Tag Archive for pandora

Pandora Follow Up

chrisandthetopher / March 1, 2011 / No comments

After two and a half years of waiting, it has finally arrived….I am now one of only fifteen hundred or so people on the planet with a Pandora console

After the initial problem of the unit being sent to the wrong address twice, the unit arrived and to my delight had 40% battery, meaning I could use it straight away….at first the joystick didn’t work properly and the stylus was stuck inside the unit, but a software upgrade later and some repeated jiggling of the stylus and these problems were fixed….the unit is very small, about the size of a Nintendo DS, but a bit thicker and can be used in a laptop like position of open all the way. The battery lasts 8-10 hours depending on it’s use and the mouse can either be controlled using the touch screen or the two joysticks.

In the way of external hardware, it has 2 SD card slots, a volume slider, a headphone jack and the power/lock switch on the front, a pop-out stylus on the right hand side, and on the back it has a USB host port, an OTG mini port, TV-out port, power connector and the two gamepad shoulder buttons. When you open the device, you find a full QWERTY keyboard as well as a full gamepad…both the gamepad and keyboard are very nice to use.

The device comes pre-loaded with Linux Kernel 2.6.x and has a custom OS based on Angstrom, it also comes with some basic software such Midori (a web browser), XFCE (a window manager) and office software such as Abiword, Gnumeric and Clawsmail. The best thing about the unit though is as it is open source, software can be developed for it by anyone who knows how to code in the correct language….there are already hundreds of programs out for it, including: opensonic (a fan made sonic game), Pandora panic (a reflex game similar to
Warioware), openbor (a port of Beats of rage, which is a fan made version of Streets of Rage for the Sega Megadrive) and an emulator for virtually every console ever made up until the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast.

I pre-ordered the Pandora in September 2008, and I think most people would agree that is a long time to wait for anything, and although technology has changed a little since then, the Pandora is still a very powerful and capable little machine and I will definitely be using it as my main portable games machine for the foreseeable future (at least until Sony’s NGP is released).

Below is a picture of the Pandora next to my 10-inch netbook.

Pandora vs. Netbook

Chris Thursfield

Category: Consoles, JPP Articles, Technology / Tags: ,

Pandora

chrisandthetopher / August 1, 2009 / No comments

The Pandora is a portable gaming/work/internet device made by a group of people who wanted to try their hand at building a portable computer without sacrificing function for cost, and it looks like they may achieve this.

Using the input from thousands of users on their forums, they have built the Pandora from the ground up, not to go head to head with Sony’s PSP or Nintendo’s DS, but as a more serious device, designed to interest hobbyists and retro gamers, as well as programmers and modders, promising that this will be the most powerful handheld in the world, with great battery life and open source functionality.

Unfortunately, as time goes on, and with the speed that technology is increasing, they may find that by the time they launch this device, there will be something similar on the market. I hope this is not the case as the popularity of the Pandora will hopefully inspire the future ‘garage designers’ to come out of hiding and show that you don’t have to own a multi-million dollar company to compete in the portable market.

copyright - http://www.openpandora.org

  • ARM Cortex-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
  • 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
  • PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
  • 800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
  • Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 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


The initial run of 4000 units is now sold out (although if you email them, they may be able to let you know if a pre-order is cancelled), and the manufacturers are running a few months behind, so if you are interested it may be a while until you can order one (I have pre-ordered mine, and will do a full review when it eventually arrives).

More info can be found at Openpandora

Chris Thursfield

Category: Consoles, JPP Articles, Video Games / Tags: ,
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