PSX4Pandora makes its debut to the OpenPandora console! Thanks to ZodTTD ( http://www.zodttd.com ) for this! PSX4Pandora is a Playstation 1 (PSX) emulator, for those who don’t know.

Release notes:

Hi everyone,

With tons of pressure built up as Pandora’s are making their way to people here, I must be honest in saying I’ve been way behind in psx4pandora development. I have spent the past while working on it though.

While I chat, download the PND file (approval probably coming shortly for the appstore) here:
http://www.zodttd.com/downloads/psx4pandora.pnd

How to install:
1. Place the pnd in the SD card’s directory: /pandora/apps/
2. Stick the SD card in your Pandora and on the desktop you will see the psx4pandora app. Run it and choose EXIT with the B button.
3. Now that the appdata directory is created on your SD card at /pandora/appdata/psx4pandora-1/ copy the PSX BIOS file scph1001.bin (all lowercase!) and your games (BIN,IMG,ISO,Z) to that directory.
4. Run psx4pandora and choose to Load A Game. Note that loading without a BIOS isn’t supported currently. Play on.

What needs work:
1. The menu system! There’s a command line interface available though for a frontend if available.
2. Audio. I’m not buffering it properly. Will fix.

What may be broken:
1. Loading/Saving via memory cards. Let me know!
2. Loading/Saving via save states. Wouldn’t be surprised atm, but let me know. 😉
3. Frameskip causing flickering and odd graphic glitches. This is a known issue and is due to skipping the rendering of elements used in double buffering.

How to access the in-game menu: Press SPACE.

How to exit the app completely: My traditional press ABXY+L+R

How to press L2/R2 psx triggers: Press L/R on the Pandora then press SPACE. Will need a better solution.

Bring on the feedback and let’s get this polished up.

Thanks,
ZodTTD

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=54095

P-UAE tries to continue where E-UAE left off!

E-UAE is an Amiga emulator, a program that allows you to run software designed for Amiga computers on other platforms, such as Linux or Mac OS. It is based on UAE, the original Ubiquitous Amiga Emulator, and WinUAE, the Windows version of UAE. While it owes a huge debt to these two great projects, E-UAE diverges from both, aiming to improve performance and features on a variety of host platforms.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,72,86

The Ur-Quan Masters is an open source port of Star Control II.

From Wikipedia:

Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters is a critically-acclaimed science fiction computer game, the second game in the Star Control trilogy. It was developed by Toys for Bob (Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III) and originally published by Accolade in 1992 for PC; it was later ported to the 3DO with an enhanced multimedia presentation, allowed by the CD technology. The source code of the 3DO port was licensed under the GNU GPL in 2002. The game still enjoys a cult following.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,29,85

Notaz of Picodrive fame, brought us this great emulator to the Pandora. It’s currently not in the state he wanted to see it, so you might expect few updates in the future.

Quote:

http://notaz.gp2x.de/releases/PicoDrive/PicoDrive_180_beta2.pnd

updated to beta2 which is beta1 with fixed readme.

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=53899

The first german users recieved their Pandora and Wejp of “GMU Music Player” fame wrote down his first impressions and took a bunch of pictures.

http://wejp.k.vu/pandora/pandora-review

VBA is the best and most popular Gameboy Advance emulator around. Emulates GBA, GBC, SGB, GBA roms! Supports ZIP-ed roms, so that after downloading files from the net you don’t even have to un-zip them.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,80

PrBoom is an engine allowing you to play the famous ego shooter Doom.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,30,78

EvilDragon of the OpenPandora-Team keeps us updated!

Quote:

Wow, what a lot of work! But so far no bigger problems, but lots of positive reports, really assuring us 🙂
I’ve been helping out here for the 2,5 days already, and we’re managing it quite good.
Speed is improving, we don’t make too many mistakes we need to fix and based on the feedback from the first users, we optimize the building process.

At least 60 units should have reached the customers so far and there were only a few problems.
A dead battery, a dead PSU (which can happen, unfortunately), one broken WiFi and a broken backlight.
For the very first units, that’s a good quote – basically only one two broken ones.

