Pandora almost ready for launch

[Midna]

The OP called the Pandora a 'super gaming device', although the youtube video of the machine only showed some Genesis games being emulated...What makes this thing so awesome to pick it over a psp or ds?

900mhz (overclocked) of raw power in a handheld the size of the DS Phat. This thing is for the seriously tech-minded nerds. Like me.

 

[Ferrariman]

It should be able to pull off PSX emulation to some extent.

 

[mkoo]

I don't know about about "Ultimate Gaming Device" part but sounds nice as a UMPC.

 

[Midna]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ROFL at your sig. I actually saw all those old Star Trek episodes. Memories...

You guys seen the progress the DaedalusX64 team are making on psp n64 emulation? Now imagine a port oif that running on the pandora. Now imagine playing Paper Mario and Ocarina of Time on the bus.

 

[Extreme Coder]

It should be able to pull off PSX emulation to some extent.

You know, I would be HUGELY disappointed by the Pandora if it does not perfect PSX emulation, considering that, you know, the PSP is underpowered compared to it, and emulates the PSP perfectly fine..
You know what, scratch that. I want semi-perfect N64 emulation, when PSP can get Super Mario 64 working at almost full speed, no reason for the Pandora not to.

 

[m3rox]

It should be able to pull off PSX emulation to some extent.

You know, I would be HUGELY disappointed by the Pandora if it does not perfect PSX emulation, considering that, you know, the PSP is underpowered compared to it, and emulates the PSP perfectly fine..
You know what, scratch that. I want semi-perfect N64 emulation, when PSP can get Super Mario 64 working at almost full speed, no reason for the Pandora not to.

The PSP doesn't emulate PSX, it has built-in support for it.

 

[p1ngpong]

You know the GP2X emulated a few PSX games really well, I dont see why a far far more powerful machine cant. On paper the Pandora is the most powerful handheld ever made, I dont see where all this criticism and doubt is coming from, from what Ive seen this is a hugely impressive piece of hardware. Give it a chance to show us what it can do guys.

 

[Extreme Coder]

It should be able to pull off PSX emulation to some extent.

You know, I would be HUGELY disappointed by the Pandora if it does not perfect PSX emulation, considering that, you know, the PSP is underpowered compared to it, and emulates the PSP perfectly fine..
You know what, scratch that. I want semi-perfect N64 emulation, when PSP can get Super Mario 64 working at almost full speed, no reason for the Pandora not to.

The PSP doesn't emulate PSX, it has built-in support for it.

Please explain that to me. Because as far as I know, the PSP uses POPStation, a PSX emulator written by Sony, and we can hack that to use our own games.

 

[Lumstar]

Isn't that technically not an emulator though? I thought it used some other method, like converting the PSX ISO into a PSP executable?

 

[Midna]

Isn't that technically not an emulator though? I thought it used some other method, like converting the PSX ISO into a PSP executable?

Technically it is an emulator. Even more technically, I believe they used some trick to make it work perfectly, and that's why it's limited in the special features department.

 

[Extreme Coder]

Isn't that technically not an emulator though? I thought it used some other method, like converting the PSX ISO into a PSP executable?

Technically it is an emulator. Even more technically, I believe they used some trick to make it work perfectly, and that's why it's limited in the special features department.

I'd love to know what tricks you're talking about (even a link would be nice).

I think the reason why it's limited in the special features department, is because Sony developed it, I'm not sure what type of special features would they add (Anti-Aliasing would be nice, but I don't know if the PSP would be capable of that along with the game itself)

 

[Midna]

Isn't that technically not an emulator though? I thought it used some other method, like converting the PSX ISO into a PSP executable?

Technically it is an emulator. Even more technically, I believe they used some trick to make it work perfectly, and that's why it's limited in the special features department.

I'd love to know what tricks you're talking about (even a link would be nice).

I think the reason why it's limited in the special features department, is because Sony developed it, I'm not sure what type of special features would they add (Anti-Aliasing would be nice, but I don't know if the PSP would be capable of that along with the game itself)

No links, just what other forum users have told me. I could be totally wrong, but it makes sense to me.

