Talk:Pandora (computer)

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Forum post references

Could somebody please convert the forum post references in the wiki to real citations, so it doesn't reference another wiki? Thanks. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 03:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First for N64?

This is claiming the Pandora will be the first to be powerful enough to run N64 emulators. This is incorrect; The PSP has a port of Daedalus that apparently runs several games well. 65.184.147.182 (talk) 19:32, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The PSP system software requires all executables to be signed by Sony. Which licensed publisher has used the emulator to port one of its games and release it on UMD or PlayStation Network? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True and, nonetheless, absolutely irrelevant. The point of replying to a comment is to comment on it, not to argue a completely different point. What you mention could very well be used to defend the Pandora if someone was attacking it but the OP is only mentioning the Pandora is NOT the first portable console to have a N64 emulator and this is true. --eduo (talk) 21:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

StrmnNrmn's Daedalus is not at all a fully functional emulator. It's more likely a proof of concept, and its development has been apparently discontinued at v13 long ago. It's a port from an N64 emulator designed for PC. It does NOT run at full speed on PSP, and has many graphical glitches, slowdowns, and limited compatibility (even if it is the best N64 emulator on PSP). If the Pandora can run a full speed N64 emulator, it will become the first handheld device to do so properly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.56.15.59 (talk) 23:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is true that in theory the PSP is powerful enough to emulate the N64. You need custom firmware to run Daedalus, which is a very buggy n64 emulator that is still in the experimental stages.

But you guys are being kind of silly because the Nintendo DS is basically a glorified portable N64 with an extra screen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.15.166.113 (talk • contribs)

Saying the DS is a portable N64 is like saying the Pandora PDA is a portable Xbox. The architectures are completely different to the point that porting isn't just a recompile. The point of Pandora is that it comes with custom firmware. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:46, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To "unsigned|75.15.166.113" Please argue about our ideas but stop personnal attacks. Don't talk about silliness, we are not talking about the same thing. Emulating a machine is NOT the same as comparing its architecture or performances with the host platform . Nintendo DS will probably *never* be able to emulate a N64. But it offers comparable performance with code written for it (ie Mario 64 DS). That's the difference between "to port" and "to emulate". Please verify your informations about emulation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.65.23.142 (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article needs to be cleaned up.

I'm not trying to advertise the Pandora; rather, I'm attempting to create a Wikipedia article on it.

It's not vaporware, it's coming out in March or April. Engadget did an article on it, and it has significant differences from any handheld game console ever produced.

I intend to add more to the article (proper references to the actual forum posts, more information, etcetera) over the next few days, but I'm extremely busy at the moment. atomicthumbs‽ (talk) 06:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've attempted to make the article more objective --90.194.112.221 (talk) 17:17, 22 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Over the next day or so I'm going to remove the citations that are forum post links. These aren't largely acceptable according to Wikipedia:Verifiability. If there isn't anything more reputable that comes out then I'll remove the unsourced information altogether.

I'm not attacking the device itself, I just worry about verifiability. Since the release of the product is only supposed to be a couple months away it won't be long until this information can be re-added. Gh5046 (talk) 07:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I finally got around to removing it. Please do not re-add it until more valid information is released. Postings on forums and wikis are not good sources. Engadget and other sites references those same forums and wikis, so they are not any more valid. Gh5046 (talk) 23:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The technical issues are proyects of the designer. I mean in the article you shoult put "estimated hardware" or something like that. If you make a citation on a forum with the developer it will be Ok because you are talking about estimations. Plus you can see some demos of software in the account of the developer on youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/MWeston2. Plus if you CITATE THE DEVELOPER you have a DIRECT CITATION no matter if it is con a web page, newspaper, forum, book, etc. Otherwise you could not citate to others (like some companies) who officially post news on their forums. They also have an updated Wiki with the harware of the pandora. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.66.68.59 (talk) 02:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's still a forum, it's not a press release. The only actual pictures that have been released have been of a PCB, which doesn't have the chips on it. It's an unfinished product, let it be finished and have the article contain real information, not estimates or guess work. Gh5046 (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Err you do know the people posting on those forums are the people who are actually making this device don't you? What could be a better source than that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.174.115 (talk) 01:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something that isn't on a forum. Gh5046 (talk) 01:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is what you get when you have people insisting on the letter of the law without realizing the conditions under which it was adopted. But hey, we've got the official site which links directly to the forums, so no worries. Tcaudilllg (talk) 13:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, if you read just a little further down on the page mentioned, you have WP:SELFPUB, which seems to me to apply directly to this situation. You have a "questionable" source (a forum) where there is information posted by developers about their own product, and as far as I can tell fulfills all the guidelines of WP:SELFPUB. I can understand wanting to use only the best sources, but in this case those forum posts are the best sources we have.70.230.2.66 (talk) 21:40, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Open source

