Production Timeline

Pandora Production Timeline

Please feel free to either contribute on the talk page, or update here. I am adding some milestones which I can't easily track down the dates for - hopefully others will have bookmarked key forum posts, etc.

2007

December: Pandora section in GP32X forums opened

2008

September 30: 3000 units were made available for pre-order, resulting in server overload and crashes.

Early October: Craig's bank account frozen. Later on, refunds start to be sent out [1]

October?: Pre-order extended to 4000 units.

The first mention of this (that I have found so far) is in a post by Chip.

October 30: Amount of ram increased to 256MB (from 128MB), NAND increased to 512MB (from 256MB). [2]

2009

January: Re-paying for pre-orders begins [3]

Renders of the case shown off [4]

Pre-ordering re-opened to fill places freed up after the great banking event. Only cash/bank transfer payments were accepted, no credit payments.

Prototype caseworks received.

Populated PCBs shown off.

2010

May 22: First shipments start[5].

Helpers on the production line seem to have been paid in pandora, first one here[6]. By June 25th, the parts which arrived in the first shipment were exhausted, with approximately 400 shipped to GBAX customers, and 200 to EvilDragon's customers in mainland Europe. These shipments went to people who pre-ordered in the first 1.5 hours (roughly). Some 50 odd units shipped with only one fully working nub (to pre-orderers who choose to take one in order to skip the queue). Of these, 5 were left over that nobody had chosen to take and auctioned on eBay by Craig for £279.99. There were an additional 7 units with both nubs not fully functional[7]. These were offered at £150.00 on the boards and seem all to have sold at that price. The highest price on eBay for one of the first ~600 units was ~$1600???

July 1: 2nd Batch Pre-order emails start to be sent out.

2nd batch is priced[8] at £279.99/340 EUR (includes VAT) or $349. Ordering from the 2nd batch is offered as a way of getting a Pandora before Christmas, the shipment of the first 4000 predicted to complete around October 2010 with a continuous progression into the 2nd batch at this point.

Mid-July: Production is stalled to help prevent building more units with faulty nubs.

See the "Nubs" page for details.

Aug 04: Another 100 from the first batch start to ship[9]

Along with a few more one-nub units, these are the first units to ship since the nub tolerance problems were identified and the factory re-supplied with 100% tested nubs. (requiring some previously 'ready to ship' boards to be re-worked) This small shipment was used for approval before any more populated boards were shipped from the factory.

Aug 13: Another 200 are in the process of being built[10][11]

Sep 20: 100 scheduled to ship[12], taking production past the 1000 mark.

These are still using nubs from the 1st production run, tested to select good ones. New prototype nubs are still in final testing. Since 150 of these shipped out of sequence (with faults), this equates to roughly 600 in the GBAX queue, and an hour into pre-ordering.

Oct 6:2000 cases arrive in the UK[13].

This allows first phase assembly to re-commence (displays in lids, etc). Still waiting for updated nubs to be prototyped and produced (although populated PCBs are waiting).

2011

Jan 5 :First Pandora from a batch of 350 boards that shipped over Christmas has been delivered[14]

These are the first boards produced after production was halted whilst the nubs were improved and re-designed. PCB production has continued with at least another 400 ready to be shipped from Texas.