News via http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php...dpost&p=953510

Quasist and Don Migel released final build of the game "AAAA".
This is a stealth / action game in 3D environment. You will get an opportunity to explore the space inhabited by hostile creatures, wade through them hiding in the shadows or break through the enemy in fight.
The game has 11 additional secret extreme levels.
Authors are asked not forget to switch on a vibration in the console menu to get the maximum fun from the game.

Download full version from RIOT Tag-Team Coding Competition entries archive:
Caanoo version:
http://www.riotdigital.com/ttcc2011/...load.php?id=31
Wiz version:
http://www.riotdigital.com/ttcc2011/...load.php?id=32 ...

Forget Microsoft Surface, what do you think about having a 32-inch Android-powered touchscreen display in your living room? That possibility might not be too far off, thanks to the engineers over at SKR Technology in Japan.

Primarily a company that designs and builds digital signage, they were approached by several customers who wanted a large screen device that had multi-touch functionality similar to a smartphone. Since they frequently work with Windows, they tried building a solution around Windows 7, but it just didn’t function as smoothly as they would like. Instead they turned towards Android, but were disappointed to find out that none of their suppliers supported the OS.

Instead of scrapping the project, they build their own interface that allows an Android-powered device to interact with multi-touch displays. As you can see in the video embedded below the display works quite well, mirroring everything on the Android device’s screen.

While the product is not yet available commercially, we should see it come to market later this year. We hope to see an open source version sometime in the future as well, even if we can’t quite afford a 32” touch panel display.

http://hackaday.com/2011/07/11/runni...reen-displays/ ...

The IOIO, a breakout board for Android phones that predates the Android Developer Kit hardware, is a now a little bit easier to upgrade. That’s because [Ytai's] IOIO manager app just his the Android market. The PIC24F that sits proudly on top of the board has always been running a bootloader, but for security reasons it is programmed to only talk to apps that have been officially signed. Now that there’s an app that meets this qualification, you can upgrade the firmware from your phone without the need for an external programmer.

What about the bootloader itself? Surely that will need upgrades over time, right? Well, yes. [Ytai's] announcement today also came with an option for upgrading the bootloader but with one caveat. You’ll need two IOIO boards to complete the upgrade. One connects to the phone and becomes a programmer, while the other lays back and waits for a refreshing code flash.


http://hackaday.com/2011/07/13/ioio-...-a-bit-easier/ ...

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....-2-2011-07-12/

As promised, here is another blog entry, this time mainly focussing on Batch 2 and the future production.

Yesterday evening, I had a meeting with the guys behind the OpenMoko GTA04.
They have nothing to do with the previous OpenMoko hardware development, they basically built an OMAP3-PCB which fits into the OpenMoko shell.
Their PCB has similar production specs (same SoC, 8 layers, etc.) as ours, they basically live round the corner and they offered to help me (thanks a lot!)
They already have some prototype boards running (looks like a nice Linux-geek-phone to me, if you want to check it out, go to their website), which means they already found a company that can handle the production.

The meeting I had with them yesterday was a very promising one. Nikolaus, the main guy behind the GTA04, knows a lot more about PCB production than we do and therefore gave me some
contacts to some companies as well as some insider tips.

We also chatted about our experiences with CircuitCo and Nikolaus had some ideas why we had so many different issues with boards.
Additionally, he told me, that normally a proper production run should have a failure rate of about 3%. And from those 3%, some PCBs are fixable.
So far, CC had a failure rate of about 20% (even some more, if I count the ones I fixed because some parts like the volume wheel simply weren't properly soldered).
Not very impressive, so I'm even more eager now to found suitable partners.

Michael Weston sent me the latest gerber files and BoM (Bill of Materials, basically a big list of all needed components) last week.

So I'm now prepared to approach some companies and get the thing rolling properly!
If, however, you know some companies who are reliable and can do such productions as well (and which are at least located in Europe, Germany would be even better), feel free to contact me!
The more quotations I get, the more choices I have and the more I can discuss about the prices with some companies.

Let's get this thing going! ...

News via http://boards.openpandora.org/index....-1-2011-07-12/

As you might have read on the boards, Batch 2 will NOT be produced by CircuitCo anymore.
I am currently contacting companies in Germany to get some quotations.
More about that in the next blog entry.

First, I'll try to explain the reasons for that move and summarize everything that happened during
the last few months.


January / February: Production resumes

As you might remember, CircuitCo promised us to finish the full 4000 PCB population until the end of last year, so that we had fully working PCBs and only the new nubs would have to be soldered onto them after that.
That would have been a cool thing, as it would've meant that Batch 1 would've been finished in January / February.
Well, as most of you might know, this hasn't happened.
Then a new guy had been employed by CC. His job was to do quality management and to oversee the Pandora production.
We got weekly status updates at first, which was great!
He analyzed the bottlenecks, all issues, etc.
While the production speed he told us was slower than we had hoped, at least we now knew what was going on, what issues there were to be solved and we got realistic sounding quantity numbers.

This worked well for the next few months. They regularly sent new boards and while quite a few had some issues, we could continue shipping and send back the non-working boards for repairs.

By selling some units as Premium Pandoras, we could cope with the monthly costs we had as well as with any refunds or money needed for RMAs.


May / June: WiFi issues occur

Then, as you might also know, a LOT of boards of a complete batch had WiFi issues.
Production then came to a halt, we sent these boards back to have them fixed and I created four new testing rigs including a new testing SD Card (with notaz' help) which tests almost anything the Pandora can do.
They can also run individual tests, so they can work on a PCB with broken WiFi for example and only run the WiFi test.


