User manual

Pandora FTW!

So your Pandora just arrived after being in the post for two months. Jolly good! But now that it's actually here, what on earth do you do with it? Don't panic! Let's take a look at what's included in the box(so you don't miss anything!) and then hop on over to setting it up for that extended Ms. Pacman marathon I know you've been waiting for!

Also, don't forget to hit up GP32X for questions/info/apps/fun/discussion!

Safety Information

First of all, let's get this out of the way. DO NOT EAT YOUR PANDORA! It will be hard enough to break your teeth, and it may or may not work after digestion.

It is wise not to play with your Pandora on the roof, but if you must, take proper precautions such as strapping it down and not using it on the roof.

The Pandora contains small parts that could be swallowed by children(and let's face it, we're all pretty much children the day we see our Pandora on our doorstep), such as the stylus or an odd button or screw.

Keep the Pandora in normal temperatures under 140F/60C. The battery is a standard Lithium Polymer battery. Do not dispose of in fire or water. Do not dissasemble, crush, or puncture the battery, or it may explode! Do not short circuit external contacts! Dispose of properly, please.

The Pandora contains a 4.3" touchscreen. Although you can touch it, do not hit it too hard or you may risk breaking it. Also, the touchscreen can(gasp!) display 16.7 million colors. That's 16.7 million ways to injure an epileptic person, so please! Exercise caution and common sense when handling the screen.

Warranty Information

By law there is a one year warranty, and the developers have stated they will replace faulty hardware. LCDs with noticeable dead pixels will also be replaced. Some more detailed info would be nice, I don't want to spread inaccurate warranty info...:)

Box Contents

When you first open Pandora's box, a slew of demons and raging emotions may forcibly leave the box. This is normal. After that, you may or may not be surprised to find a:

• Pandora console
• Stylus (located in stylus slot on the side of the Pandora)
• Battery
• DC Wall Charger
• TV-Out Cable (ONLY if you ordered it separately)
• Carrying Case (ONLY if you ordered it separately)

After you take those things out, you may find a sliver of Hope left over. It's best to keep it, as you never know when you could use some Hope.

Specifications

Highlights

• ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
• 430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
• PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
• 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
• Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
• Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
• Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• Around 10+ Hours battery life

Specs

• Texas Instruments OMAP3530 processor at 600MHz (officially)
• 256MB DDR-333 SDRAM
• 512MB NAND FLASH memory
• IVA2+ audio and video processor using TI's DaVinci™ technology (430MHz C64x DSP)
• ARM® Cortex™-A8 superscalar microprocessor core
• PowerVR SGX530 (110MHz officially) OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant 3D hardware
• integrated Wifi 802.11b/g (up to 18dBm output)
• integrated Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (3Mbps) (Class 2, + 4dBm)
• 800x480 resolution LTPS LCD with resistive touch screen, 4.3" widescreen, 16.7 million colors (300 cd/m2 brightness, 450:1 contrast ratio)
• Dual analog controllers
• Full gamepad controls plus shoulder buttons
• Dual SDHC card slots (up to 64GB of storage currently)
• headphone output up to 150mW/channel into 16 ohms, 99dB SNR (up to 24 bit/48KHz)
• TV output (composite and S-Video)
• Internal microphone plus ability to connect external microphone through headset
• Stereo line level inputs and outputs
• 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
• USB 2.0 OTG port (1.5/12/480Mbps) with capability to charge device
• USB 2.0 HOST port (480Mbps) capable of providing the full 500mA to attached devices (examples include USB memory, keyboard, mouse, 3G modem, GPS)
• up to two externally accessible UARTs and/or four PWM signals for hardware hacking, robot control, debugging, etc.
• un-brickable design with integrated boot loader for safe code experimentation
• Power and hold switch useful for "instant on" and key lockout to aid in media player applications on the go
• Runs on the Linux operating system (2.6.x)
• Dimensions: 140x83.4x27.5mm
• Weight: 335g (with 4000mAh battery)

Features

The Pandora is a mixture between a PC and a gaming console. That's why it has gaming controls (Buttons, DPad and analogue nubs). It is fast enough to emulate many other systems, run a full desktop, access the internet via FireFox and play games such as Quake3. However, it is not as big as a netbook. Believe it or not, it will fit in your pocket. It's a bit bigger than the Nintendo DS.

First Time Use

Now that you've opened the box, let's set this thing up! Place the battery inside the battery well on the back of the Pandora, making sure the contacts touch(the little silvery metal bits, it's easy). Snap on the battery cover and you're all set!

Charging

Before you begin using your shiny(or in this case, matte) new Pandora, you must charge the battery first! (I assume?) Simply plug in your wall charger into an outlet, or optionally use a mini-USB cable connected to a computer or wall adapter. For extreme silliness, plug your Pandora into an already charged Pandora, and charge it from that! But not really.

First Boot

Once your Pandora is ready, turn it on. (It may turn on automatically after battery insertion, not sure?) The OS will take some time to boot up for the first time, this is normal. After it is booted, a series of settings will pop up allowing you to alter your Pandora to your liking. I could use a bit more material for this section...

