It’s been over two years since the project started, and about 14 months since they took pre-orders, but the first mass-produced Pandoras are finally being assembled.  What a long, strange trip it’s been.  Video here.

My Interview with One Last Continue

I recently did an interview with one of the writers for the gaming news site One Last Continue about the Pandora.  If you’re at all curious about the “computer thing” that I’ve been working on, this is it.  We’re getting really close to starting up manufacturing, so expect to see more posted here when it finally ships.

There are some videos here and here of the latest prototype running several games and applications.  The official website is openpandora.org.

Here’s the latest render of the Pandora handheld system.  The keypad is greatly improved and the general aestetecs are coming along nicely.  The team working on Playstation emulation says that they’ve gotten framerates up to 200fps on FFVII without using any Pandora optimized code - which is amazing.  Other devs have successfully overclocked the CPU above 900MHz with no ill effects.  This system is going to be even better than I hoped.

Pandora Update
Much has been going on with the Pandora project.  Above is the first video of the actual Pandora hardware doing something.  In this case, it’s just showing a slideshow, but that’s better than nothing.  Beta version boards have just started shipping to known developers so they can start coding for the system.  There is already a working media player (MPlayer)that supports just about every format and container available, as well as a working SNES emulator.  Still no official word on what the UI will look like, but there are plenty of mockups floating around the forum.  If you’re interested in what the Pandora is likely to be capable of, check out the official wiki.  Pay particular attention to the FAQ.  I wrote most of it.

The head guys are still shooting for a June/July launch of the final product, and I can’t wait.

Pandora Gets One Step Closer to Completion

The Pandora dev team has finally made some much needed updates to the website - including this pic of the nearly finished PCB.

If you missed my original post, Pandora is an open source project to make the most powerful handheld gaming console / palmtop computing platform ever.  The system has the potential to emulate Playstation and Nintendo 64 games (and all older systems) at full speed, as well as audio/video playback, web browsing, and other mobile computing tasks.

I’ve been following the project very closely, and you can be sure I’ll post significant updates as they occur.

Pandora Handheld Gaming and Entertainment System

This is the hottest thing since… um.. something that is really hot.  Really.  I have not been this excited about a gadget since the GP32, and this is a huge improvement in all areas.  The fact that this unit is being designed and produced by 3 guys who are basically just hobbiests makes it all the more awesome.  It would be the American dream, except they’re all European.