June / July: Communication gets worse again

That's when communication and our faith in CC started to break down again.
While at first we got a few quick replies regarding the testing SD Card, we didn't get a status update for weeks, even though we were asking for that once a day.
Two weeks after they got the new testing setup, they started to work on WiFi... 1,5 weeks later they had a problem with one of the tests. I had a bug in the script that prevented one test from working.
But it took CC 1,5 weeks to realize that. It sure felt like they haven't done anything within that time...


What's going on right now with CC?

We are missing about 1000 PCBs from batch 1, and it seems the only ones they have left are boards with issues they need to fix.
Most of these boards had aged bare PCBs. When PCBs are lying around for a year without being populated, they start oxidating - which had happened here. This leads to all kind of issues, as parts don't
solder properly anymore. Well, if they HAD populated the PCBs last year like the promised us they would, this wouldn't have happened...
(Note to fearful Pandora owners: The oxidation no problem if your board is already populated, it won't stop working suddenly. Once the parts are on the board, they have proper contact and won't fail)
Anyways, they agreed to pay for the new parts needed to fix those PCBs with issues.
They also mentioned they will fix 125+ boards per week, we'll see if that will work out. But they told us they will finish Batch 1.


Our conclusion?

Well, we personally aren't pleased with how CC handled the situation. We were given false promises, they didn't keep any deadlines, the number of boards with issues that need to be fixed before
we can ship them is way too high and communication was really lacking.
This caused our reputation to shrink as well, as we couldn't keep any deadlines either and it seemed we were telling lies and delaying things.

This is what we experienced, maybe we were just unlucky and other companies have no such issues with CC?
Maybe the Pandora was too complicated to build after all?
Who knows?
Some guy on the BeagleBoard mailing list also wrote he's been waiting three weeks for a reply from CC, so it at least seems we're not the only ones.

On thing that is without excuse for us is the lack of communication, the missing status updates as well as the non-kept promises and deadlines.
Issues can ALWAYS occur, but we'd love to know about them, so we can fix them together asap.

As you probably know, the iControlPad is also produced by us. We chose a company in Germany. They didn't miss a single deadline and each time there was an issue or a question, they contacted us right away.
This was a very pleasant experience.

This does mean that Batch 2 will NOT be produced by CircuitCo. We are now looking into various companies within Europe and should have some quotations within a few weeks.
If you ...

News via http://psp.dashhacks.com/2011/07/13/...v0-2-released/

PspStates is cool… You can save the state of any game, at any point in the game, and resume from that exact state later on. The PSPgo offers a similar feature; however, you’re limited to only 1 game and 1 save state at a time. Dark_AleX’s version — yes Dark_AleX is the PspStates originator — lets you save up to 9 game states, for different games, using different key combos.
The problem? Remembering what key combo was used for what game. That’s when plum comes in, creating convenience by adding a PspStates menu system. Press the Home (or PS) button and then R+L Triggers to bring up said menu. From there you can select your slot by pressing Circle or delete a save state by pressing Triangle and X closes (or backs out) of a menu.

Activate both pspstates.prx and states_menu.prx in seplugins/game.txt. Enjoy

Download Via Comments ...

News via http://psp.dashhacks.com/2011/07/08/...psp-localizer/

Even more homebrew worth checkin’ out: ASKidwai’s BrainBoxer, UnlimitedX’s Kingdom of War PSP and Draan’s Localizer. What’s what? Read on…

BrainBoxer, if you missed our previous coverage, is a game from ASKidwai that tests your knowledge through diverse, random questions. This latest and final version includes two-player support and adds the ability to jam your own tunes while exercising that brain of yours.


Kingdom of War PSP is a Warcraft-inspired game from UnlimitedX. Pick your character class and set out on your RPG/MMO adventure. Yeah, I said MMO — KOW PSP is online! And KOW is a PSP Genesis entry too. So if you like it — vote for it.


qanuippisi? qanuinngittunga. That’s Inuktitut — a language not officially supported by Sony and the PSP. But if you know your Inuktitut you can translate the XMB yourself using Draan’s Localizer. Localizer v1.1 r4 supports all the latest custom firmwares and homebrew enablers.

Download and Give feedback Via Comments ...

News via http://www.romhacking.net/forum/inde...pic,12900.html

One of the first ever seen game romhacked fandubs has been released for the PlayStation One.

The Time Crisis 1 Spanish translation project tried to achieve something different from many other translation projects, by completely dubbing and inserting the game, up to the last sound file. Of course, this translation also does graphics and text, but the main focus was to dub and improve over the poor performances of the original English actors.

Since images will not show how a voice acting mod sounds like, you can see and hear how the project has ended on the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV5kQKweX2w ...

via http://www.romhacking.net/forum/inde...pic,12877.html

It’s been a long three years, but Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru, or For the Frog the Bell Tolls is finally playable in English. This hilarious game has you take on the role of the impetuous but good-natured Prince of Sable. As the Prince, you must save Princess Tiramisu and the dessert and frog themed land of Mille-Feuille from the evil Lord Delarin…and do so before your rival, the valiant Prince Richard, beats you to it.

Gameplay is a mix of platforming action and simple RPG elements. The engine for this game went on to be used for Link’s Awakening, and many elements were borrowed for later Zelda and Nintendo games.

This patch is likely my first and last big gift back to the community whose works I’ve enjoyed so much over the years. It isn’t perfect, but countless hours of revisions and testing have gone into capturing at least a portion of the original’s wit and humor.

Enjoy! ...