atari 2600/5200/7800
Colecovision
Intellivision
Vectrex
Atari 800/XL
Commodore 64
Spectrum
Arcade games from the 70's and 80's (i.e. MAME etc.)
+ various other systems from that era

16bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to):
SNES
Gameboy Color
Genesis/Sega CD
Turbografx-16/PC-Engine/CD-ROM (technically an 8bit system but eh...)
Amiga
Atari ST
Atari Lynx
X68000 (Japanese computer with arcade quality graphics)
286 (and possibly 386) PC's via DOSbox
NeoGeo AES/MVS
NeoGeo Pocket (it actually has a 16bit CPU)
Arcade games from late 80's - 90's (i.e. CPS1/2, FBA, MAME etc.)

32bit consoles and computers including (but not limited to):
Playstation (PSX/PS1)
Gameboy Advance
Arcade games (some MAME games using 32bit CPU's i.e. PSX based)

Emulators that MIGHT work decently on Pandora (these are all speculative!):

Nintendo 64
Sega 32X
Atari Jaguar ("bit" level is arguable, but it's a 32bit era sysyem)
3DO

Emulators that will NOT work well on Pandora (these are all speculative!):

Nintendo DS (might eventually move into the "work decently" tier, time will tell.)
Sega Saturn (altho 32bit, it's very messy hardware to emulate)
Playstation 2
XBox
Gamecube
PSP
486 based PC's and higher
Current mainstream consoles (Wii, PS3, 360 etc.)

These lists are preliminary and speculative. But hopefully they give some idea of what will likely be possible or not. As always in emulation, you never know what some brilliant dev will do in the future, but it's good to have a sense of proportion. Remember, Pandora is very powerful (easily surpassing all current handheld game devices) but it's not a miracle machine.

Any mistakes or suggestions for additions/changes, please post below!

And remember:

THIS LIST IS SPECULATIVE - do NOT expect to see emulators for every system in the list!

10 comments - Last Comment By JKKDARK

Zodttd Status Report

Posted By: wraggster

I've spent the past few days working hard on psx4all. While it still runs too slowly on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch, compatibility is getting better. For instance the games can now be properly loaded through the BIOS and the Sony Playstation BIOS screen appears.

Temper4iphone, the Turbo Graphix 16 / Turbo Duo (PC-Engine / PC-CD) emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch is still on its way. Exophase, the author of emulator this port is based on, has released an update, and I'd like to incorporate those changes into the port.

For those wondering of the mystery package, it's of a Pandora. The Pandora is a purely homebrew driven handheld with a focus on video games. It uses bleeding edge technology and wow is it fast! At it's default 600MHz using the new OMAP3 processor, Playstation emulation of Final Fantasy 7 runs in-game at 65 FPS (a bit over fullspeed) or higher. When overclocked to 900MHz you start seeing 100 FPS and higher in-game!

While the Pandora will take some of my freetime away at the moment, I am still focused on Apple iPhone and iPod Touch software. No worries there. There's room for both here at ZodTTD.

Sorry for the delay in responding to private messages, I'll get right on that now. It's been a busy week indeed!

http://zodttd.com/

1 comments - Last Comment By pkmaximum

videos of psx4pandora running games

Posted By: argor

over at gp32x zodttd posted this

I posted some quick low quality videos of psx4pandora running games such as Final Fantasy 7, Wipeout 1, and Einhander at 600MHz:



http://ca.youtube.com/user/zodttd

More videos with higher quality (and hopefully sound too!) are on their way soon. But I figured just in case I can't get the new video cam to work tommorow, at least this is something. smile.gif

I should make some videos of things running at 900MHz or so too. More to do...I better get back to work smile.gif

4 comments - Last Comment By pkmaximum

a video of the mk0 Pandora Case

Posted By: argor

over at youtube MWeston posted a video of the mk0 Pandora Case compard to NDS lite

Size comparison of the Pandora handheld versus the NDS lite. Closed up, there isn't too much size difference other than thickness, but open, that beautiful 4.3" display towers over the DS. smile.gif

3 comments - Last Comment By yaustar

video of pandora Pandora MK0 prototype

Posted By: argor

from http://www.openpandora.org/blog.php
Here is a Pandora MK0 prototype next to a DS, the Pandora also boots up and does some little LCD tests.

1 comments - Last Comment By pkmaximum

Zodttd Update - Pandora/iPhone News

Posted By: wraggster

Zodttd posted this update about his Pandora and Iphone projects:

What's up with ZodTTD you ask?

I am preparing to goto a friends wedding on May 13th.
I have been working very hard on psx4all and made a lot of progress in terms of compatibility. Performance has increased as well.
I've been placing my project's source code on a public git repository which will also allow for more proper bug reporting, and each project will have a wiki!
The Pandora videos I've made on YouTube and ZodTTD Video have been getting more popular. The psx4pandora project is running at amazing speeds on this upcoming gaming handheld.

I still need to speak to Exophase about temper4iphone, and integrate the updates into it before releasing. Exophase is the author of Temper. This project emulates the NEC TurboGraphix 16 and Turbo Duo (also known as the PC-Engine and PC-CD). A big thanks to those who have created controller skins for the temper4iphone project! It's a huge help!

1 comments - Last Comment By pkmaximum