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).

Hi, it's time again for the weekly report on what has happened.
Craig finally resolved the customs issue, so the parts (parts for 2000 Pandoras) finally are moving towards their destination.
The other 2000 parts did pass the customs without any problems a few days earlier, btw.
So, first test mass production is still due to be finished on July 20th (you know, the ones we ordered a while ago) and all the parts are also on their way - which means: COMPLETE mass production of the boards could be happening soon!

The final puzzle piece for the final unit is the case. What's the status with that, you might ask?
Well, as said a while ago, Dave doesn't have too much time at the moment, as he is very busy with his normal job. However, he continues to work on the case, day by day. And I'm really happy that the To-Do-List has really grown short.
So short, that he might even finish it within the next few days! There's a light at the end of the tunnel! Finally, I can see it!

On to some other questions and stuff I've seen on the boards: A lot of guys are asking what happened to the video craig promised to you.
Well, as you all know, he planned shooting a long one. That does take time, though. And during that, the custom problems happened. Craig spent all days trying to resolve those issues... so he couldn't spend any time on the video.
- And I guess you wouldn't want more delay because of the video, right?
Also, there's not too we could show you: You've seen the working prototype... and that is the last status before the FINAL unit is ready. I know you love videos... and the time between the protoype and the final unit seems endless - but there's not much we can do except wait for it. Those things do take time and we also have to wait for the boards and cases to be finished.
Heh - you know what's funny? I read somewhere on the boards that for some time moves so slowly while waiting for the Pandora... it's the complete opposite for us. Time seems to fly by. Whoops, another week gone.

Let's wait together, shall we? I know there are some OMAP3 devices coming - but none will be as open and supported for homebrew and Linux as the Pandora is.

Hiya, it's EvilDragon again.

I got some more fresh news, and those are not about delaying or anything like that.

As you have all read, the only driver problem is WiFi. To put things short (and as they are pretty complicated), here is what was our problem:

There's a closed-source driver available for the WiFi chip, but we didn't at all want to use it (hey, we're OPENPandora, not ClosedPandora). Then we found an OpenSource project for that WiFi chip - we used it and it worked well at the beginning (you might remember some WiFi testing videos).
But that driver was poorly coded - and it did have more and more problems. We can't even get to work it anymore with the latest Angström image, only with our testing rootfs (which is good, as we do know that the hardware is fine.

Well, DJWillis wanted to take on the WiFi task - and it's already looking really good. He found another driver which should work way better - and it already compiled with our latest kernel.

So basically, that WiFi issue MIGHT be solved faster than we thought. There's still a lot of work needed, but this has been a HUGE progress.

I'll keep you informed.

We've come a long way from where we started. Six months ago, neither viridior or I had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into. Nevertheless, we survived, and in the meantime we've created our first truly usable Gentoo release.

If someone could boot it up and play with it and make sure the essentials work (emerge can build new packages, internet works, and so on) we'd be extremely grateful. We want someone to pick through it like the average Gentoo user might, so knowledge of Gentoo would be helpful. If Gentoo experience is lacking, that isn't a big deal. Simply trying to emerge (install) a package we haven't already installed or pre-built would be great!

So, whoever wants to try it out can get a copy of the latest release here. Since the latest is 0.0.3, you probably just want to go straight to 0.0.3's page. Pandora testers will want to select the plain 0.0.3 "base" variant, while BeagleBoard users might want to use the "base-beagle" variant. Be sure to read the "Install a Pre-built Image" page for installation instructions.

We're looking for feedback on your entire experience! Was the website easy to use? Where might we improve? How about the image itself? Are there any tweaks we should've included? Everything is still under heavy development, so it will be relatively easy to change things now rather than later.

Here's a big thanks to the testers who use precious time out of their day to test our images! We really appreciate it!