The New Dawn Of Homebrew Coming Soon ?

http://openpandora.org/FDMphotos/2.jpg

The Homebrew Community is bigger now than it has ever been, more sites from all corners of the world cover it and more consoles are now open to emulators and Homebrew games and applications.

The Mainstream have even embraced the homebrew community but also some sites taint the homebrew scene by posting apps and news that is clear piracy, but the good sites and users are far more widespread than the bad ones.

The Homebrew scene in each console has to fight against efforts to stop homebrew. But soon a console called the Pandora may persuade all of us to maybe add one to our collection, the price wont be the cheapest, for those in the USA it may be as high as 330 dollars but what youll be getting is a console thats basically as powerful as an Xbox.

The Pandora wont replace our Wiis, PS3, PSP or DS because commercial games unless it does extremely well wont be much of a factor but if you like homebrew and to be fair most who come to DCEmu like homebrew, it will however be a very interesting console, already the list of homebrew coders developing for it reads like a whos who of the homebrew scene.

Those wanting to know more can check out our very own Pandora site here --> http://pandora.dcemu.co.uk/ specs here-- > http://pandora.dcemu.co.uk/the-futur...le--93261.html

Whether your not interested or indeed are interested theres no doubt that a new dawn of homebrew is coming, it should make every homebrew scene even more open to the mainstream and thats something that benefits us all.

Agree or disagree please answer via comments

I'm not knocking this. But aesthetically, ergonomically, and cosmetically, I don't see anything else on the market better for homebrew than the Slim PSP.

I'm sure this has a lot more "under the hood" with this than the PSP. Hell, it looks like a very small laptop. So I'm sure some interesting stuff will come out for this if enough developers get excited and sign on.

Its encouraging that consoles made strictly for homebrew and complete freedom are being created.

I still think the PSP has a good amount of potential left for it regarding homebrew. If only the scene was was appreciative and new developers started to develop and old developers came back with some new stuff... Ahhh that would be beautiful.

I would love to see Exophase resume work on gpSP for the PSP and/or release a version of his PC-Engine (Turbo-Grafx) emulator for the PSP. But he has done so much already that could be asking a lot.

I doubt the Pandora will bring about a revolution in terms of homebrew, but it will offer a lot of potential and will most likely perform marvelously for what it is. Ergonomically speaking, it looks vastly more comfortable to use than a PSP, which has a number of conflicts wherein portability won out over ergonomics. The lack of commercial titles doesn't bother me because of all the emulation the device will offer. There aren't a whole lot of new games that garner my interest these days anyway, so it's no big loss for me.

Personally, I can't wait for Pandora to ship.

it still looks chunky, the analog sticks look like the oppsite of the psp, where as now i get a thumb cram from it being too close to the edge, these look like a far stretch

over a hard edge, with a corner

+ it looks unbalanced to hold

yes it got some balls under the hood, but for the price i still have to wonder what the advantages are over a micro notebook other than built in game pad and a hard to type on keyboard

I'm currious about the pandora for a few things but I have a so so outlook. Best it could hope for is gp2x/gp32 level of support but ultimately I think it might not fully meet it.

Still, i'm currious to toy with one for kicks.

The Pandora, if it is still as portable as the hype made it out to be (about the size of a DS Lite, if I am not mistaken), does sound quite appealing. I will certainly keep an eye on it after it is released.

However, it is not how powerful a system is but how you use it that matters, so I will likely end up hoarding my $330 (or however much it will cost) until I have a good reason to purchase it or three months have passed after its release (whichever comes later). By then all bugs will have been ironed out and its development community will be going strong.

This Pandora system is nuts. I thought there would be a touch screen if there is thats awesome it will be a competition for the DS. Now for the talk its competition for the PSP just cause theres more homebrew shit for that system doesnt mean this system aint going to blow the homebrew seen right out it could do just that in a couple days.

As for the power of the system cause its directed towards more the homebrew scene you could probably see more benefits then the PSP. Now i could see it being a battle for people only if the coding package for the Pandora is difficult which i would most defenitly doubt cause people will probably create there own type of package and start making mad things for the system.

You all got to remember this system is open and uses Linux and the PSP doesnt which makes things more difficult to port but this time more easier then others. Once coders get a hold of this PSP will be the Dreamcast in the homebrew scene.

Im sorry if this doesnt make sense i was somewhat drinkin booz during this time :(.

Viva la pandora!!!!


Every time I read about this beast im all like 'wowowowowowow!'

Chunkyness is NOT A FACTOR!! This thing is not only competing with handheld consoles, but mini-laptops to!

This is the shit.

This is THE shit!

THIS IS THE SHIT!!!!!


GIMMIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

To me it's all going to depend on the D-Pad. It's a real drawback on the PSP, so hard to even to a Ha do ken. Don't really care about the analog stick, since most emulated system had one. TV out is a big plus. Can emulators for the PSP slim play on regular tvs?

I dont think im going to buy a pandora but it looks good for a homebrew console

The Pandora is going to be THE console for homebrew, with some emulators already being ported to the Pandora and running at full speed without being optimized (PSX,JAGUAR,SNES,PICODRIVE) it looks to have a great future!

Me and a couple of my friends will buy one for sure :)

My concern is primarily the build quality and price with the former potentially too low and definitely the latter too high for the time being.

Time will tell if Craig and co can pull it off. Still it is nice to see a dedicated homebrew handheld with some decent hw, GP2X really should have a had a better CPU when it was launched.

Im gonna get the pandora,But im gonna sell my gold psp for it (I'll still have a blue psp tho ;) )Looks Damn nice

I am also going to get one of these.

The homebrew possibility's are awesome.

I would love to pre-order one.... Still waiting for an email back though....

This would totally own psp if it ran psp iso`s? etc n64/dreamcast w/e lol and video output wicked! ok yeah! psp slim, but this has a keyboard too! and probably can run a linux OS

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Originally Posted by Aryn

The Pandora, if it is still as portable as the hype made it out to be (about the size of a DS Lite, if I am not mistaken)

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You're mistaken, the real size is about the size of a DS (not lite).

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Originally Posted by Da_ALC

Chunkyness is NOT A FACTOR!!

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Yeah, chunkyness is not a factor... is a FACT

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Originally Posted by Renegade_Rulez

The Pandora is going to be THE console for homebrew, with some emulators already being ported to the Pandora and running at full speed without being optimized (PSX,JAGUAR,SNES,PICODRIVE) it looks to have a great future!

Me and a couple of my friends will buy one for sure :)

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I've only seen a bunch of crappy emulators without sound runing in an OMAP developement kit. Nothing surprisingly enough to make me buy a 330$ gadget.


Don't let the shiny lights blind you. Wait, check and compare before buy this kind of gadgets (In special this one, because the patent-free design, the continuos hardware changes and all the delays aren't the best friends of build quality)

Eh, it's ugly...
I'll wait for a redesign or case mods...

I'll stick with the psp, or go straight to a decked out laptop.

That thing doesn't look very ergonomic, and a different color wouldn't hurt.

I already have a laptop and psp

I dont think I will really need this system

However ill keep an eye on it in the future if I have to go somewhere and I need something smaller than a laptop to carry around to keep me busy along with my psp.

i hope i will be able to trade my ds phat and one of my psp's which is phat and hacked for a pandora and i will still have my slim psp as a ds phat and psp phat would be worth the trade for a pandora.

The only way i would even consider getting this is if it can fully emulate dreamcast and possibly the nds because if they don't use the extra horsepower to emulate newer systems then the psp looks like it has the advantage in usability

They already have an Emulator that was running FF7 at full speed off of raw cpu power, and they have a video of quake 3 running full speed. whoever says this is not going to be a good homebrew system is a RETARD!!! yes, the build quality seems like it might be questionable, but i am still planning on getting one just for the amazing specs.

ive not seen the video of quake 3, i have seen the video of quake 2, which does not really require all that much power to run in linux ...

neither does ff7

i keep looking at this thing and wondering why? i found a deal on a 7 inch sub notebook, it has a 1.2 ghz cpu (a crappy but just as powerful) intel 3d chipset, bigger touch screen that swivels into a tablet, 1gb of ram much better storage solutions, and doesnt look like its going to fall apart in 6 months

for only ~400$

if i were in the market right this second i would by that over the pandora, its underpowered for the price, it looks badly constructed, ive always felt it was badly designed (ie the keyboard looks like a nightmare to type on, and the controllers look like an afterthought)

drop the price in half, and make a commercial game base then it would have something to really go on, now its just a awkward sub micro notebook with the "console" tag slapped on it

$330? That's a bit steep for something I expect to do things on that I can already do with other systems or my PC. It looks cool, and seems great for homebrew, but I just cant see enough people blowing that kind of dough on this. For $330 I could buy a lot more than one system, that doesn't even have commercial support. If it's not commercial, that means it won't appeal to the masses. Less people= less developers= less lifespan.

I think if history has taught us anything, it's that power (and often cheap cost) isn't everything. The PSP is popular as a homebrew attraction for many reasons - it's relatively fast, light, quite programmable (thanks to the psp sdk folks), supported by the powerhouse Sony, very attractive, and more importantly - ubiquitous - it's everywhere.

I'm no expert at what makes a good programming platform, but it's not just speed, because good programming can make up for the latter -- NJ's CPS2/Neo-Geo emulators are a prime example of this. The PSP's power is largely untapped by most developers, including myself - the Media Engine, due to its difficulty of mastering is unused by the most.

