Slashdot Mirror
Pandora Console Ready For Pre-Orders
Croakyvoice writes "Finally, months after the official announcement, 3,000 lucky people can now pre-order Pandora, possibly the world's fastest handheld console. It boasts a processor capable of up to 900 MHZ, PowerVR 3D graphics, a large 800x480 LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, dual SD card slots, TV out, dual analogue and digital controls, a clamshell DS Lite-style shape, and a 43-button mini keyboard. The console already boasts an amazing amount of ready-for-release software such as Ubuntu and many full-speed emulators for systems such as Snes, Amiga, Megadrive, and many more that are not publicly announced yet. The console is as powerful as the original Xbox and on a par with the Nintendo Wii. Those interested should visit OpenPandora.Org. For the full history of Pandora from inception until the present, check out the Pandora Homebrew Site."
It boasts a processor capable of up to 900 MHZ,
It is 'possibly' the world's fastest console.
It "boasts" an amazing amount of ready-for-release software such as Ubuntu and many full-speed emulators
The console is as powerful as the original Xbox and on a par with the Nintendo Wii.
All this, and we are lucky to pre-order???
Lisa: They can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe.
Skinner: Now as a special treat courtesy of our friends at the Meat
Council, please help yourself to this tripe.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
What I love is the fact that the world map has a broken link for North America, Japan/Korea, and Australia. I got the emailed newsletter that contains the working direct link and a link to the world map. It's still not fixed after 14 hours. You'd think they'd actually test it sometime today.
This will appeal to geeks and hackers but 99.9% of the rest of the world will never, ever get this on their radar. This is so like another console from a few years back (Gizmondo?) that looked like an old-skool gamers dream machine with GPS and whatever else thrown in the mix but ultimately it died a death as it really wasn't of interest to the mass market. Also, its flexibility is its downfall - Joe public won't be able to work out what it is for - it's too much of an 'everything plus the kitchen sink' device.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
To set the trend. If we show up at airports, lunch spots, on campus and start playing on this platform some one is bound to look over our shoulder. After a certain amount of buzz it's time to get on TV and also get in stores.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
It's neat, but it doesn't seem to be very ergonomically designed.
The Internet is generally stupid
Oh shit, it made it on Slashdot. The 3,000 units are sooo gone.
You just got troll'd!
This is so like another console from a few years back (Gizmondo?) that looked like an old-skool gamers dream machine with GPS and whatever else thrown in the mix but ultimately it died a death as it really wasn't of interest to the mass market.
Gizmondo had a lockout chip to keep out homebrewers, which wasn't cracked until after the system was discontinued. Pandora, on the other hand, is designed without a lockout chip on purpose.
Also, its flexibility is its downfall - Joe public won't be able to work out what it is for - it's too much of an 'everything plus the kitchen sink' device.
So are the iPod Touch and the model with a built-in phone, but that's selling like hotcakes.
Why oh why can't a device that looks like a potential competitor for a N810 have GPS built-in? Image how could it would be to flip open your browsing/ssh/gaming gadget at any time and have larg-ish screen with good resolution & GPS. /me sobs
battery life? Such a powerful instrument is bound to either require laptop-style batteries, or have a really, really short battery life.
If two years count as an insane short amount of time..
Game Informer (July 1996) and Total (issues 53 and 54) reported that Nintendo was working on a handheld video game system called Atlantis. In 2001, it was finally sold under the name Game Boy Advance.
Why oh why can't a device that looks like a potential competitor for a N810 have GPS built-in?
It would raise the bill of materials unacceptably. But it does have two USB ports and two SD slots that could probably be used for SDIO. Enthusiasts will find which GPS dongles work best with Pandora.
Battery life is said to be between 10 to 12 hours of normal usage ..
I ordered one. Can't wait to get it, as its got a lot of power and will make a superlative machine for developing music/synthesis/effects application .. plus the odd game or two, of course, lol ..
For those saying "It will Never Take Off", so? As long as Craig&Co. can make a tidy profit selling it as a niche item, it will be awesome anyway - the hardware itself is superlative, and the development scene for this console is like nothing else - even if they only sell a few thousand, thats at least going to give a few thousand people an awesome system to play with.
