Slashdot Mirror
Flat Panel Linux Box for $99?
A reader writes "Found an interesting site which describes a hack to modify the $99 Iopener internet appliance to be able to run Linux. Flat panel LCD display, small footprint, 56K (non-win)modem. No ethernet, but a built-in parallel port (for PLIP?). Just add 2.5" HD. The perfect X terminal! "
But will it run text mode quake?
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
What's the resolution of those things? 640x480? I know plenty an X dialog box that can't fit in 800x600, never mind anything less.
Still nifty, though.
Perfect - both a hardware hack, and a cool operating system. Why would any user want to run the proprietary OS it comes with?
X over a parallel port? ick
... they just installed Linux on a hard drive and plugged it into the IDE port graciously provided on the I-Opener's main board.
Not groundbreaking, but interesting nonetheless.
NO CARRIER
---
Mainly, it needs an ethernet port.
Looking at the site, i see the modem is some plug on thing. Could someone find a way to use an ethernet card with it? If that were the case, I'd buy one today.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
suppose you put a touch-screen keyboard overlay on this thing. Further suppose that you add a DC power supply (battery :) Portable Linux webpad! and it would play Quake! for $99!
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
But you keep coming back for more though...
hmmm..
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
I love when I hear about people hacking equipment like this. A very good use of creative energies.
It may be a good idea to put this thing in a bathtroom for an uninterrupted "experience" while on a toilet. It'd probably be an even better idea to trick the host home server to emulate i-opener's dial-up service and be a proxy.
BUT... 10" 800x600 "crisp" screen (old passive LCD technology?) makes my eyes worried.
The fact that they're calling an x86 chip a "WINChip" exemplifies a marketing strategy that takes advantage of a consumer market that thinks P.C.=Windows. Of course, the WINChip seems to completely suck in tech and marketing, and most of the zombies will still look for the Intel Inside sticker. Still, I am thrilled to see that there are products in existence with a 10" LCD for a total cost of $99. Now, if only laptop prices would come down...
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
That's tight. Looks like Larry Ellison's dream of having cheap NCs has finally come true... While running a superior operating system at the same time!
It even comes with a flat panel screen, and that for only $99. Impressive. I remember having to do an NC demo a couple of years ago for California ex-Governer Pete Wilson, and the NC we set up had a $4,000 flat panel. From about $4,000 to $99 (I'm sure the flat panel quality is less, but still) is a great improvement.
Couldn't one just use one of the devel kernels and wire it into a network with the usb port?
Oh C'mon people, give him credit, he did a nice job so stop understating the hack. sure it was easy, but that IS the beauty of it. just because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it, doesn't mean the you rocket scientists out there should say it's a piece of crap!
after all, it's the creativity and inventive that counts.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
So... install *BSD. Or OS/2. Or Windows. If you noted, there's nothing saying this only works for Linux.. you could even install x86 Solaris if you were so inclined. :> And yeah, so it might be just putting a hard drive on the motherboard as someone else mentioned, but it still took this person(s) time to figure out that the plug was mirrored I'm sure. It's still a hack (and one that I might be looking in to soon)
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
---
Ok, not perfect, but useful for those situations where you need to deal with larger windows.
online services? The article mentions that it is a custom dial-up but makes no mention if it's the hardware that's been customized or if it's simply that they don't support other connections in the software. I suppose for the price I can assume it software-braindead but if it's not a winmodem and it IS on COM1..
I would question the need for Linux on a device that is limited to 640x480 (no - it doesn't make sense to put Linux on everything, just most everything) not to mention just how useful it would be in everyday life in as limited a manner as it currently exists. Though- on the positive side I can see application where this would be very useful. At $99 bucks it would be the cheapest "smart-typewriter" ever and the added advantage of being able to do not only typing but spreadsheet work and presentations might make it a very useful tool for some administrative staff...
It's got a USB port. How is Linux USB support (particularly for USB<-->Ethernet) these days?