Calibrating The Touchscreen

The touchscreen in your new Pandora device isn't psychic! You have to tell it what to do, and in order to do that effectively, you need to calibrate it. Simply navigate to settings>screen>calibration wizard(I made stuff up if you can't tell) and follow the onscreen instructions. You may have to recalibrate the screen from time to time as well.

Basic Use

On the desktop, you will see many(or few) things. On the bottom left you have your applications menu, similar to the Windows start menu. Clicking it brings up a list of all installed applications, or at least the ones configured to show up in the menu. To the right may be some icons, these serve as shortcuts to commonly used applications. Next to that you have your taskbar, which as you might have guessed, lists all running applications in your current workspace. To the right of the taskbar you have your workspaces, think of these as multiple desktops. By default you have two to switch from. Applications running in one workspace will not be visible in the other, so you can effectively hide your Ms. Pacman game from your boss at work, because there's no way you're not going to go for the gold, even at work! Finally there are a few more icons that deal with TV-Out, network connectivity, etc. and some running applications may place an icon there as well. And to the right of THOSE, you have your time. Because time flies when you're using your Pandora! Badum tsh. Aaaaand to the right of that, you have a little icon that, when clicked, displays all running applications. Finally, I'd just like to reiterate this--EVERYTHING is customizable! We'll get to that section later, but for now, let's just check out the applications on your Pandora.

Applications

Where Can I Get More Apps?

There are many ways to get more applications onto your Pandora.

• The easiest way is to browse the Pandora App Store, where you can download free or paid apps from ones of developers! To download, navigate to an app, pay for it if you must, and hit the 'download' button. Select where you want to save it, and you're done! Because I assume it will be in .pnd format.

• There is the good ol' Pandora File Archive.

• There are nice repositories, such as the Angstrom ARM Repository, or...

• The Pandora includes the package manager ipkg.

• Also, people may upload their apps to weird crevices in the net, so be on the lookout!

Introduction To .PNDs

What Are .PNDs?

A .pnd ("pandora") file is an application (game, word processor, emulator, whatever.) More accurately, it is a full application bundled up into a single file; think of it like a zip, with a relatively well defined internal structure.

The pnd-file system was designed so you could use an application without the hastle of installation or uninstallation, or even having to organize it yourself if you don't want to. You just download or obtain the pnd-file, and use it.

More details can be found in the "libpnd hub" part of the wiki, but that is more oriented to techies and developers.

How do I run a PND-application?

Put your pnd-files in your SD (see below for some suggestions where.)

A pnd-file is usually invoked in one of the following ways

- browse to the file using the directory browser, and click to run it. (.pnd files are file-associated to another program, pnd_run which knows how to run them.) This lets you organize pnd-files in directories of your choice on the device NAND or SD.

- in PMenu, the applications will be shown by name; you can just select and run them from the menu

- for pnd-files placed into /pandora/menu on SD, the application will be shown in the Start menu on the device; use your stylus or buttons to invoke it

- for pnd-files placed into /pandora/desktop or /pandora/apps on SD, they will show up automarically on your desktop; invoke them with the stylus, your finger, or controls as you see fit

Where Do .PNDs Go?

Put .pnd-files into specific directories if you want them to show up in the Start menu or on your Pandora desktop, or in Pmenu.

You can put them anywhere you like in internal NAND or SD, if you wish to organize them yourself and launch them with taps.

/pandora/desktop -> pnd files show up on the desktop

/pandora/menu -> show up in the Start menu (by the developers suggested categories.)

/pandora/apps -> show up in the desktop, and in Pmenu

Where does my data go? How do I make files visible to the applications?

An application normally will see what is contained within the pnd-file, or your personal data created with the tool; it can of course look anywhere on the SD or device internal memory. For example a Quake port might expect to see extra level files in /quake, or give you a way of selecting a path to put files in.. or it might just expect it to be in your personal data folders, or in the pnd-file itself. Its up to the application, with suggestions in the pnd-guidelines for developers.

The first time a pnd-application is run, an "app data" directory is created for it; anything that app data folder contains will be visible to the application as if it was in the pnd-file (and in fact, this lets you override files in the pnd-file without modifying the .pnd itself, which could be handy.) If your app creates a file "foo", it'll show up in /pandora/appdata/appname-id as "foo". The actual appdata folder name depends on the name used by the developer, but should generally look like application-name and some funny number afterwards. It should be easy to spot.

ex: Quake 1 will probably put score or save data in /pandora/appdata/quake1-123/ or somesuch.

Q: How do I make ROMs available to an emulator?

For something like ROMs, hopefully a developer consensus will lead either to a canonicle location, or a convention of having a directory pickre or browser present, so that ROMs can be stored in SD locations of your choice; doesn't strike me as something that should be in a pnd-file, or to be pretended to be in a pnd-file with appdata tricks.

Q: How do I make pak-files available to Quake?

For some add-ons or data needed for a game, the developer may require it to be 'in the main application path'; as mentioned above, just drop it into the appdata folder and the app will just see it.

More Info About .PNDs

Visit libpnd_hub for more information!

Oops! I Borked My Pandora!

Fear not, young netizen! Your Pandora was designed to be unbrickable, so unless you used the ancient art of alchemy to physically turn your Pandora into a brick (or you just broke the hardware inside), you should be okay!

Pandora FAQ

Silly goose, go to the FAQ page for more detailed information.