It will _NOT_ be opensource in any way beyond the OS (or maybe even parts of the OS, if there'll be closed kernel drivers), the hardware itself is _NOT_ open source! So it's not "fully" opensource! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.178.125.223 (talk) 16:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

O Rly? Since you don't work for the people making the system or the SOC you have no idea, so stop speaking like you do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.247.100 (talk) 14:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You do realize that there are pretty much no open source systems on the market by your definition, right? It seems much more resonable to assume that everyone will read "fully open-source" as the software being fully open source, which will be the case from the sources I've seen.70.230.2.66 (talk) 22:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The term "open source hardware" is already defined. If you sell an "open source console", people will expect open source hardware, not open source software. 87.178.116.179 (talk) 13:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know a whole lot about this system, but I went ahead and changed the article to say the software is open source so it wouldn't be confused with open source hardware. That was the whole issue, right? --Eruhildo (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Then what is the word for a gaming PDA designed to run free software, including a free operating system? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:10, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've never seen source code of hardware. Can I compile it with gcc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.192.93.76 (talk) 13:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hardware has source code. See Verilog. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:28, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that it's not open source hardware. There have been no statements by the development team that the hardware will be closed source. On the other hand they have not explicitly said this to be the case, but open source software tends to assume drivers as part of the software. (we saw differently from Creative recently, but they aren't open source anyway).

Might as well seek clarification though. Tcaudilllg (talk) 06:31, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Pandora will use the TI OMAP platform, which is closed 'source'. Also, OMAP uses PowerVR technology which they licence, and which is closed source. The 3D drivers on the Pandora will be a binary, without source code available. So the hardware is defintely closed, and the OS partially. Therefore I'll change the wording a bit. Jalwikip (talk) 08:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To claim that the OS is not fully open source because of a binary blob driver is to claim that no modern Linux distro is fully open source. There are many closed source binary drivers for Linux. Pandora's OS will be Linux based, and fully GPL compliant. Candre23 (talk) 11:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

900 MHz

Somehow we should mention that zodttd has reported it running stably at 900 MHz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.127.175.78 (talk) 16:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What source do you plan to cite? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

just after a fast search find a cite

http://zodttd.com/blog/zodttd/status_report_time_b-50_sid-6210576b47684b492b629e96fa788c31.html

--Andri12 (talk) 22:18, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The link is broken. Besides, it takes a lot to convince Wikipedia editors that a given blog is a reliable source. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about that one? Besides zodttd is a reputed developer within the community and one of the earliest to have had access to a Pandora. --89.127.175.78 (talk) 08:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Unbrickable" design?

I think this might mean that unlike many other devices it won't become corrupted if there is an error when updating the firmware...? Is this the case? I'm sure there must be a more suitable way of saying it though? Barrylb (talk) 03:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might just be a fallback bootloader in mask ROM that loads a rescue image from an SD card. (The PSP supports something similar if a battery with serial number -1 is attached.) But we might as well wait for more verifiable information about the Pandora PDA's bootloader to become public, which should happen this summer when the product comes out. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 14:26, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(after more research) In fact, that's how it works.[1] But I'm hesitant to use that source in the article because it's a forum post, despite that it was posted by gp32x.com staff. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 20:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Internal Bluetooth