 

[DeMoN]

If it can emulate N64 and PS1 perfectly then I'll still be impressed and may even consider buying one. I really don't expect this to emulate PS2, DS, PSP, etc.

And it's about damn time too.

 

[Midna]

If it can emulate N64 and PS1 perfectly then I'll still be impressed and may even consider buying one. I really don't expect this to emulate PS2, DS, PSP, etc.

And it's about damn time too.

Well duh. you can't expect this thing to emulate consoles like the ps2, which is a bit more powerful than it.

 

[gibberish]

they've said right from the start that PSX emulation will have 100% compatiblity and all games will run at full speed. from the demo's weve seen so far i believe it - lots of games running at 80 - 120fps with little optimization and hardware accelaration not yet fully implemented.

i do think n64 emulation will be almost perfect, but since there are no devs currently working on it then we will have to wait a bit.

whoever the guy was that got NullDC running on the PSP has said they're going to port it, but they've made no promises as to how well it will run (likely not very well at all). someone else said theyre going to make a POC PSP emulator, but the chance of any playable games are 0... it will just be for POC. DS emulation is possible, but will be likely be awkward to play - have to wait and see.

anything newer than these wont be possible. saturn probably wont either.

 

[cutterjohn]

Sigh, yet another post in a thread that may have gone slightly offish, but yes now with all the netbooks around the Pandora is a bit of a joke. If I were looking purely at portability and wanted something that could emulate just about everything that the Pandora can plus PS1, I'd go for a PSP slim.

Anyways netbooks:
That Raon is a POS. The ASUS N10J is the way to go w/a 160GB hdd/9cell battery/GMA 950(IIRC) AND discrete 9400M GS/Intel Atom N270 @ 1.6GHZ(has a built in turbo mode, but I forget how much ASUS overclocks it)

Now, if you google up N10 User Forum you can find a section about overclocking the N10J, which many can be stably overclocked to 2.1GHz(some only manage about 1.8GHZ though). That plus the 9400MGS means that it can actually run quit e afew games, even Fallout 3 at playable rates if not highest settings. (The overclock is done by a CLI utility, so you could easily make a batch file to turn it on and off, and you'll need to run it at least once to turn it as it's lost after powerdown. It ups the FSB speed.)

The 9400M GS is hot switchable with the embedded Intel GMA GPU which you can use for extended battery runtime if all you're doing is web surfing, or other non-GPU intensive tasks or ones which the Intel GMA can adequately handle.

The drawback is memory, as IIRC the max that people have reported working was 2GB.

Base price of the useful N10Js is c. $550 IIRC, but beware as IIRC one version of the N10J lacks the 9400M GS.

In the future the nVidia ION netbook platform looks promising, however they don't have any takers yet. The AMD version is a joke, while the Cyrix one could be nice as their CPU is slightly better than an Atom, although their low clock speeds remove that advantage, but they also use a discrete PowerVR based GPU in their design. There are a couple netbooks that use this, can't remember them offhand, and I think that they're pushing a newer platform this with a few more vendors.

 

[Arm73]

If this thing could run XP and all the 8/16 bit emulators plus a decent DOSBOX emulation ( and the likes of SCUMMVM and even MAME) then I'll get it right away.
There are tons of old games that I promised myself to play one day but I only have time late at night and I like to play while laying on my bed.
That's why I like the DS.
But the thing is somebody will have to write emulators for it or port them from the PC ( which will make them less efficient ).
And also who know when those emulators will come and if they will be regularly updated and supported.
It's got a nice resolution and a touch screen which would make it a dream to play old point and click PC games, plus the keyboard will be useful to fully emulate older computers such as the Amiga, C64 and even the Spectrum, and a nice joypad incorporated to play all kind of games,but still, it depends at how well it will be supported.
Again, I have a few favorite emulators on the PC and if I could run those on the Pandora I'd be willing to get it, and the SDHC slots would make it easy to move stuff back and forth, so I guess I'll wait and see.
For the moment I bookmarked that nice page with the Pandora Database, and when it will start to fill up I'll look into it.
There is a great potential, and I don't find the price unfair,