Don't forget: its totally open. So it won't "die" as long as there are people willing to get one and code for it, for their own purposes. Gizmondo and all that: dead coz Joe Blow Hacker can't code for it, easily. Pandora: Very, very easy to write code for it, so even if there are no commercial entities getting behind it as a mainstream console, it will still be highly useful to those who bought it ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
do these guys have the official nintendo devkit or something to affirm that one?
because you know, you cant compare diferent cpus just by the clock or cache size, that to not mention the video chips that are probably radically diferent.
I always thought that a modern slashdot'ting was a myth due to a poor, database-heavy configuration with insufficient oomph behind the servers. Then some git links to gp32x.com which had one of my GP2X ports as the second item on the front page (outside of the top visible screen). So my two-links-deep, petty news item on something vaguely related to the story (a quick recompile for GP2X) makes my traffic for the month of October (i.e. one day) pass my total traffic for the month of September (30 days) within a matter of hours.
God knows what temperature gp32x.com is hitting right now. Strangely, though, my adsense hits/clicks read normal. I *knew* I should have released my other port so that I was in the No.1 spot on that site when Slashdot hit...
There is supposed to be a paypal option. See here it is. Well let's try to checkout. Hey ! Where's the Paypal option ? Well if you REALLY don't want to take my money I'll just buy something else.
"Could not connect to the database: Too many connections" Looks like they are running their webserver off of one of these.
I have a radio... It's capable of more than 10 GHz.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Joking, but it actually did take me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why on earth someone would want a handheld console of all things... I think we Unix geeks had dibs on that word before gamers. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
It's 10:45 GMT, still earlier enough and the site is Slash Dotted! Thanks guys.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Simply to support homebrew hardware... It can sit next to my OpenMoko and wait for software :)
Remember: They plan to release a Pandora LIVE.. online networking/gaming service :)
Hope they do not code their machine, like they code their website..
"Could not connect to the database:
Too many connections"
A ConnectionPool anyone???
With the netbook you're getting something that will run most older emulators well, and a machine which is more usable for casual net use. I run a big stack of emulators for older consoles on an ancient Toshiba laptop (with a mere Celeron 500) with no problems. With a 1.6GHz Atom, I'd guess Project64 (N64) and ePSXe (Playstation) work well... Anyone out there tried yet?
Andy
If you can make the "world's fastest console", shouldn't you host on at least a "world's somewhat resilient server"?
[Slashdot Comments We Liked]
... but does it have a camera?
Oh SHI-
I bought the GP2X when it came out as a portable media player/ games machine. It sucked batteries dry at an alarming rate and has sat in my drawer unused after about the 4th set! I have an Eee900 (20Gb Linux) which I like quite a bit - it can play Urban Terror quite well, has loads for me to fiddle with (mods, software etc) and cost me about £50 more than this Pandora. So why do I want a Pandora?? Small, battery life... Anything else?
Why would anyone buy this instead of a cheap laptop?
Why would anyone buy a cheap laptop instead of a cheap desktop? You get get something twice as powerful for half the price.
This thing just happens to be _half_ the size of an eeePC; look at the dimensions and see for yourself.
It isn't a laptop replacement, nor is it meant to be. Their is a reason the Sega Game Gear (portable gameboy competitor) sold many times better than the Sega Nomad (portable genesis/megadrive, complete with the massive cartridges), you know.
Saw UK, but no US. Is that a feature, a flaw, or something to work around?
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
http://www.gbax.com/
This is by the same owner. Look at all the links for each country.
http://openpandora.org/worldmap.html
Actually I should have just posted this.
The PSP 2000 is only 170 bucks, not 214:
http://www.amazon.com/PSP-2000-Console-Piano-Black-Sony/dp/B000UA0LXQ/
Who looks at that and thinks Sinclair variant? (or Timex/Sinclair for the US)
And no, for their time, those little computers were def not a joke.
Does it Run Linux?
On a par with the Nintendo Wii? Yeah, right. The Wii is at least twice as powerful as the original XBox. It also has a specialised CPU that came from the same project that gave birth to XBox 360's CPU and the PS3's Cell CPU.
People seriously underestimate the Wii because it's not HD and the large slew of shovelware.
something i carry in my fluke bag.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I want to know how I can compile a CAS (maxima or maybe sage or euler) for it, program an equation typesetter, and get something like the gnu graphing library to work on it.
This thing is pretty cool and looks like the future of the computing industry. It will be nice when everyone has something like this on them at all times that they can keep in a small pocket. Take into consideration that even though the specs aren't that of a super computer, it is just a little bit bigger than a DS, with the thickness of a PSP.