Hardware developer MWeston confirmed that the "easter eggs" on his personal Pandora site were accurate and the Pandora will indeed have an integrated Bluetooth radio. Only his forum post[2] exists as proof at the moment, so I didn't include a confirmation link. If you read the whole thread[3] though, it's clearly not a joke.Candre23 (talk) 12:25, 30 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Big/little endianness

The text says "The Pandora will have an existing software base due to having a package manager that will accept Debian packages for the ARMEL (little-endian ARM) architecture." However, TI specs claim the chip used is Big Endian. Jalwikip (talk) 08:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That was a typo, it is LE. PlopperZ (talk) 14:15, 20 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Preorder / ship date

Lead developer Craig Rothwell has stated that preorders would only take place when the final units are within about four weeks of shipping.ref1 ref2 I would love to put the refs in the actual article, but Wikipedia still has a problem with forum posts as sources, even when those posts are made by the people involved.Candre23 (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DAMN!!!

Parden my french, but this thing is baddass. Is there any exact release date?-- 12.185.250.67 (talk) 04:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly, but some finalized consoles are supposed to be taken to trade shows in August. As the post above says, preorders will start about four weeks before everything is ready to be shipped, which will probably be some time shortly after August. There's a list of official forum dev team updates over here, so you know where to look if there's any news... Esn (talk) 22:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Battery life

The battery life estimates on this page are extremely vague.

I realize this is by design since we don't know anything exact but there should be a little more information IMHO. It is easy to glean for instance that video battery life can potentially be quite a lot more than 10 hours even with brightness at 100%. I know this because PMP Player Advance on the PSP can easily decode 2000kbps h.264 video with 192kbps MP3 audio while running at only 66mhz. The resolution is 480x272, so the pixel data is only about one third of what it might be on the Pandora. So lets figure 3x66mhz just to get a wild guess how much performance would be needed to do something similar with higher-quality video, and you get 200mhz... A recent official Pandora blog entry noted that it gets about 8.5 hours of runtime at 500mhz with full brightness and sound on, with no power management. At less than half that (200mhz) battery life should be 15 hours, easily.

Besides this, the battery life at the stated speed (600mhz on this wikipedia entry) won't be anywhere near 10 hours. Maybe 8 at best considering it only gets 8.5 at 500mhz. But for old emulators and simple programs, such high speeds won't be necessary and 10+ hours should be easily attained.

What I suggest is that the battery life section is split up. It currently says:

"Approximately 10 hours of runtime for video / general applications and 100 hours for music playback"

More accurate would be:

Battery life:

Games - Between 5 and 10+ hours depending on how demanding the game is
Video - At least 10 hours
Music - At least 100 hours

This amount of information is important since battery life is a major consideration for someone considering a purchase, or in this case, a pre-order. If there's no objections I'll go ahead and add this information in the near future. 76.10.137.127 (talk) 03:02, 10 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with including your information is that no more specific estimate of runtime is verifiable against any remotely reliable source. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 01:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Price

What is the current price of the consoles in USD? Wiki131wiki (talk) 19:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The pandora is not a released product, so there isn't a "current price", but the announced price is about $330. But generally prices of products have no place in Wikipedia articles anyway. Mahjongg (talk) 23:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How many shoulder buttons?

How many shoulder buttons are there? Are there only two (R and L)? or is there 4 (like a Playstation controller)? Akadewboy (talk) 13:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Considering the shape of the device and the number of buttons available on the main face, I would presume only 2. Just a guess CompuHacker (talk) 21:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can confirm 2 on the official site: find the photo at the upper right, and click #4. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think the chances are that that button contains two individual buttons :/? CompuHacker (talk) 07:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean that each shoulder button has two individually addressable sensors so that it acts like a 1-dimensional D-pad? Not likely, or the blog, forum, or wiki would have mentioned it by now. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 12:22, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There are only 2 should buttons, this has been confirmed on the gp32x forums. However, the SoC board has exposed connectivity for someone to hack shoulder buttons or a rocker switch if they want to. If there is a game that requires extra buttons, the numerical buttons at the top of the board can be mapped and are easily acccessible while playing the game. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15.219.153.74 (talk) 05:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]