As some guys were asking about quality checking – here’s what we did for the first units:

1. The boards including all the hardware are being tested in Texas after population.
2. After we assemble them, we have a special bootloader where we can test all controls and the LCD.
3. Then we install the firmware – ready to ship.

Based on the feedback we got and the one broken WiFi one, we changed that a bit.
Before we install the firmware, we do a WiFi test (it connects and downloads a small file).
As another user had the problem that his unit shutdown during first boot (flat battery) and then he couldn’t login, we’re also doing that first boot (which configures the system and takes a while) right here.
And we do that completely from the battery – so most faulty batteries should also be recognized.

So right now, that’s what we do:

1. The boards including all the hardware are being tested in Texas after population.
2. During assembly, we test the controls and the LCD.
3. After screwing them together, we do the WiFi test and a different person tests the controls as well.
4. We install the firmware and do the complete first boot from battery.
5. After that, the unit is ready to ship.

This helps to make sure that no faulty unit should reach you. And if one slips through our hands (well, we can’t possible charge all batteries for 6 hours to see if they work well), then we will replace it, that’s for sure.

Some other questions have occured regarding the firmware, so I’m going to give newcomers some tips here:

1. Right now, WiFi is always enabled on Bootup. This eats some battery power – especially, if it keeps looking for networks and can’t find any. So unless you want the unit to be always-on, you should probably disable it. That can easily be done: Go to Settings / Startup and disable WiFi on bootup. After you did that, you need to Toggle WiFi (that’s in the system menu) before you use it.

2. It seems the Network Manager has a problem: When it disconnects, it can’t reconnect. It seems that’s also the case on standard Linux desktops. We’ll look into this, however, if you lose connection at the moment, you need to reboot. You should only lose connection though if the WiFi signal is flaky – we ran some units for 48 hours as a test without a single reconnection.

3. When you use the nubs, they need to some time to calibrate. Usually, it automatically happens while using them, however, to make sure they work fine, slowly move them into each direction (Up, Down, Left, Right) and stay there for 1 or 2 seconds. Let them go back to the center each time before you move it into the next direction.

4. Just switched on your unit and right while booting the screen switches off? No worries, your unit is NOT broken. It’s a feature that also turned into a bug: When you shutdown the unit, it saves the brightness value and applies that on startup, which is a good thing. However, if you shutdown the unit and close the lid, then the brightness value goes to 0 – and that’s what the unit saves. So on next startup, it will switch off during booting process. That’s not a big problem – just wait until it booted and use the brightness control on the keyboard to make it bright again. Another fix for a firmware update 🙂

5. Not firmware-related: But be sure to first CHARGE the unit before using it 🙂

That’s it. So far, we got a lot of positive reports, which is pretty cool.
Funny thing is that some users bashed the Pandora – without even having one (well, we know where we ship the units to).
I have no idea why they do this, but we’re sure: The more Pandoras are out there, the more positive posts will appear.

So, it’s back to work for me, so that more units can find their way home 🙂

http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=179

Notaz of Picodrive fame, brought us this great emulator to the Pandora. It’s currently not in the state he wanted to see it, so you might expect few updates in the future.

Quote:

http://notaz.gp2x.de/releases/PicoDrive/PicoDrive_180_beta1.pnd

This is not what I originally intended to release, but as I figured that my vision is taking ages to materialize I’m releasing what I have. This is built from the latest core code that is capable of 32x and SMS (with lots of internal changes from last Wiz version), but I had to disable 32x/SMS support as they are not really usable (hence the ‘beta’ tag). So current known issues are:

* no 32x/sms yet
* no smooth scrolling in pal/50hz mode (still need add this to kernel/firmware)
* forced vsync because of double buffering, so no way to disable frame limiter (again need to patch kernel)
* occasional sound glitches (also firmware problem)
* no use of hardware scaler yet (needs work)

That aside, Genesis/MegaDrive support should be solid, also Sega/Mega CD (needs BIOS in /pandora/appdata/PicoDrive/ directory).

Enjoy!

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=53899

Hu-Go! is a PC Engine/TurboGrafx emulator, now ported to Pandora.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,76