I don't wanna piss on anyone's poorly thought out press release, but surely the point of a games console is that it should have some games.
The web-sites (such as they are under the load) are rather scant on details of new releases.
Ports of emulators (yay for piracy) don't really count, and neither does "Ubuntu".
Sure, it's powerful, but if there's nothing to play its destined to fail.
"[unrev-II] The DKR hardware I'd like to make..."
http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0754.html
"Consider a couple of these souped up devices given to each village in
Africa. Anyone with $1 billion for true development aid to 500,000
African villages? (This is just the cost of one unfinished dam or one
shut down nuclear plant.)
Consider millions of these devices airdropped into Iraq and Yugoslavia
-- instead of more expensive cruise missiles! Anybody got $1 billion to
spend on ensuring democracy with a true defense against tyranny in those
places? (This is probably what the U.S. military's spends on gas/oil for
a month cruising the area...)
This is like a system I wanted to develop and deploy pre-Y2K just in
case...
But it still has much value in preparing for any potential (natural,
political, economic, biological) disaster, as well as aiding the
development of democracy.
It's somewhat like the wearable crystsls described in The Skills of
Xanadu" by Theodore Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix),
although the one thing it lacks is easy self-repliaction...
Developing and then deploying this sort of device is the sort of thing
the UN or a major foundation should fund (if they were on the ball).
But luckily, there is hope from toymakers!"
OLPC is on the ropes, and it took a couple more years than I predicted, but here are the toymakers coming through for us with Pandora!
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ubuntu on Pandora - youtube video
Unless their business model can turn a profit on sales from linux geeks, this thing is going to tank. Power =/= sales. The Pandora is neat, but for that price why wouldn't I just get an Eee or some other Netbook?
For one thing, no store like Best Buy is going to sell a device that touts itself as an emulator, therefore no mass-market penetration.
Secondly, it's a bloody emulator and open source. So no money is going to be coming in after the initial sale. Even on the pre-order page they're already asking for donations. The Big Three make little profit off the consoles themselves, especially if they take a loss to lower the initial price point. The real money is in the games.
Third, the price puts it at the low end of the sub-notebook market. So for a few bucks more I could get an Eee, which can do everything the Pandora can (barring the digital/analog pad) plus have more storage, word processing and a keyboard you can actually type with.
Fourth, it's a bloody emulator. Even if they somehow make a profit, as soon as it sees some success it'll be sued into oblivion by every company that it emulates a console for. Open Source is not going to protect them from a juggernaut like Nintendo when they preload the Pandora with an NES emulator.
The Lynx flopped.
The power was that killed it. All super-powerful colour handhelds back then ate batteries like candy.
The GameBoy didn't survive *despite* being balck'n'white, it survived *because* it was black'n'white and could actually be carried everywhere (and not kept tied to a power cord).
Currently with the advance in power consumption and battery technology, this point isn't relevant any more.
The second main point is game library. That's something that several concurrent of the Lynx did understand : Nintendo quickly released lots of games for GameBoy (and each successive machine inherited with all the past library through retro-compatibility), Sega and NEC built handhelds compatible with the then huge library of home console games (sadly their machine where colour and power hungry).
Last but not least : ease of development and attraction of 3rd party developers.
the original GamePark had a huge success to the point that anything developed with source available systematically had a GP32 port.
It didn't have a huge success in big commercial developers, but it was incredibly successful in the indie and homebrew community with tons of developed softs.
Don't be surprised if Pandora does too.
The Pandora open-console is a successor of this kind of platform :
- Maybe you won't see latest success from some company like Squaresoft or Bungie targeting it.
- But you just *know* that it will see tons of emulators and ports (which will be functionnal, thanks to decent input - something not possible on iPhone).
It takes more than being "the most powerful" to succeed in gaming.
It takes having a library of software, something that the Pandora will have through indie and homebrew channel.
It takes actually being usable (and not taking too much power like old colour handheld or lacking decent inputs like an iPhone).
I'm sure the Nintendo DS portable will still be #1 for several more years.
And this will probably stay that way, Nintendo DS will probably stay the #1 mainstream handheld. ...but...
There's a n interesting example that you missed in your list :
the Wii.
Which is currently an incredibly huge success even if it is one generation behind all concurents.
Because it targets a completely different market.
