Newly released/updated for the Pandora:

The package contains SD card ready PNDs and fact sheets for the following emulatorsega 1.16-4 (SMS)DOSBox 0.74 (PC)GnGeo 0.8.3 (Neo Geo)GnuBoy 1.0.5 (GBC)gpFCE 0.4 (NES)gpFCE-GP2X 0.4 (NES)gpSP (GBA)Handy 0.5b (Atari Lynx)HuGo 1.1.0 (PC Engine)MAME4ALL 2.5b7 (Arcade)Mednafen r3 (Neo Geo Pocket/PC Engine/Others)Mupen64plus 1.5.r20110615.2 (N64)PCSX-ReARMed r8 (PSX)PicoDrive 1.80.0.899 (SMD)PocketSNES 6.5.0 (SNES)RACE 1.0b3 (Neo Geo Pocket)Snes9x4P v20110310 (SNES)UAE4ALL v1.1.1.19 (Amiga)Thanks to all authors for the hard work.Version 0.2 : DOSBox 0.74 (PC) addedVersion 0.3 : UAE4ALL v1.1.1.19 (Amiga) addedVersion 0.4 : Mednafen r1 (PC Engine) added + fact sheets updatedVersion 0.5 : Mednafen r2 (Neo Geo Pocket) added + fact sheet quick ref addedVersion 0.6 : Mednafen, Mupen64plus and PicoDrive updated

Download Here ...

Newly released/updated for the Pandora:

X-COM: Terror from the Deep - statically recompiled executable for Pandora. Original DOS X-COM: Terror from the Deep is required for playing.

Download Here ...

via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....pe-2011-07-28/

If you followed the recent threads you knew that I was visiting a company today which would be a good candidate to produce Batch 2 (and hopefully many more later batches) of the Pandora.

Doing something like this is always exciting.

Can the company produce the boards?
Do they want to do the job?
Can they do it for a good price?
Will they help you with your project? Or simply do what you tell them to do?
Are they friendly, open and honest?

There's so many stuff swirling around in your head before visiting a company... the future of the Pandora depends on finding the right partner.

Well, I'm pretty sure you all want to know how it went today, right?

Right.

The company I paid a visit today is called Global Components and is located in Oberhaching, near Munich. It's about 90km away from me, so it's not too far and I can easily visit them whenever I need.
I arrived at about 11:10am.
Do you know the rare feeling when you enter a building and just know you've come to the right place?

Well, I had that feeling today. I had a real nice meeting and was greeted heartily.
Everyone I've seen there was motivated, they have a great working atmosphere in there.
For me, this is a very good and important sign. It's always a sign of high quality.

The meeting was very assuring.
First I was given a nice company tour. They got high-quality machines in every room, it looks very organized and tidy. I also saw some boards from current production runs and they use even smaller SMD parts than the Pandora.
From what I've seen, I'm pretty sure they can easily produce our boards, and that's one of the most important things!
I brought some pictures with me. Just a little insight into the whole company. I'm happy that i'm allowed to make a movie of the birth of a Pandora board as soon as production starts.

As I had a Pandora PCB with me, their main technician took a look at it. He explained me some things I always wanted to know (like how PoP is being done and how the full population process works, etc.).
He also suggested a solution to place the shoulder buttons way better so we won't have manually fix the plastic with some buttons.

All in all, things looked pretty good for me. They agreed that they want to produce the PCBs
I'm now awaiting a quotation from them (this will take a few weeks), then we'll need to check on the leadtime of the parts and while waiting for those, the production will be set up.
This surely will all take a while. There's no company that can just get the gerber files and start with the production the next day.
The PCBs will take a few weeks to produce, the parts have a certain leadtime and the machine also needs to be setup and programmed.
However, once this is done, PCBs will be finished very fast. I'll get the amount of Pandora PCBs they can produce per week within the next weeks.

Oh, on a side note they mentioned that they would try to help us fix boards with issues as well, in case CC doesn't really move forward here.
I'll send them a few ones of them over, so that they can check if a repair is possible and much it would cost. So if CC doesn't do much, we might move the repairs of the remaining boards of Batch 1 to Germany as well.