It's fairly easy to make a small form-factor laptop with older technology (which is what this unit seems to be), but that won't make it a successful product over time. The unit needs to be lightweight, dissipate heat efficiently, have a useful and extensible programming devkit, be of some value by itself (and not just as a result of its extensibility -- meaning that it should include some decent tools and applications), and, as shallow as it makes me sound, be attractive. I'm not sure if this system meets any of these requirements, not to mention possessing good looks :)

Let's face it, if hacker-targeted handhelds were profitable (or even popular), you'd be seeing a lot more of GP2X in run-of-the-mill stores (not that I have anything against the GP2X). All said, however, I do find the idea interesting, and I wish whoever is backing and/or developing for Pandora good luck.

I was considering for a long time getting one of these, that until I got my EEE 1000h that I see portable enough to run all the emulators that this can ever live up to, web browser, hell it runs windows... that explains enough =)

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Originally Posted by osgeld

ive not seen the video of quake 3, i have seen the video of quake 2, which does not really require all that much power to run in linux ...

neither does ff7

i keep looking at this thing and wondering why? i found a deal on a 7 inch sub notebook, it has a 1.2 ghz cpu (a crappy but just as powerful) intel 3d chipset, bigger touch screen that swivels into a tablet, 1gb of ram much better storage solutions, and doesnt look like its going to fall apart in 6 months

for only ~400$

if i were in the market right this second i would by that over the pandora, its underpowered for the price, it looks badly constructed, ive always felt it was badly designed (ie the keyboard looks like a nightmare to type on, and the controllers look like an afterthought)

drop the price in half, and make a commercial game base then it would have something to really go on, now its just a awkward sub micro notebook with the "console" tag slapped on it

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I would call it poorly constructed either. i know for fact all you've saw of this console is a few mock ups and a couple poorly lit pictures, none of us have gotten a hold of this yet.

On their official site they say it handles quake 3 with ease

I dont think you understand that it intentionally doesnt have a commercial library...

As for the comments about getting a micro pc that 'better' for a higher price; this console is designed specifically for homebrew and emulation. There is alot more to a cpu than clock speed. Ask you self this could a 133mhz pc with 16mb or ram could emulate a ps1 better than a ps2 at a higher resolution and better fps? you'd think not, but the DC could do it with bleem. Apply the same logic to this situation... you cant really compare the specs to that of a pc.

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

I would call it poorly constructed either. i know for fact all you've saw of this console is a few mock ups and a couple poorly lit pictures, none of us have gotten a hold of this yet.

On their official site they say it handles quake 3 with ease

I dont think you understand that it intentionally doesnt have a commercial library...

As for the comments about getting a micro pc that 'better' for a higher price; this console is designed specifically for homebrew and emulation. There is alot more to a cpu than clock speed. Ask you self this could a 133mhz pc with 16mb or ram could emulate a ps1 better than a ps2 at a higher resolution and better fps? you'd think not, but the DC could do it with bleem. Apply the same logic to this situation... you cant really compare the specs to that of a pc.

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Indeed!

These mini-pc's are not designed to run games whatsoever beyond solitaire and maybe HOMM 3, you wont get much joy out of them. And emulating on them is always going be slower due to hardware design.

Mini PC's are design for taking on holiday to get online, write emails and send pictures to yer family. And thats about it.

Look at the average battery life on them in comparison to the Pandora.

Also with it running Linux AND having USB Host, the drivers for almost everything are already there, and plenty of software. So your basically going to be able to do almost everything with the Pandora that you can with a mini-laptop.

Also, those of you with PSP's and anybody that has ever seen one, love the nice big bright screen on it.
Where talking twice the resolution in the same screen area with the Pandora, thats a hell of a step up (plus touchscreen, brilliant), reading e-books and viewing websites will be clear as on this.

Personally im looking foreward to getting Red Alert 2 running on this baby and having network games. Playing RA2 with a touchscreen/ graphics tablet is awesome.

if this thing can run windows xp and World Of warcraft i would be very interested altough the screen is a bit small.

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

I would call it poorly constructed either. i know for fact all you've saw of this console is a few mock ups and a couple poorly lit pictures, none of us have gotten a hold of this yet.

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Thats because the real ones doesn't exist... but I think the quality does not matter cause the crappy design is there

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

On their official site they say it handles quake 3 with ease

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Yes, the official site wants to sell it... It would be dumb to talk about his lacks.

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

As for the comments about getting a micro pc that 'better' for a higher price; this console is designed specifically for homebrew and emulation. There is alot more to a cpu than clock speed. Ask you self this could a 133mhz pc with 16mb or ram could emulate a ps1 better than a ps2 at a higher resolution and better fps? you'd think not, but the DC could do it with bleem. Apply the same logic to this situation... you cant really compare the specs to that of a pc.