I purchased one of these for my wife's grandmother. Nice easy to use platform, does e-mail well and surfs. Javascript, no java, no PNG. Does fine on slashdot, CNN, etc...
:-)
Its a slick little box as is. The pointing device is not suitable for arthritic fingers, but they can take an PS/2 pointer as well.
The LCD is VERY sensitive to viewing angle, but if you only have one head on your neck that shouldn't be too bad. Its also very susceptible to ducking. Moving items vanish.
Their original plan was to sell them for $400 with a $5/mo ISP service. That didn't fly so they flipped to $200 and a $20/mo ISP at their xmas time introduction.
Now at $99 for a linux terminal I'm really excited. I feel a bit bad, since they are probably losing money at $99 and won't be making it up on the ISP service. Not bad enough to refrain from buying a couple though.
---
Geez man, look at the site you at, Slashdot, News for Nerds! Of all those posts where people complain about non-nerd news this is one piece of news that is nerdy! This is really interesting stuff. If you're getting tired of linux maybe you shouldn't come to slashdot, interesting thought...
Billy Transue
bill-transue@NOcoolmailSPAM.net
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
wow! This is the first time I have been able to read a story before the site got slashdotted! Most people argue this is useless and has not practical application, so what? Its fun, easy and costs $99! If not anything else, it is a cool weekend project. Now, if only somebody could post info on 2.5inch hard drives and switching ide cables, this is something I would do today!
if not anything else, this would make a nice way for sharing one internet connection don't have much money left after my 850 athlon order and when it gets here my roommate can have her own x-terminal and stop bugging me.
x term $99
freedom from roomie $priceless.
what are the chances of using a usb cable for this?
"what kind of a rescue mission is this?!!"
- Mission to Mars
The Circuit City in my town sells them for $299 not $99.
The page says that these terminals have a 16MB Sandisk on board. If so, forget the internal hard disk (although you're going to need it to do the Sandisk install) that's enough to get it booting.
On top of that, if the USB-to-Ethernet support in the latest development kernels is at a reasonable level of stability (I haven't checked them lately, so no guarantees), you should be able to boot the kernel and a minimal system from the Sandisk, and mount the rest of your system over the USB connector. OK, it's not gonna be superfast, but it'd do as a second screen for a server.
I know that alot of people here think the EULAs are junk, but in reality some of them are legitimate. Although I think this is very cool, isn't this a blatant misuse of their device. I assume that there is somewhere where they say you can't disassemble them, and in this case, where they are selling them at a loss, they have a legitimate reason to request this.
On a second note, what are the terms of their contract. Assuming you are buying the product, and not just on an indefinate lease, how long are you required to use their internet service before terminating the contract?
I just called their customer service line. The operator was a bit confused when I asked her if I could order the appliance without the ISP service, but assured me that I could cancel it at any time. So, you don't need to subscribe to their service. Woohoo!
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
There is an ethernet card that is supported by Linux that attaches to a parallel port.   It's pretty steep in price (around US$100+) though.   One of my buddies was considering buying it since his old XIRCOM parallel port wasn't supported.
Can't think of the name of it off hand but will look it up in a hurry unless someone already knows it and posts...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
does anybody know, whether i can get such computer outside of the use (in europe)?
I mean, where else am I going to get a similer small foorprint PC for $99? This is perfect as a web/shell terminal in the living room where you don't want a lot of wires running between lots of devices making lots of whirring noises and taking up lots of space.
I tried to call them, too. But they seem to be slashdotted... I wonder if they are willing to send this thing to Germany :-)
Prolific manufactures a range of USB chips, including the PL2301 and PL2302 devices that allow two USB host controllers to be linked, providing a simple point to point link at up to 5Mbps. This driver supports both PL2301 andPL2302 chips.
---
The form on netpliance.com does not let me put in a Canadian address. :-( any sugestion ???
