Short But Good!


PhonicUK

Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
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148
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www.phonicuk.com
From the blog:

Hi folks! You've been waiting for the weekly report, haven't you?
Well, I've been very very busy with various things, so I coldn't catch up with everything until now.
And I've got some short but really good news for you:
Dave finished every single step which was on the ToDo-List of the case!
This does mean, that the case moulding could start REALLY soon.
We're currently waiting for a review from the company - and will tell you more about the status as soon as we get some more information!

Oh, on a side note, most parts for the boards have arrived in Dallas (95%). This means that mass production for the full 4000 run can most probably start as soon as we give them a green light (which means: After we tested the 105 boards).

Awwww yeah! It feels like they're going to give the "We are shipping" announcement any week now!
 
PhonicUK said:
From the blog:

This does mean, that the case moulding could start REALLY soon.

Oh, on a side note, most parts for the boards have arrived in Dallas (95%). This means that mass production for the full 4000 run can most probably start as soon as we give them a green light

Awwww yeah! It feels like they're going to give the "We are shipping" announcement any week now!

Don't hold your breath. I see announcements in the next few weeks, but I don't see them being of the "we are shipping" variety.

After all, that's another extremely non-committal announcement from the OP guys. I'm already seeing problems happening at the molding company. Call it a hunch.

And what's this 95% business. Does that mean they have enough parts to make 95% of the 4000 Pandoras? Or does it mean that they are waiting on, for instance, a particular chip which needs to be on every board, without which they can't even produce a single Pandora?
 
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Pleng said:
After all, that's another extremely non-committal announcement from the OP guys. I'm already seeing problems happening at the molding company. Call it a hunch.

Better, IMHO, for them to be noncommittal than commit to a date which they then miss (again). But... as hunches go, that one seems very safe ;)

Pleng said:
And what's this 95% business. Does that mean they have enough parts to make 95% of the 4000 Pandoras? Or does it mean that they are waiting on, for instance, a particular chip which needs to be on every board, without which they can't even produce a single Pandora?

Worrying/irksome, isn't it? Percentages and statistics and the like are extremely open to abuse at the best of times, but without context they are nearly completely useless. Since it's ED I am a little happier that he's just not as comfortable with English and so hasn't phrased it as clearly as possible - but it would still be nice if he could clarify this point. It seems unlikely that they have all the parts for all Pandoras except the last 194.75 of them - so I SUSPECT that the "5%" is things like the "final FINAL final ultimate finished final" case/case parts... in which case it doesn't actually push the Pandora manufacturing any further forward.
 
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PhonicUK said:
Awwww yeah! It feels like they're going to give the "We are shipping" announcement any week now!
Yeeah! Reeeaaal soon now.

In fact it may happen in a coupl-ack* *ack*
 
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Errm, nope, you won't see the "We're shipping" within this week :)

It's still gonna take a while until the moulding finishes (remember the 45 days I posted a while ago? :)), then those cases needs to be shipped to Texas to be built and then shipped back to us to finally be shipped to your place :)

However, the case is still being checked and everything, and so far NO problems :)
It's looking good, folks :)
 
ED always makes good informative post compared to that video Caigix made. Does this mean that there is nothing for you to do now but wait and possibly even make a Pandora video. Hopefully we can start seeing things getting crossed off at the homepage's checklist. It seems like everything on the list can be crossed off in a short period of time.
 
Shaun. said:
ED always makes good informative post compared to that video Caigix made. Does this mean that there is nothing for you to do now but wait and possibly even make a Pandora video. Hopefully we can start seeing things getting crossed off at the homepage's checklist. It seems like everything on the list can be crossed off in a short period of time.

Well, craig is the crazy marketing guy :D And he's doing a good job here :)

Don't trust that checklist... it's not up-to-date, a lot has happened.

We're not simply waiting. We're checking the TV-Out-Cable in the meantime, fiddle around with the software, etc.
There are still lots of small things to do for us WHILE we're waiting.

The next really interesting thing will be next week - when the first 105 mass produced boards should be finished :D

Then the moulding company gets a PCB so it can optimize the case to make the PCB fit perfectly - well, and then it's all set for the mould production and the real real REAL mass production run :D
 
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EvilDragon said:
Shaun. said:
ED always makes good informative post compared to that video Caigix made. Does this mean that there is nothing for you to do now but wait and possibly even make a Pandora video. Hopefully we can start seeing things getting crossed off at the homepage's checklist. It seems like everything on the list can be crossed off in a short period of time.

Well, craig is the crazy marketing guy :D And he's doing a good job here :)

Don't trust that checklist... it's not up-to-date, a lot has happened.

We're not simply waiting. We're checking the TV-Out-Cable in the meantime, fiddle around with the software, etc.
There are still lots of small things to do for us WHILE we're waiting.

The next really interesting thing will be next week - when the first 105 mass produced boards should be finished :D

Then the moulding company gets a PCB so it can optimize the case to make the PCB fit perfectly - well, and then it's all set for the mould production and the real real REAL mass production run :D

EvilDragon, any updates about the software? As an "alternative interface" developer, that's something that is very important to me. There's not much info about how the os in the pandora works, I know it's amstrong, but it has a custom package manager, the pnd, but I can't find enough information.. And libpnd seems a bit incomplete and has bugs, at least last time I tried to use it.
 
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Hm, not yet. LibPND should work, as it works in Angström (not Armstrong :D)
We're currently concentrating on the driver part, as that's more important (as Angström is already running nice, and normal software can easily enhanced by most devs... at least, much more easy than the kernel drivers :D)

There was a thread about how the PND packages are setup... and AFAIK there's also a program which packs up those PNDs...
 
