Team Pandory
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June 2023 Update (behind the scenes)
🕑 Added 2023-07-01 01:48:42 +0000 UTCHey y'all, quick update, I'm melting. Flippin' 'eck, love!
I live in the middle part of Japan, and the words "mushi atsuii" really do get thrown around a LOT. Translated, "hot and humid", and when we have 35 degrees celcius or more, it is difficult to do anything without air conditioning.
Pandory has had an update to 1.14. There are no improvements to the DX / PG3D jailbreak, so no need to rejailbreak those systems. It adds fixes for adding games on the PG3D.
If you have a Key 7 (red board), this removes the paint filter to an additional 455 games. I got through maybe 80% of the key7 games list before my key 7 board finally decided to fail for good.
If you're wondering if the Pandory jailbreak itself harmed it? Well, the answer is a definitive "No". When the Key 7 arrived new, it was extremely unstable and only booted up 25% of the time. I suspect it was a failing NAND chip.
After trying to restore the board for the 15th time, it decided to longer function at all. Zip. Nothing, it's brown bread.
So I'm afraid no updates for the key7 will be done until either
- 1. I manage to get hold of another key 7 (they don't sell them new anymore, difficult to get hold of- I've tried)
- 2. Someone else carries on this task (add game to fba list, rejailbreak, see if it works, if not remove- repeat)
As for video production, we've been busy but not everything is shown to the public.
In this past month, we were sent not one, but TWO mini-PC units.
One was a Chuwi N100, and the other, was a GMKtec RYZEN 7735HS (IKR!) - The Chuwi was as expected (very nice budget system), but when running tests on the Ryzen, we were getting some form of throttling after around 1 minute of gameplay. KOF XV would be at 60fps then it'd shoot down to around 30-40fps. We looked into it and rather than it be a GPU / CPU heat issue, it may have been an NVME / RAM heat issue.
Fortunately, the correspondent at GMKtec was very kind, investigated our findings, and sent us a new updated unit. This one arrived yesterday, and AFAIK it the memory configuration is now dual-channel.
We'll be testing and working on that review video soon, but testing and setting up these systems units can take a long time, especially when installing VERY LARGE games from Steam.
We've also been contacted by PXN to review their PX50 controller.
Before sending us the unit, they agreed to hold a giveaway with our channel.
They said they'll be willing to send out two controllers if it had an Instagram "mandatory sign in and subscribe".
After investigation, we found that gleam-like giveaways do not have Instagram subscribe methods (and we don't really do Instagram), which is a bit of a pain.
But even though it looks nice and feels great in the hands, the analog-stick has issues. Maybe it can be fixed in the firmware, but I'm currently unsure of this (it does have a firmware update feature).
I don't feel it'd work if we celebrated a release of a poorly reviewed controller with a giveaway. PXN would be shooting themselves in the foot.
I've recorded most of the video for this review, but have emailed them to see if they can actually fix the issues with the sticks, before finalizing the video.
So how about the videos that actually got published? Let's-a-go!
Batocera on the RG35XX Video Guide:
It's been available for a while and we thought a quick guide couldn't do any harm.
Still similar performance to GarlicOS, but has additional systems, such as the N64, PSP, and Dreamcast... They don't perform amazingly well though- expect 2D games for those systems... Or Amiga (yet?)
JSAUX Steam Deck Magnetic Fan Review:
They asked if we can review it, and we did.
Bit of an unusual one. It can only really be used when it's docked.
Does it cool? Sure thing! But with the additional noise, why not just raise the internal fan inside the Steam Deck?
It's one for the overclockers... Maybe? :/
Chuwi N100 Review:
Believe it or not, Chuwi finally decided to send us a message regarding sending us a product to review. In the past, we reviewed two of their budget laptops very favorably, and this mini pc was no different.
It won't run AAA games, but it's perfect as a home PC and great for emulation.
The video was also slammed on Reddit because we're apparently "Shills"... They obviously haven't seen our other reviews before :-) (see our Pandora Box Ex Review... The Pros Cons list is epic)
If you wanted more budget Mini PC benchmarks:
We enjoy seeing the best bang for buck, and hopefully these videos can help some people out when shopping around for a system. Currently, the N5105, N95, or N100 are really good value units.
Anbernic RG353PS Review:
https://youtube.com/shorts/tIzpU9Bi8-Q (short)
We've had other RG353 handhelds on the channel before, and we knew EXACTLY what we getting here. Essentially an RG353P with half the memory, no touchscreen, and no Android. - Perfect for retro games!
