OpenJazz is a free, open-source version of the classic Jazz Jackrabbit games. OpenJazz can be compiled on a wide range of operating systems. To play, you will need the files from one of the original games.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,35,55

News from the Pandora front!

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That’s the weight of the packages fully packaged up with painted cases (unless our friends lied to us) – and getting the plane to UK on Monday. Yay!
We’ll probably get a tracking number on Monday (it took two days the last time we got a shipment from China), then we can be sure!

Where’s the rest of them parts?

The batteries just got custom clearance, and will probably arrive on Monday.
700 boards are there, they have the nubs already soldered on. Another 800 boards are already populated.
The rest of the nubs are in Texas, as they are directly soldered on during population.

4000 LCDs are there. 4000 stickers are there.
10.000 speakers are there. 4000 WiFi Antennas are there.
5.000 Quick Start Manuals are in UK and also will arrive on Monday.

All the other needed small parts are there.

Keymats will arrive together with the cases… well, and that’s all there is. Time to start assembly. Yay!

The OS and some software

The OS is also coming along. We installed an image to the NAND a week ago – it runs well and rock solid so far.
I tried quite a few things to break it – hard reset while it was running quite a few times, etc.
The OS survived. The only thing I managed to do was making the bootup hang when I did four Hard Resets while booting in a row – guess a hardware driver hang. Was solved by powering off and reboot again – and still the filesystem was fine and intact.

Looking good here. Bootup is still a bit slow (55 Seconds at the moment), but that’s something we surely try to improve in the near future. As a test, I simply removed some services that won’t be needed AFAIK and got a booting time of 33 seconds. It won’t make it in the first release (as we don’t have time to test if my removed scripts REALLY don’t break anything!), but it’s a nice view of what can be done. Switching to Upstart (a tool which enhances bootup by running scripts parallel instead of serial) will also make a difference. Stay tuned for OS updates!

Power Management has become better. The WiFi driver now supports power management – so with the standard OS settings, 7 hours with WiFi are possible. Without WiFi, it goes up to 13 hours at the moment.

For a basic OS, this is all pretty advanced already. There will surely be some settings that can be enhanced (i.e. Browser layout, MIME types, etc.), but we’ll wait for suggestions from you guys and will include the best settings in future firmware versions.

Also, in case you want to meddle around and break the OS (you should only do so on the SD Card, but some probably still mess around with the NAND I guess ;))
I will create a recovery bootsystem which allows you to restore the config files on your system or backup your home-directory.

Aditionally, notaz created a flasher (it’s the same one we use to install the OS for the first time). With that, you can copy some files on your SD Card and restore the image completely (don’t do this too often though, it will wear out the NAND over time :))

Various devs (me too, though I don’t think you can call me dev) are packaging up games, apps and emulators that are ported so far.

We have Stella, Hatari, UAE4ALL, DOSBox, Vice, Colem, Exaile, Free Heroes 2, Commander Genius, Angry Drunken Dwarfs, BattleJewels, Battle for Wesnoth, Super Mario War, C-Dogs, Pandora Panic!, Quake 2, etc. and more coming up…

Some stuff needs more work (notaz wants to improve PicoDrive more before Pandora release, UAE4ALL is just a direct port of the GP2X Version, runs fullspeed Amiga 500 games, but is not as compatible, PSX and N64 also need more work), but I guess that stuff will keep you busy for a while.

MAJOR thanks again to ALL the devs who have helped us with the OS – despite them having few time… THANKS!

I also suspect there are some devs among the preorderers who also like to port some games (or code their own ones).

I can’t await to see what’s coming from you guys – I’m sure it will be worth all the trouble we went through.

http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=176

DOSBox is a DOS-emulator. Now also out for the upcomming Pandora!

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,54

Jeff Mittchell ported the Atari 2600 emulator Stella to the Pandora.

Release notes:

It does not run PAL-roms at the moment, but all NTSC ones run fine.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,71,53

Pickle updated Wolf4SDL (Wolfenstein 3D SDL Port) an engine port, which can be used to play Wolfenstein 3D. This is the pack which supports “Spears of Destiny”. Data files are of course NOT included.

Because Wolfenstein 3D is showing swastika’s during ingame, we can not provide any links as it would be against german law. In particular it would be against paragraph 86 StGB “Verbreiten von Propagandamitteln verfassungswidriger Organisationen”.

Allthough this is just an engine port of Wolfenstein 3D, the game itself is still indexed.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,30,52

Pickle updated Wolf4SDL (Wolfenstein 3D SDL Port) an engine port, which can be used to play Wolfenstein 3D.

Because Wolfenstein 3D is showing swastika’s during ingame, we can not provide any links as it would be against german law. In particular it would be against paragraph 86 StGB “Verbreiten von Propagandamitteln verfassungswidriger Organisationen”.

Allthough this is just an engine port of Wolfenstein 3D, the game itself is still indexed.

As usual we are lagging with the Pandora news 🙂 Here is another update from the official blog!

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Yesterday, we were in for quite a surprise!

On Thursday, air traffic was back to a regular state – but delivery services (like UPS) have quite a backlog and need some time to catch up.
They told us, our shipment won’t arrive before early next week.

Therefore, Craig was quite surprised when he found a note left by UPS yesterday at his door that there had been a shipment for him – and that they left it to a neighbouring business.

And there he found it: The shipment from Texas. Lying around on the grass, visible for everyone – and nobody was really paying attention to it.
Quickly he delivered the packages to where they belong – and now everything is safe and sound. Still a scary thought that about half a million USD were lying around on the grass…

Anyways, that does mean: The boards, LCD, WiFi Antennas and some other minor things have arrived in the UK!

Now we need to wait for the cases. Those cases have been produced and painted, but as it looks like, UPS won’t pick them up until sometime next week (I guess they try to deliver the stalled shipments first and then start picking up new ones once their back in normal state).

As usual, we’ll let you know when UPS picked things up (well, if they tell us… as said, we didn’t know the boards would arrive yesterday ;))

http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=175

Commander Genius aka CloneKeenPlus is an engine which interprets Commander Keen 1-3 (Vorticons Series). Of course you would require the original dataflies of the game, which are not supplied with this pack.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,35,50

More news from the Pandora front!

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As you probably already found out, there was a volcanic eruption in Iceland which caused chaos to the european air traffic. No flights are currently going to and from UK. As the boards in Dallas were already picked up last week, we hoped that they were already in UK, maybe sitting at the customs, when that all happened.

Well, unfortunately, that was not the case. They didn’t go on a direct flight from Dallas to UK, but were routed via some other airport in USA. And that’s where they are still waiting for the moment. I guess 1t shipments do not go the same routes a small packages 😉

UPS is currently rerouting their shipments, we don’t have an update yet when the boards will arrive, but I’m sure UPS is working as fast as possible to get it all sorted out. The production of the remaining boards is still going on, of course.

Next, onto the cases:

Since the volcanic eruption gave us some more time, we decided to tweak the cases some mor…. naaaah! Just kidding!

The first 1000 cases have been fully produced and will be painted black! Why? Heck, because it’s worth it!

Picture: Left: Unpainted; Right: Black Painted; Bottom: Ash Grey Painted

http://www.open-pandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174

BattleJewels is a Puzzle-Action-RPG. Plays like popular jewel games, but is played head to head against a never-ending sequence of enemies. Experience points are gained towards levelling up, and gear may be purchased, and skills and spells may be learned.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/pandora.cgi?0,0,0,0,25,48