ED - How long is the estimated final Pandora assembly scheduled to take? Extrapolating from your last post, I'm guessing the cases would be arriving in the UK mid Sept (assuming shipment by airfreight). I'm guessing (again) that I'll have my Pandora mid Oct.

Henceforth '3 Months' is the new '2 Months'
 
EvilDragon said:
Hm, not yet. LibPND should work, as it works in Angström (not Armstrong :D )
We're currently concentrating on the driver part, as that's more important (as Angström is already running nice, and normal software can easily enhanced by most devs... at least, much more easy than the kernel drivers :D )

There was a thread about how the PND packages are setup... and AFAIK there's also a program which packs up those PNDs...

Thanks for the answer. At least is some info :) I'll take a look again on those threads. Perhaps I feel like I don't have enough info because on this forum people is always discussing and it's hard to find the official info between a lot of opinions :) well it's hard to explain what I mean with English not been my native language.. :D

Anyway perhaps is better to wait to the Pandora to be finished, and then and only then, code the os-dependant things. At this moment I'm building a development enviroment on my mac, as my previous enviroment was gentoo linux but I have "switched" :lol: Pangea development is looking good, but it have been re-done from scratch because of new ideas :)
 
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ED could you solve the "5% puzzle" for us please? Are you missing 55 of the parts for each and every Pandora (possibly excepting the 105) or are you missing all of the parts for 5% of the Pandoras or was that just a BS figure that meant "We're nearly there!"?

Ta,
 
Nation.A.List said:
ED - How long is the estimated final Pandora assembly scheduled to take? Extrapolating from your last post, I'm guessing the cases would be arriving in the UK mid Sept (assuming shipment by airfreight). I'm guessing (again) that I'll have my Pandora mid Oct.

Hm, really hard to do any guesstimations. But your guess doesn't sound too bad. If anything works out nicely, it should even be quicker than that, it might work out in September :)
As said, moulding takes 45 days (as the company helps us making the case perfect). They need a board for that, which should be finished within the next few days (one of the mass production boards). However, I don't what they can do already WITHOUT the board. They could do stability simulations, for example. So it won't probably be 45 days from when they receive the board. It might be 30 days when they receive the PCB, it might be 40... depending on what they can do without the PCB already :)
We'll see that when it's time - and I'll keep you informed :)

My birthday wish for this year definately is that we successfully shipped the Pandora and have that all behind us - and my birthday is on October 17th... ;)

efegea said:
Thanks for the answer. At least is some info :) I'll take a look again on those threads. Perhaps I feel like I don't have enough info because on this forum people is always discussing and it's hard to find the official info between a lot of opinions :) well it's hard to explain what I mean with English not been my native language.. :D

I know what you mean - it's also not my native language :)
And it's really hard making myself clear (I hope I did that right above :D) when it comes to the Pandora... people tend to be very picky :D Therefore, some things could lead to misunderstandings.

Anyway perhaps is better to wait to the Pandora to be finished, and then and only then, code the os-dependant things. At this moment I'm building a development enviroment on my mac, as my previous enviroment was gentoo linux but I have "switched" :lol: Pangea development is looking good, but it have been re-done from scratch because of new ideas :)

Cool. I liked the GUI I saw, really nice and clean.
Together with cpasjustes launcher and native Angström, the Pandora should have a launcher that pleases everybody :)


Monk said:
ED could you solve the "5% puzzle" for us please? Are you missing 55 of the parts for each and every Pandora (possibly excepting the 105) or are you missing all of the parts for 5% of the Pandoras or was that just a BS figure that meant "We're nearly there!"?

No, at that time, a few minor parts were still on their way... I don't know exactly which ones, but I guess the analogue nubs for the big mass production, etc.
Should all be there soon (if they aren't already :))
 
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EvilDragon said:
My birthday wish for this year definately is that we successfully shipped the Pandora and have that all behind us - and my birthday is on October 17th... ;)
Hold on -- that's more than a couple of months away.

You're not supposed to give promises more than a couple of months away - and definitely no firm dates! :eek:

I hope they ship before the twelve month anniversary. Any later & I expect a complementary copy of Craig's pandora biography:
Code:
"At least I'm not dead, but give me a couple of months"
 
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At least this is progress that is clear. Barring no mishaps (Maybe the case manufacturers need to tweak something and the date extends another two weeks), we should expect Mid-Oct.

Hopefully, (hopefully), this time window will be enough that the UI and drivers are working very well. In the meantime, I am enjoying my Samsung i8910 (OMAP 3430) and I get a feeling for the power of the device, but in the same sense I greatly want to have software that fully exploits the power of the chip. Which I'm eagerly anticipating when the Pandora gets in my hands.
 
Are you ****ing kidding me, October now? *******!!! I'm really starting to lose hope for this project.

Edit: I need to stop checking in on this, maybe make it a monthly visit or something until it arrives so I stop geting signals leading me to think maybe it will come out in time for whatever at that point.
 
Phawx said:
At least this is progress that is clear. Barring no mishaps (Maybe the case manufacturers need to tweak something and the date extends another two weeks), we should expect Mid-Oct.

At one point 'Barring no mishaps' it was due to be March. Another point, 'Barring no mishaps' it was due to be June. What makes this 'Barring no mishaps' any different to any of the others?
 
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I hate to be negative, the guys are doing something pretty huge... how many people MAKE their own games console/netbook? It just would be nice if through the process the guys could give a more varied answer e.g. Best Possible time September... likely time, October, worst case time, December. Then people who signed up don't feel like they're being mislead in any way.
 
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