Pandora can have a decent success just like the GP32 and GP2x had before it, if it target the homebrew/indie communities.
It has also enough horsepower to run Linux (I mean: more than a simple embed firmware, but actually run Apps too). Thus it could run basic PIM applications. (Calendar, phonebook, editor, etc.) It could also be a good entry in the PDA/Console hybrid market (something that hasn't seen anything new since Tapwave bankrupted).
I currently have a Zodiac 2 that I carry around everywhere and have always had other PalmOS PDAs (together with a foldable keyboard and an antique GPRS/Bluetooth/IrDA enabled phone its a perfect solution to browser / mail / chat / ssh). I could pretty much see myself replacing this with a Pandora.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Surprisingly of all these devices it's the PSP that has the largest library of emulators
Only because it's been out longer (March 2005 in North America vs. November 2008).
This list is limited to devices with actual useable gaming controls.
Was there a reason that you left off the DS?
Nintendo DS with CycloDS Evolution accessory
North American price: 180 USD
Has anyone from the U.S. ordered one, or do we just have to wait?
With a name like that I am just wondering whether I should be opening the box. ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The DS isn't particularly good with emus thanks to a small screen, can't really emu anything more then a Genesis
NeoGeo works, and so do the majority of Super NES games. But whether those platforms are "more than a Genesis" is in the eye of the beholder.
has a damn slow browser which also suffers from the screen
Are you talking about Nintendo DS Browser or DSOrganize Web Browser?
is hard to code for
In what way?
doesn't work as a Portable Media Player
MoonShell works for me. Sure, you have to convert video to DPG for the DS, but you also have to convert video to the PSP's obscure flavor of MPEG-4.
Thank god I got in early this morning; I knew this would make Slashdot eventually. Bad luck to those who missed out on one, you'll have to wait until next year.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Anybody who has opened a Jaguar can see it used a 16/32-bit 68000 for its "brain"
There were three CPUs inside a Jaguar. An MC68000 (intended as an input/output procesor or "IOP") sat next to the game controllers. A 32-bit RISC CPU ("Tom") was on the GPU die, and another 32-bit RISC CPU ("Jerry") sat next to the APU. The "64-bit designation" of the Jaguar comes from the 64-bit data bus between Tom and RAM. What confuses a lot of critics is that games varied in how they allocated tasks between Tom and the IOP. Some games, especially those developed by Genesis/Amiga/Atari ST veterans, would run game logic on the IOP and use Tom only to render graphics. Other games would run on Tom and use the IOP only for a couple tasks such as reading the controllers. The real thing that made the Jag more of a pain than, say, the PS2 was that Tom had a lot of architectural defects, notably that functions run from main RAM had to be split into segments no bigger than 256 bytes.
In any case, the N64 is clearly more powerful than the PS1. Just compare the 3D virtual world of Banjo-Kazooie versus one of the PS1 Spyro games.
Banjo might beat Spyro, but Forsaken looked sharper and ran with more frames per second on a PlayStation than on an N64.
You'll all cower beneath the power of my Infinium Labs Phantom console!
I'll just keep sitting here waiting to take delivery...
Pandora on Wikipedia
Ubuntu on Pandora
Ubuntu on Pandora part 2
Cached FAQ from PandoraWiki
Even if not a single original game comes out for it, it's going to be an awesome device for emulators
Where can most people legally get ROMs, so that the major video game publishers can't convince a judge that the non-infringing uses of Pandora are insubstantial?
linux native games
Games for Linux published by Loki are designed for an x86 CPU, not an ARM CPU. Only games with a Free program (e.g. Quake 3) and games whose authors are willing to spend time and money to port them will run on Pandora.
I'd rather have nethack in my pocket than any game for the DS or PSP.
You say you'd rather have a DS game than any DS game. I don't follow this.
USB Hub + USB controllers + TV-Out = Multiplayer/Singleplayer on TV.
That'd be good for single-screen multiplayer games such as fighting games and minigame collections and Bomberman and the like. But there's one problem: the most popular 4-player games are all proprietary software. You can make hardware capable of PS2-class graphics and plug up all the hubs you want, but you're not going to see professional games unless the professionals can make a business case for porting their proprietary works to Pandora, and that depends on the number of potential customers. Is there any indication that enough Pandora hardware units will be sold for publishers of these games to commit money to a port?
You guys are all missing the point.
