after using an open pandora for about a month now i really like it. small, long battery life
and a persistant full linux workstation anywhere i go. (not one of those limited android devices)

physically the plastic case is a little noisey but it is a first batch pandora, newer pandoras 
might be built tighter fitting now, not sure. dont have a newer one (wish i did they got more ram)

i have ordered 2 used RT-N16's from diferent sellers on ebay. both times the item arrived dead.
there is a power shortage on the internal dc 2 dc converter and thus beware of this device all 
together. ASUS what the hell you doing? i have always liked your hardware. i will assume that the
users broke both of these devices, say for example with high power draw usb devices... 

asus could you kindly provide an amp rating for the usb ports combined? i would like this.

as much as i was disapointed in the refurbs purchased on ebay, after RMAing one with asus.
the RT-N16 has been reliable. infact it is what is running this website this moment. so its
acting as a firewall, router, and webserver, and i still got 100mb ram free to use.

its stable but i did modify it, added pure copper heatsinks to the ram, and the switch ic, which 
seems to have helped alot since they are quite hot even with the heatsinks i added. an unmodified
RT-N16 may not need such heatsinks, but i am using this device beyond original device goals.

so i ordered one of the original magic jacks with the intentions of connecting it to my linux
router. the company had stated plans to support linux in 2010, its now 2012. where are the 
drivers? why must companies endlessly give the finger to gnu software?

anyway, it was my fault. i didnt fully research before ordering. resold it.

so i tried using the 12$ ToPeak chain breaker on amazon.com with a shadow conspiracy v2 chain.
broke the pin first use. so i ordered a 3$ shadow chain breaker pin. this pin works well in the
ToPeak chain breaker. slightly long but works.

i attended the event on the 27th, the showroom floor was packed with embedded systems, mostly
arm basis. alot of android talk, im not a fan of it. gnu/linux all the way for me. anyway, 
the event had lots of usefull resources of which i packed my backpack with and road home with.

i ride a 24" bmx racing bike, not ideal for long traveling but also not slow. i road 60+ miles 
that day, including to and from. it was worth it though, the magazines and spec sheets will be
very usefull on the research i am doing.

amazingly, microsoft was at this event. i dont understand why.. anyway some of their employees
did not look to happy, possibly they where being ignored? i know i didnt look at their showcase
and i dont recall seeing anyone at it either.

open source installable spec comparison with price color coded as of date listed. ranking is based
on memory first then by flash size, then by amps used. usb was used as the next ranking, price is 
green as low, blue as mid,and maroon as high price. but price was not used in the overall rank 
number. i figure you will shop based on price if you want to. last but not least, installability 
of linux kernel and various userlands was NOT part of the ranking here.

sources used: dd-wrt.com and openwrt.org device lists.
prices based on amazon.com, ebay.com, and newegg.com prices.

disclaimer: i cannot garantee accuracy of any of this information, i only own the wrtu54g-tm 
and rt-n16 certify those as correct. just because a device is in this list does not mean it is
supported by openwrt or dd-wrt.

other usefull statistics: smallnetbuilder.com tst benchmark

rant: it actually pisses me off that in general devices are sold without specifications listed.
compitition of devices shouldnt involve useless advertisments spinning irelivance. if your going
to advertise your device, get technical, with no bullshit.

here are some of the funniest things i have read in relation to programming languages.
enjoy.
1. how to shoot yourself in the foot in any programming language

2. shoot self in foot, same as above but with a few unique entries

3. developers note

so i noticed there was a 4 pin header under the processor module, probably trying to hide it.
but i figured out the pinout. and logged the boot process and the suspend, and shutdown. here
is the bootlog. u-boot help and u-boot printenv

also relivant to the post below, this bootlog claims there is only 128mb of sdram, which makes
sense considering the speed of the device when using android. but if this is the case, then in
software its being told to lie about it and claim 256mb.

this is streight out of the w-load printenv command:
release_ver=WMT2.1.2
fake_firmware_version=Android2.2
fake_mem=256M

first id like to say that shopping for these is truely luck. there is soooooo many of these that
look similar but have totally difrent parts inside, beware! make sure u know EXACTLY which one
your getting. memory size, cpu model # and ports are the most important to take note of in this
regard.

i bought on ebay what was advertised as aPad. 256mb/533mhz/2gb rom turns out its really 256mb 
ddr2 ram running at 533mhz, with a via cpu running at 300mhz, with class 2 2gb flash internal. 
for the price i paid i didnt complian i even gave great feedback. turns out the real name china 
uses for this exact model i got is called: Eken M002

as for software preinstalled. it came with android 2.2, web browser (using the safari icon), 
skype youtube app, various other stuff but the one app i wanted to use, google voice, was 
preinstalled and erroring out. ok i said. i plan to change the os anyway, and here i am working 
on just that: click here 4 more

hard drive internal is ZIF socket
format is fat32
upgrading firmware: copy the new firmware files to the / of the drive power device off. press and 
hold the joystick down. next press power button this should begin the firmware upgrade

side note: zif cable is the worst cable type i ever encountered. the zif cable easily comes loose 
if the cowon a2 is droped.

steam recently recoded its gui interface. it may no
longer work at all on linux.

wine 1.2 verified:
step 1 download steam installer it should be a .msi file
step 2 run the msi file with wine

manual method:
step 1 download steam installer it should be a .msi file
step 2 unzip this file with 7zip, yes i said unzip it...
step 3 rename steam.exe1 to steam.exe on a windows machine
step 4 transfer steam.exe to the linux machine
step 5 create a folder in /opt/games for steam
step 6 move steam.exe to /opt/games/its-new-folder
step 7 run steam.exe with wine from its-new-folder