Parts, setup, etc. need to be paid upfront, so this is another issue we need to take care of. CC did cost us a lot of money, and we still don't know how fast they'll send us more boards - there still are 1000 missing!
The iControlPad helps us earning money as well, which is great, but the faster we have the total amount of needed money available, the faster the production can start.
That's why I'm also checking for additional solutions to raise money faster. I'll keep you informed on that!
If anyone knows someone who'd like to support us, get in contact with me! I'm sure we can make some good deal here.

Well, anyways, it seems we found a new company that can do the production!
I'm very happy about that, as you never can be sure before visiting them.

The next steps for now are:

* Get a quotation from them, check what parts are needed and how fast
* Make a proper new business plan (including total costs, estimated times, etc.)
* Make sure to have money ready when payments are due
* Try to squeeze as many working boards out of CC as possible

Oh, and of course (as soon as got the top priority things done):

* Continue to work on HotFix 6
* Update the website (REAAAALLY needed!)
* Fix the remaining RMAs
* Check the remaining PCBs I got here

I'll let you know any further steps that happen, as usual ...

Hi all its been too long but the hacking of the site a few months ago made us update security features and to the latest version of vbulletin.

One of the downsides was a massive loss of positions in Google which is one reason for the bringing back of all the DCEmu Network sites whilst keeping the new DCEmu CMS system..

But also since then no one has been able to register and even get their lost passwords back.

finally last night Martin traced the bug that caused this and that side of the site is now working properly again, thank god.

Ill be sending an August newsletter out detailing all the recent news and fixes on DCEmu in the next few days.

This weekend im hoping to bring back the remaining sites inc the coders sites and open new ones covering PSvita, 3DS, WiiU.

Thanks for now. ...

Newly released for Pandora, Caanoo, Wiz and GP2x:



A DragonFly remake by 'The FARM Team' (Futublog, Princemegahit & GECA soft)

gp2x - http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...,0,0,0,27,2890
caanoo - http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,27,755
wiz - http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,27,559
pandora - http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,27,430 ...

via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=954515

Hi there,

so far I only posted this on the official boards, but seeing many devs are still exclusively active here, you may find this interesting, too.

PNDTools (in the lack of a better name)
is a simple and easy-to-understand GUI for opening, browsing, editing and creating PND files and
NEW NEW NEW
you can also view, edit and create PXML files with it (WIP, please send me feedback, see below).

What does it do?

• It can open a PND and display its contents in a tree structure
• You can then extract data from the PND or add new stuff
• It extracts the PXML and icon data
• You can create a new PND from scratch or modify an existing one and save the result again as a PND
• GUI for viewing and editing the PXML file (beta)
• It has options

What does it currently not do? (aka things on the todo-list)

• Parsing of the PXML file and validation check
• It does not work with PNDs using the ISO filesystem (and I don't see a good reason for why it needs to do so as SquashFS is the superior FS imo)
• It only extracts PNG icon data (although probably 99% of the icons are PNG)
• PXML "wizard" for creating a quick-and-dirty PXML suitable for most cases with an easier (non-tree based) GUI
• better PXML element interface (buttons instead of a drop-down)
• context menu for adding PXML elements
• options for chosing the default PND extraction path (use program's folder, use user specified folder, ask every time for location)
• Linux version (I am trying to set-up Lazarus, but I can't get the Virtual Tree View component to compile :S )
• keeping the cmd open after executing chmod or squashtools

What will it (probably) never do?

