An opinion consensus before i RMA please


andyhamer

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Jan 4, 2010
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Location
Workington, Cumbria, (UK)
I've now had my Pandora for a little over a day, and despite what my recent frequent "i need help" posts might suggest i am loving it.


I do have a few issues with it though, and would appreciate some advice from those who have had more experience with their units before i decide whether or not to (reluctantly) send it back.


Firstly (and the lesser problem, still annoying though) there is hardly any resistance to the hinge, i can't leave the screen at any angle it just flops limply to a flat position (i would consider a DIY solution for this, as long as it wasn't too convoluted) and the second is the frequent complete lock/ups freezes (over 20 times this has happened both when overclocked/overvolted & stock) sometimes launching an app/emulator, sometimes inserting/removing SD, and sometimes when the Pandora is just idling (could the SD cards be a problem 2x Play.com class 4 32GB bought from Amazon) any ideas?


Thanks.
 
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The screen issue can be fixed by one of the following:


1. Place a piece of paper in the gap of the hinge to tighten things up a bit


2. Place a small blob of Blu-Tack behind the screen to keep if from falling over.


The frequent freezes are strange... How much space do you have free on your NAND?
 
Firstly (and the lesser problem, still annoying though) there is hardly any resistance to the hinge, i can't leave the screen at any angle it just flops limply to a flat position (i would consider a DIY solution for this, as long as it wasn't too convoluted)
I don't think this is an RMA-able offense. It is designed to only be open to that one point. Some people are lucky and have a stickier hinge, but I don't think you can really complain if you can't, same with overclocking: some are just going to do better than others.

and the second is the frequent complete lock/ups freezes
Have you tried removing the battery, waiting a few minutes for systems to lose their settings and restore to default, and then dropping it back in? Probably not the issue (since you talk about overvolting) but sometimes the OPP level gets "stuck" and this is a quick way to fix it.
 
make sure your opp level is not limited to 3. If you OC to 900mhz it MUST be at least at OPP4
If you want to change your OPP level (for example to 5), go to Menu->Settings->CPU-Settings, and check that the maximum available OPP is 5.


Then go to Menu->System->Terminal and type:



Code:
echo 5 | sudo tee -a /proc/pandora/cpu_opp_max
 
The screen issue can be fixed by one of the following:


1. Place a piece of paper in the gap of the hinge to tighten things up a bit


2. Place a small blob of Blu-Tack behind the screen to keep if from falling over.


The frequent freezes are strange... How much space do you have free on your NAND?


use Panasonic SD formatter


that's normal hinge behaviour, sooner or later


no need for RMA imo


make sure your opp level is not limited to 3. If you OC to 900mhz it MUST be at least at OPP4

How do i find how much space i have on the NAND? (and how much should it be)


The SD formatter was the first thing i did (before using the cards with the Pandora)


Strangely i did Overclock/volt with the respective apps & since then the Overvolt app has vanished but the Overclock one remains, can you download it as a seperate PND?


Strangely VBA 1.7.2-1 runs very, very slow for me (in fact the slowest of anything iv'e tried incl N64 games) any ideas why?
 
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To check how much space is left on your NAND, go into the file manager, click on 'File System' (and the left hand side), and then in the main part, right-click on the background (the white bits between the folders) and then click properties. I have ~100MB free.
 
To check how much space is left on your NAND, go into the file manager, click on 'File System' (and the left hand side), and then in the main part, right-click on the background (the white bits between the folders) and then click properties. I have ~100MB free.

Thanks, but how do i right click?
 
run from terminal: /usr/pandora/scripts/op_cpusettings.sh

"no such file or directory exists"

^ Slide the right nub to the right.

nothing registering i'm afraid


Thanks to everyone here that is taking the time to help me, it's greatly appreciated.. despite the seeming evidence to the contrary, i have used electronic devices & computers before (my house is filled with them) not quite sure why i seem to be struggling so much with the Pandora.
 
Further to what Alerino says above, do you have any other SD Cards to reflash with? If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that Play.com simply rebadges their cards (just as Kingston and several others do), and it may be that the particular card you've used isn't suited to reflashing.
 
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reflash your system, the scripts are supposed to be there, you must have done something naughty

Seriously..! this will be the 2nd time (in less that 24hrs) i can assure you, apart from overclock/volt everything else was strictly by the book.

Further to what Alerino says above, do you have any other SD Cards to reflash with? If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that Play.com simply rebadges their cards (just as Kingston and several others do), and it may be that the particular card you've used isn't suited to reflashing.


I've just found a class 6 Transcend 32gb (bought from Amazon, if i remember correctly) will that do?
 
It might not do anything at all if your unit does have a problem, but if you were previously flashing from a bad SD card, that could explain some of the problems.
 
If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that Play.com simply rebadges their cards (just as Kingston and several others do), and it may be that the particular card you've used isn't suited to reflashing.
I didn't think that Kingston simply rebranded other people's cards (but rather used other people's chips and controllers in their own cards) but I'm pretty sure you're right about Play.com branded cards. Plus they've also been suspiciously cheap historically.


It may not be anything to do with the cards, but I've known all kinds of portably hardware behave very strangely when presented with peculiar cards (including Nokia phones using Nokia branded cards!). I guess it's different to PCs because between a CPU and an SD slot on a PC you've got a north bridge chip and a south bridge and probably a couple of other intermediate chips, wheras on pocketable electronics the SD cards plug more or less straight into the CPU, so doing funny things with voltages and timings can take the whole system down is any number of interesting ways.
 
If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that Play.com simply rebadges their cards (just as Kingston and several others do), and it may be that the particular card you've used isn't suited to reflashing.
I didn't think that Kingston simply rebranded other people's cards (but rather used other people's chips and controllers in their own cards) but I'm pretty sure you're right about Play.com branded cards. Plus they've also been suspiciously cheap historically.
Also, you at least get a lifetime warranty/guarantee with Kingston cards, making them preferable.
 
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Houston we have (another) problem, i now cannot shutdown the Pandora via the usual method (ie: within the menu's, tried both Minimenu & XFCE multiple times) all it does is an instantaneous reboot, this is all getting a bit crazy now i can't remember ever having this many issues with a device before.
 
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Do you have the AC adapter plugged in? If so, that is normal behaviour because the unit needs to be on in order to charge.
 
I have re-flashed AGAIN! (this has got to be some kind of peverse record after only having the thing for just over a day) and it is STILL! freezing, please does anyone know what is causing this & how it can be eradicated?
 
I have re-flashed AGAIN! (this has got to be some kind of peverse record after only having the thing for just over a day) and it is STILL! freezing, please does anyone know what is causing this & how it can be eradicated?
So it's freezing even after a reflash and without installing *anything*? Yeah, I think it might be RMA time.
 
I have re-flashed AGAIN! (this has got to be some kind of peverse record after only having the thing for just over a day) and it is STILL! freezing, please does anyone know what is causing this & how it can be eradicated?
So it's freezing even after a reflash and without installing *anything*? Yeah, I think it might be RMA time.

Yeah, all i installed was the pnd_run_installer after that.. freeze, I did Overvolt/clock first though: OPP 4 & 700mhz, could it be that my unit is not able to cope with Overvolting & overclocking i think i have read that some units perform better than others at this, could this freezing behaviour be caused by a too high volt/clock combo?


I'm thinking that maybe i should just run the thing at stock for a while, and wave bye-bye to the main reason i bought it: PS1 & N64 emulation.
 
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