TinyURL.Com/MaasKey/GoPan
GoPanda2 is a worthless crock:
After I spent over an hour downloading the latest version over 56k dialup modem, then installing it, when I run it, it opens a full-screen window, where it says:
checking for updates...
checking for binary update...
checking for normal update...
downloading latest GoPanda2...
and then it just hangs forever while churning the modem constantly. I had to kill it to free up the modem for any other use.
Clarification: What I downloaded is the latest "stable" version, which isn't stable at all, because it refuses to run at all, insists on upgrading to beta-test version instead, without bothering to ask the user (me) whether I really want to spend more than another hour of download time to switch from stable to beta-test version without ever having actually run the "stable" version.
Update: Overnight I downloaded the latest beta-test, which took another hour plus, then in morning I extracted the archive, then tried to run it: Same thing happened as above, finding the latest beta-test isn't the latest version and going to download yet another version. One tiny difference: With the latest beta test version, I got warning that the publisher is unknown.
So anyway, I went back to bed while it spent however long it takes to upgrade again. When I got up I saw that it had a Welcome screen up, with copyright only 2012 (WTF??), and an inset asking me to log in. First I re-established the dialup service (which I'm using now to do this edit on Unix), and then filled in my IGS username and password (that's what I assume it wants), then clicked the login button, then logged into Unix and started this edit (starting with "horizontal bar and "So anyway"). This whole time, GoPanda2 has been "Connecting...", still hasn't achieved connecting (to IGS I presume) so it seems to be seriously broken, apparently unable to achieve connection (to IGS) after appx. 8 minutes have passed already. Did some more edit here, and several more minutes have passed, and it still hasn't finished trying to connect (to IGS). Just to check if IGS is up, I'll connect manually via Unix... telnet 210.155.158.200 6969 ... Worked fine, connected virtually instantly to IGS. Checked back with GoPanda2 ,and after appx. 20 minutes it still hasn't achieved connection (to IGS), so I'm going to abort the connection attempt now.
Abort connection attempt worked immediately.
Pressed Login button to re-open login tab, and re-submitted login, and it's back to "Connecting..." just like before. The three-bars to the right of it seems to support filing bug report, so I'll try that next. Here's text of my bug report:
See TinyURL.Com/MaasKey/GoPan for full report. In short, Stable version isn't stable (insists on upgrading to Beta), even Beta doesn't work (insists on upgrading yet again), and Login (to IGS) doesn't work at all, spends 20 minutes and still can't even connect.
Going to try to send that now... well I clicked the OK button at bottom of the Send Bug Report dialog, and it's doing absolutely NOTHING, not churning modem at all, no PPP traffic whatsoever, just sitting there still on screen. Several minutes have passed, and I've clicked the OK button a total of four times, and still it hasn't even tried to send bug report.
I give up, will CANCEL the bug-report attempt and send regular e-mail to ... crap, can't copy and paste the text of the e-mail address because neither the address at top-left in News nor the address in lower-right About is actual text, but both are links, so I'll try clicking and see what happens... as expected it opens Outlook Express, and puts e-mail address "gopanda2@pandanet-igs.com <gopanda2@pandanet-igs.com>" into To: field, so finally I have text I can copy here, as I've done. I needed to abort from Outlook Express before I could past it in here, because Outlook Express hides the tabs at bottom of screen, including tab to TELNET that I'm using to talk to Unix while doing this edit.
(Maybe it's just that I already have 18 tabs, and OE makes #19 which overflows onto second line of tabs. Anyway I don't have OE configured, which wouldn't do any good anyway from dialup, so I needed to eventually abort OE in any case.)
Sent regular e-mail, here's the text:
See TinyURL.Com/MaasKey/GoPan for whole series of complaints.
Summary: After spending over three hours downloading stable (not stable)
and beta (unusable too) and finally beta upgrading to beta yet again,
it's totally unable to connect to IGS after 20 minutes of trying,
can't even file bug report from program either. Apparently it doesn't
recognize that my Internet connection is over dialup PPP, so doesn't try
to connect over PPP, and doesn't notice that there's no other kind of
Internet connection here, so doesn't abort futile mis-attempt over non-PPP.
After sending that e-mail, I quit GoPanda2, then re-started it from Start menu: It decided it needs to upgrade yet again, wants to spend another downloading the latest version again, so I aborted it immediately.
Next I re-started from icon on desktop again, and again ... downloading latest GoPanda2... so I aborted that too.
Next I re-started from icon for GoPanda2.exe inside GoPanda2-beta folder, which did checks for updates but actually brought up main Welcome page, which is a relief. (I'll need to delete the Start-menu and desktop versions asap, because they are trying to run the "stable" version rather than upgraded beta, d'oh!)
So now I clicked Login button and filled in IGS username and password and clicked submit button, and it's sitting there "Connecting...", not even trying to exchange any traffic over still-existing PPP connection, modem data light flashes when I type through TELNET into this edit, but doesn't flash at all the rest of the time GoPanda2 is "Connecting...".
Update:
Excerpt from e-mail I got Jul.07 from developer of GoPanda2:
"It
isn't really meant to be used with a 56k connection, so I regret to
tell you that as a small development team we can't spend time to figure
out why GP2 doesn't work with it. I recommend using maybe PandaEgg or
Glgo, depending on whether you prefer windows or linux, they might be
suited better to your system.
Best regards,
Rasmus Buchmann"
Update 2014.Mar.27: I tried running GoPanda2 again: It spent about 15 minutes downloading the latest version, then gave me home screen with inset for me to log in. I entered IGS username and password, clicked button, and it immediately put up an error-alert saying "Connection error".