News via http://www.open-pandora.org/index.ph...emid=2&lang=en

Nope, we're not playing Lemmings, but I guess a lot of you wanted to know what happened to those cases.

Well, we too wanted to know - the last status update we had was that they were shipping on January 15th and therefore we assumed the cases should have arrived last week.
Unfortunately, Fatih had business to do in Dubai... and he is the only one the Chinese actually do talk to (except for if they encounter any problems, then they also send a mail to Michael. But they didn't do that).

So we didn't know until he returned a few days ago that the cases hadn't been shipped yet, they were still working and tweaking as they really wanted to make sure this will be the last case they need to send to us before we start the mass production.
We're still trying to find out the complete story of what happened and why there was another delay. A friend of Fatih (who can speak chinese) will help us here, as communication with them isn't easy, and there might even have been some misunderstandings, etc.

Whoever does think that that company is a small, cheap company that only tries to rip us off:
Nope, that's definately not true. Fatih has been working with them since years. Also, they created some other parts for the Pandora which have been finished long ago and didn't make any problems. It just seems the case was much more complex than they had thought.
Some of their other customers are Sanyo and Toyota and they have been established 1998, so one thing we know: They are reliable... but (as it is the case with many chinese companies): They do need some time to finish it off.

So, rest assured, the cases aren't screwed, we just don't know yet when exactly they will arrive. We have been promised they will ship enough mass produced cases before the chinese new year. I leave it to you whether you want to believe it or not - I just will pray it will be true.

So much for the cae situation. I hope you can now understand why we chose that company. Believe us, it's a pretty annoying feeling having everything setup for mass assembly and then wait in anticipation for the cases.

Oh, I have one more information that will probably make second batchers happy: We already ordered the parts for the second batch to decrease the waiting time.


Finally, some small OS informations:

* We got a new WiFi driver, thanks to Palm We'll need to test it out more, but it should work better than the one we have.
* pmenu is finally working fine in the image, so we have an almost completely working image (for a first release) ready.
* We also did a quick try with the Ubuntu netbook-launcher-efl. It compiled and worked nicely. Only the icons were missing, but that's because it uses the Human icons from Ubuntu which we haven't installed yet. The nice thing about it is that it does support finger scrolling. It might not make it into the first release, but I doubt it will take long until it will be included into an update. I personally prefer XFCE4 and pmenu though ...

Newly released for Dingoo:

This unbricker tool is patched up so that the unauthorized screens don't come anymore. You should all thank MTH on #dingoonity (freenode) cause he basically read the mips code i disassembled. I only patched an unbricker tool and did some research.
It has been tested on bricked HK models and found to be working by diffrent users, more info here : http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingoo-...r-flashing/45/

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/...0,0,0,0,15,256 ...

News via http://www.summeli.fi/?p=1475

I decided to build a two threaded application. The main thread is for the UI, and the worker thread if for the emulator. This makes all porting easier in general, since now we can have a UI thread to handle all rendering, key I/O etc, and run the emulator thread as worker thread, which can emit the new processed frames to the UI thread etc.

The Qt makes the threading extra easy:
In my application I just inherited the emulator controller class from QThread, then I just call start() to start the thread. The QThread will guarantee that all slots will be executed in the context of that QThread after start has been called.
Another nice trick is to use Qt::BlockingQueuedConnection as connection type when the signal must be prosessed before the emitting thread can continue.

I’m really excited that all this communication between threads was so easy. No mutexes, or semaphores were required this time at all ...

News via http://dingoonity.org/

Vinicius(cabelo) has scripted another interesting tool for ports and emulators that require a lot of RAM. MicroMenu, a front-end to execute heavier ports without the need of Dmenu or Dinguxmb


Quote
To install, just replace the 'main' file on local/sbin. Check if the path and binary files are right (remember that on *nix systems the names are CaSeSeNsItIvE).
To choose, use DPAD and START.

To use other itens on MicroMenu just edit the main and set the right path/bin. You can?t use any port that uses the file selector(like snes9x)

Download link(100126): http://viniciusrezende.com.br/pub/di...enu_100126.zip
DingooBR post: http://www.dingoobr.com/?p=1265
More info about download and instalation instructions: http://viniciusrezende.com.br/pub/dingux/micromenu
(News are comming, the dpad is a temporary solution)

Thanks to zolini for the news and the Dingoo Brazillian community.

Official Release post is here: http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingux-...nu-for-dingux/

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

News via http://dingoonity.org/

Cax (or borus) has modded ZX81's MSX Port adding features and some fixes.


Quote
27/01/2010 - My mod of Zx-81's Dingux port of Marat Fayzullin's fMSX:

I liked Zx-81's fMSX Dingux port very much, but it missed some features I needed myself.
So... Here is the list of modifications I made to fMSX-Dingux:

* added full-screen up-scaling
* added MegaROMs type auto-detection by SHA1 (so games like Aleste and Batman work now)
* assigned "Exit" from menu to X button
* first save state is loaded automatically on ROM opening
* path to last opened rom/dsk is remembered after exiting from emulator
* fixed "sound persists on state loading" bug
* fixed gfx garbage in menu (manifests itself in full-screen mode)
* fmpac.rom is not loaded after reset if "Music FM-PAC" is switched off in setting

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...