• Have a browsing interface as good as 7-zip's and the same functionality

This is a beta release, so a lot of bugs are to be expected and the program has a few known "quirks":

• Currently it calls chmod 755 on all the PND data to ensure all necessary files are given the "executable" flag, this works, but obviously is not the "nice" way to do it
• It only loads PNG icons from a PND
• You will need to place it somewhere it has direct write access or execute the Program as administrator
• It needs half of the cygwin dlls and the cygwin chmod because Windows does not know the "executable" file-flag (well it does, but modifying it is complicated and calling chmod was easier to do for now)
• Only for Windows atm!
• Drag&Drop is always recursive
• You cannot replace files in a PND, trying to do so will simply result in no change. Delete the old files and add the new ones as a temporary work-around (this is also why moving nodes sometimes does not seem to work)
• When creating a PXML file you have to create the HF5 compatibility elements (title and description) first (second respective entry in the drop-down) and then the grouped HF6 elements

Download it here (Windows only, ZIP, 2MB)
To "install" just extract the contents of the archive anywhere (the program will have write access, see above).
Current version: 0.3.5beta, built 22.07.2011
This is the beta version (PXMLTools branch), but core functionality is not affected, it just adds the WIP PXML editor.
Source: Public GIT --- ZIP (last-update 05.06.2011, master)

Media:

---The main interface---|---PXML Editor---

How it works:
When creating a PND no actual data is handled until you press the "Create PND" button, after which it will copy all data to a folder called "temp" and then call chmod and mksquashfs on that.
When opening a PND it will extract (unsquashfs) the contents to a folder called "temp2" and add that folder to the tree-view, also it extracts the PXML and icon to a folder called "meta".
If you want to access the data contained in the PND you can simply copy it from those folders.
The folders are located next to the program exe and will be wiped before each respective operation.
It is safe to remove those folders if you want to clear temporary data.

Please try it, but be careful when doing so - I am not to be held responsible when data is lost or damaged, make back-ups.

---

The PXML editor is not very user-friendly at the moment, but I wanted to focus on getting all the functionality in there and the next step will be creating a proper interface (especially for adding elements). I plan to make most of it context sensitive.
For the moment just open an existing PXML file or create a new one from scratch, select elements to add from the drop-down box (those saying package will be added to the package element, those saying application...) and click "add".
Multiple application elements are supported as well as every other part of the specification (HF6) - to add elements to a specific application element, just select it or a child node of it.
In order to add multiple categories and sub-categories you will have to create the category first, select it (which should happen automatically) and then add the sub-category.

To edit an element just select it from the tree-view, all attributes will be displayed on the right. ...

via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=953913

Hi,

I finished porting my static recompilation of X-COM: UFO Defense to Pandora.

Download it here:http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,29,429 ...

via http://hackaday.com/2011/07/22/addin...-open-pandora/



There’s very few users out there who actually have their hands on an Open Pandora Console. But the ones who do might find this hack useful for getting TV out up and running. It’s actually not hard at all, but if you don’t want to alter the hardware on the device you’ll first have to find a cable plug that will fit the EXT jack. This proved more difficult than it needed to be, since TI carries the connector but only sells them in multiples of 2200. A group buy was organized and we’d bet you can still get in on that action.

The connector in question carries TVout1 and TVout2 conductors. These correspond to the Luminance and Chrominance signals needed for the S-video protocol. But [MarkoeZ] wanted to use a composite connection. Turns out that’s not hard either, he hooked up the ground from the plug to the ground of the RCA jack, then connected both video lines to the center conductor, making sure to add an inline 470pf capacitor on the Chrominance side. Check out the demo video embedded after the break to see the final product.

http://hackaday.com/2011/07/22/addin...-open-pandora/ ...

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....ng-2011-07-22/

According to CircuitCo, they shipped the first batch of fully tested and working boards a few days ago (along with a couple of new nubs for me so I can do more replacements myself).
They haven't given us any information yet how many they shipped, so I can't tell you much about that.
The boards should arrive next week, so that's when we know the amount for sure

It also seems they have some clue of why WiFi failed on so many boards, we're waiting for their conclusion - and you can be sure I'll let you know.

Moving the production to Germany is also making progress. Some companies are working on the quotation (takes about 3 - 4 weeks, it's complicated board) and I'm visiting one promising-looking company near Munich next Wednesday.
If I'm allowed to take pictures of their production site, I'll post some as well here.
As mentioned I'm working together with the GTA04 guys. We found our devices share quite a few parts, which mean we can probably order together in the future to save time and money as well.

I'm doing another newspost for sure on Wednesday after the meeting to tell you how it went. ...