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Are you saying a SOC is more powerful than a higher clock speed and features CPU with dedicated sound and graphical hardware?
Let me tell you I've played lots of ps1 games with bleem on my old pc... an old p166 with a 3dfx graphics card, not too far from a dreamcast.
The first reason why this kind of devices seems to be powerful than a similar pc is because this devices have a tiny and quite optimized Operating System that doesn't overhelms the CPU with extra tasks and the software is compiled with a determined architecture in mind (that means less compatibility in exchange of an high speed boost, but since all units of the system are the same thing, if it works in one of them it will works in all of them).
But the pandora's OS is in a very early state (lacks tons of drivers) and this will make pandora slow, unstable and quite chunky until It gets optimized (If ever does happen).

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Originally Posted by noname1

if this thing can run windows xp and World Of warcraft i would be very interested altough the screen is a bit small.

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Just do a search on youtube, it runs better on Asus 90x EEE models, thanks to Intel Atom CPU :)

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

I would call it poorly constructed either. i know for fact all you've saw of this console is a few mock ups and a couple poorly lit pictures, none of us have gotten a hold of this yet.

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yea but it looks like if you accidentally left it in the car on a hot day you would come back to the plastic warping off of the lcd

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

On their official site they say it handles quake 3 with ease

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so did my k6/2 300 with a voodoo II

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

I dont think you understand that it intentionally doesnt have a commercial library...

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i do, i also understand its linux based, therefore a sub micro laptop

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

As for the comments about getting a micro pc that 'better' for a higher price; this console is designed specifically for homebrew and emulation.

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this thing isnt going to have the hardware sprites or sound generators for every system ever made, its a cpu, a video chipset and some sound card -> pc, theres nothing really special or propitiatory about this, its a x based pc with a light os

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Originally Posted by Dull Blade

There is alot more to a cpu than clock speed. Ask you self this could a 133mhz pc with 16mb or ram could emulate a ps1 better than a ps2 at a higher resolution and better fps? you'd think not, but the DC could do it with bleem. Apply the same logic to this situation... you cant really compare the specs to that of a pc.

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and you cant really compare an optimized wish list "dream team" peice of software vs a from the factory "it will do" execution

Maybe this'll start a small war between this company and the GP2X, meaning we'll get a faster, nicer GP2X at a lower price with better battery life.

This looks like a really powerful thing, but I like the form factor of the GP2X better. However, I've never actually used either, so this is all based on looking.

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Originally Posted by chipan

I've only seen a bunch of crappy emulators without sound runing in an OMAP developement kit. Nothing surprisingly enough to make me buy a 330$ gadget.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HhIt...eature=related
this is the pandora hardware just with out a case the pandora port is not optimized

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Originally Posted by uberjack

It's fairly easy to make a small form-factor laptop with older technology (which is what this unit seems to be),t, dissipate heat efficiently, have a useful and extensible programming devkit, be of some value by itself (and not just as a result of its extensibility -- meaning that it should include some decent tools and applications), and, as shallow as it makes me sound, be attractive. I'm not sure if this system meets any of these requirements, not to mention possessing good looks :)

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what are taking about old technology this no old technology the pandora will be 1 of the fyst that have ARM Cortex-A8 which is the fastest ARM core that is in manufacture rite now

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dissipate heat efficiently

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ARM Core's never have problem with that as that they are design to produce very lite heat

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Are you saying a SOC is more powerful than a higher clock speed and features CPU with dedicated sound and graphical hardware?

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some yes you cant compare the clock rate to compare the performance of different microprocessors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth
to hive some hint how powerful it is it is comparable to Pentium III and also Intel Atom
and on the gpu powervr SGX530 is 1 of the best gpu that you can get for portable

How much graphics ram does the pandora support? is it shared with the main memory ram?

Will Pandora be able to run like Microsoft's Windows 98 OS?

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Originally Posted by noname1

if this thing can run windows xp and World Of warcraft i would be very interested altough the screen is a bit small.

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It won't. It is ARM based not X86. XP won't run on this machine (at least not at a usable speed).

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Originally Posted by MillenioX

How much graphics ram does the pandora support? is it shared with the main memory ram?

Will Pandora be able to run like Microsoft's Windows 98 OS?

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Shared and possibly yes but not at a usable speed. Remember this machine is ARM based, not X86.

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Originally Posted by TVarmy

Maybe this'll start a small war between this company and the GP2X, meaning we'll get a faster, nicer GP2X at a lower price with better battery life.

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Considering that some of the makers of the Pandora are selling and distributing the Wiz (GPH's new machine), that would be rather interesting.