In case you missed it back in June, the Palm Pre was rooted by extracting the Root ROM from a Palm tool used to reset a device with damaged software. A lot has been learned from examining the code inside that ROM but we’re most amused by one thing in particular. If you grew up in the 80’s there’s a pretty good chance you know the Konami Code by heart. So did the developers of WebOS, the firmware running on the Palm Pre. By inputting the familiar (UpUpDownDownLeftRightLeftRightBA) set of gestures the handset enters Developer mode for connection to the SDK which was leaked last summer but is now in open release.

http://hackaday.com/2010/01/27/nes-l...ding-for-palm/ ...

God of War II was almost a PS3 game (at least, before it did become a PS3 game). In an interview with Game Informer, Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida remembered the internal debate over whether to release God of War II as one of the last big games for PS2 or as a headline title for the PS3 launch. "Many people, including marketing, suggested that maybe it should be moved to PS3," Yoshida recalled. Certainly, God of War II would've bolstered an exclusive launch lineup that was limited to Resistance: Fall of Man and very little else.

"We had a lot of debates about it, actually. I always firmly stood by keeping it on PS2," Yoshida continued, noting that "the end of a platform is when you see really great games, after developers really begin to understand the hardware."

Yoshida's "gamble" paid off, both critically and financially. If God of War II had been a PS3 launch title, more systems would probably have been pushed at launch, but software sales would've undoubtedly suffered compared to the game's success as a PS2 title. Besides, PS3 owners weren't excluded from the action! Back then, PS3s used to have this magical "backwards compatibility" thingy.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/26/go...3-launch-game/ ...

Bad news for those of you who have picked up some classic arcade titles on Xbox Live and can't wait to play them in Microsoft's new Game Room: It looks like you will have to repurchase anything you want to play with your avatar in the 3D environment. Game Informer learned this recently from a Microsoft rep, who went on to say that it's because the Game Room titles are different from the XBLA versions -- in fact, it sounds like they're more old-school and not "revamped," as the rep puts it.

Fortunately, you will get a small price break: As previously announced, the games will sell for 400($5) to play on Xbox 360 and PC, 240 ($3) for the game on one platform or 40 ($0.50) for "two quarters'" worth of playtime. But for those of us who've already shelled out 400 for the Centipede/Millipede combo, it looks like we'll have to pull out the wallet yet again.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/26/re...box-game-room/ ...

Sorry Steve, but we're not necessarily interested in playing first-person shooters like N.O.V.A. on your newly-revealed iPad. That doesn't mean we can't see the gaming possibilities though. Don't get us wrong, we're excited to see that most of our iPhone games will work, but we think that's only the start of the story.

Real time strategy: The interface just isn't big enough for detailed troop management on the iPhone, but the iPad's larger display could be the perfect thing for trying to keep up with a hectic battlefield while managing resources. A beefier processor means the game won't be held up by too many orcs/soldiers/space cars on screen. The apps we want: Command and Conquer, StarCraft 2.

Board games: It's obviously a great size for classics like chess and checkers, but we could see playing a hell of a game of Risk that we could either pass around the room or play against friends online. OK, we were kidding about the friends part. Good luck trying to get people over to your house to "pass the giant iPod Touch around." The apps we want: Risk, Pandemic, Othello.

Most iPhone games with a virtual d-pad: Think of it, if you can move the buttons on your favorite d-pad controlled iPhone game, you may never have to wish for invisible thumbs again. Well, you might still wish for invisible thumbs but only so you can freak out neighborhood children. The apps we want (and are thankfully already out): Pac-Man Championship Edition, Wolfenstein RPG.

That one on the iPhone where it looks like you're drinking a beer: Dude: Giant beer.

Adventure games: We know some of these have been making their way to the iPhone, but pointing and clicking your way through adventure classics just seems like a natural with the iPad's larger screen (not to mention the reduction on iStrain as you read those piles of text). More and more of these gems are being remade with high resolution graphics -- we think it's high time to start enjoying them on a screen that does them justice. The apps we want: Everything Telltale's ever done, Quest For Glory.

The games that run like crud on your iPhone: After all, you've already paid for them, shouldn't you be able to play them without a bunch of chugging and stuttering? Note: This doesn't really apply to those of you rocking a 3GS, though we'll see how well your phone continues to stack up when devs also have the juiced up iPad in mind for their apps.

Popcap: Sorry guys, but there's probably nothing to be done about this one. They're going to make games, and those games are going to be a lot of fun. You're not going to be able to stop playing it. Plants Vs. Zombies is going to be fun on the iPhone and it's going to be several percentages funner on the iPad. Sorry. The apps we don't necessarily want but will be powerless to avoid: Peggle, Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies.

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/27/th...-want-on-ipad/ ...