This is the ultimate handheld-NetHack console. Check out the keyboard!
This should be the only reason you need to get one for goodness sake!
I am one of the three thousand for this very reason!
Honestly if this thing ever gets an N64 emu (hell, I have 3 running on my xbox) I'm going to be short 330 bucks the next day. My current goal in life is to be able to play OOT on the subway without having to bring a tv with me.
You missed out the important word handheld.
Id like to see you playing xbox as you walk down the street, no really, it would make me lol.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Also, you could put Google Earth on it
Pandora has an ARM CPU, not an x86 CPU. Does the Linux version of Google Earth run on ARM, or is it x86-only? I'm guessing the latter.
Yeah, but will it run IRIX?
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
I will not be buying one of these until they provide full documentation for the PowerVR 3D core used in the device, which is proprietary and does NOT have an open source driver available.
why on earth someone would want a handheld console
I take it you've never had to stand in front of a rack of computers holding a keyboard in one hand for more than 15 minutes.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I don't actually think the Pandora team are going for the number 1 slot in the console market.
They're not that stupid. They're trying to make a profit by catering to a niche that I, and probably a lot of geeks, fit into.
Where else are you gonna find what is, for all intents and purposes, a fully functional PC with a QWERTY keyboard that'll fit in your pocket and play a ton of emulated games?
You wont. Hence the point in this product.
the most popular 4-player games are all proprietary software.
*cough* Emulators. *cough*
So? The most popular 4-player games for emulated machines are all proprietary software, and all but the most hardcore of gamers lack the hardware to space-shift Game Paks or arcade ROM chips to an SD card for use on Pandora.
PowerVR? Nice!
The Dreamcast used a chipset by them, and what it could do with textures absolutely wiped the floor with the PS2. No idea what they're up to now though...
But it looks pretty atrocious, my craving for subnotebooks was sated by the iPod Touch, and for that price, it had better run all commercial PSP AND DS games, because I wouldn't pay that much for an open homebrew system when I have cheaper closed but hacked systems that also run homebrew code. :/
Like OpenMoko, I admire their effort and wish them well, but don't actually want the product offered...
on normal workstation configuration; that's 1GHz usable, not the low power-mode 900MHz that Pandora arrives towards. They should have waited to release the first 1GHz hand-held console, but NOOOOOO; Hauser wanted to be Quaid. Not to mention, all these hand-held consoles we're seeing are using the low-power "tile-based" rendering of an integrated PowerVR graphics chipset, so that means they will always struggle with a CPU throughput to arrange everything in its assumed "pretty" but poor-performing way. This is such a set-back in computing... All the prior handhelds were only half the hardware capability, and the software was perfectly calibrated to conceal all the low-performance hiccups. The Nintendo DS wasn't even in the hundreds of MHz that the Pandora is in, and it is sold for half the cost. Nintendo's next hand-held will be over a GHz and most-likely 2/3 the price, in less than 9 months birthen because they have all that overhead that makes it cheap.
Pandora will be a dead platform in the second development cycle; they're not even being honest about their bills, and they have SEC investigators looking through their statements. All this for what? Linux will get front-page news, as the biggest bust of a hand-held. The Pandora Project should be in anti-trust hearings, because someone else's muscle is being mis-used to penetrate the market to disfigure competitive sales.
Why don't they just license some tech from HP for an Alpha-based cluster-console that could interlink with other nearby units to improve performance? That's all kids do these days is play with theirselves' wii and use only remote networking. With a clustered Alpha hand-held gaming console, they could get nearer to eachother and get some math done.
Get off my lawn!
a lot of people seem to be comparing the pandora to things like the lynx and gizmondo etc.
The point of the pandora isnt for global domination of the portable market.
It is not a direct competitor to systems like the PSP or NDS.
It's a niche market but damned if it isn't the best of its kind, it has the potential to go head to head with the current handhelds but realistically no way that the pandora devs have access to the billions nintendo and sony have.
It is a homebrew kit, much like the GP32 and GP32X and if you appreciate it based on its target audience and its history of conception, it's pretty damn impressive.
It should be in the best interest of the homebrew community to make sure this project is a success.
Hey, I run Vim in a full-screen xterm on my Nokia 770. The Pandora looks like a good machine to replace this. Probably not this version, but when TI release 256MB clip chips I'll definitely be in the market for one with 256MB of RAM, especially if it has DVI out.
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