Can't think of the name of it off hand but will look it up in a hurry unless someone already knows it and posts...
Replying to my own post!   Found the name of the parallel port ethernet adapter - ADDTRON.   Supposedly the DE-420, 450, & 600 are supported on Linux.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
This thing rocks! This hack is superior in its simplicity and craftsmanship!! Great job! The ethernet via usb is probably the hook for X rather than over serial.
I love PC's, and something like this would really be the perfect complement. Why settle for an information appliance hard coded to do one particular thing, when you can a bunch of sleek little x-terminals that can do anything a stand-alone appliance does?
I can think of plenty of uses for something like this around the house, in a business setting, the uses multiply.
So if anyone with the means is listening, build them! The market for appliances of this type will fail until they're cheap enough ($200 would be my price point, can I reiterate that enough?), and as long as they're tied to proprietary systems. Who else would buy a generic, sleek, flat paneled x-term for $200?
Well, 32MB is kinda small nowadays, even with swap.
I wonder if this thing could handle a 64MB or 128MB or even a 256MB SODIMM?
It's got a USB port. You can buy a decent USB->10BaseT adapter for $70 or less. Linux has experimental support for some of these in 2.3. This is a really cool toy.
"Q: Can I use my current ISP or any other ISP of my choice with i-opener? A: To ensure a pleasant customer experience, i-opener includes Internet access service in order to provide automatic software updates and instant offline access to news, weather, sports, finance, and entertainment news." I take it that's a no? Why can't they just say no?
- Can I get my hands on one in the UK? I just took a look and you have to subscribe to their ISP thingy to get one, and that's only in the US. I was about to buy one to play with when I saw that they won't ship out of the US.
- At $99, it's worth it just for the LCD screen to attach up to rackmount machines. Anyone managed to rip the head off one of these things yet?
- And a thought: these things would make excellent cheap EPOS machines by the look of it. And certainly a lot cheaper than NCR's offerings.
If anyone succeeds in getting one to the UK, drop us a line will you? Ta.Smegma.
How about a USB floppy drive to install one
of those "Router Distributions on a floppy"
with support for USB compiled in.
Hmmm...As I rush to the ATM
Certainly circuit city's "we'll beat any advertised lower price" applies to their own web store?
gc
This would also make a great subscription box in cases where you do not need a keyboard. Just plunk the lcd on the kitchen counter with a trackball and write a script where it will dial up my isp and refresh slashdot every ten minutes or so! Or keep it next to the tv for quick headline updates on the hour.. no keyboard required!
Or just keep it in a corner and run x-dali clock on it to complete the shaggy pad look. Or make it a stockticker on your desk!
iopener $99
get me away from my computer $priceless
You're not presented with the EULA when you buy the thing. It shows up after you run the software to sign up for service. If you nuke the disk, never having run the SW, you'll never see the EULA!
Yup, I do believe they do. You can get 2.5" drives anyway, without buying laptop, or get the IDE interface -- and IDE is a standard, after all.
Using a D-Link DE-620 here. Gets about 4MB/s so not TOO sucky. Actually quite usable.
/bin /etc /sbin only)
/usr stuff from your powerhouse in the spare room. A Winchip 180 isn't too bad. Performs about the same as a P150.
If you are the ultimate nerd (ok, maybe just an above average nerd) try this:
One of these boxen with a minimal install (enough to boot -
Mount the
With this setup what you have is a machine which runs its apps locally, mounts all the big stuff over ethernet and is silent. I would love one of these, but I'm in the UK just now. This thing looks like it beats my kludge with a PC104 board and an LCD screen, but I wouldn't want to give up my NEC Multisync LCD screen.
Does anybody know, do they ship internationally?
Even if it's repackaged iOpeners. Buy 'em for $99, pop in a small drive, sell em for $200. Even $250. That should cover a small drive, and with modest economies of scale, the labor too.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The connector is the same (pin spacing/diameter), save for 4 "extra" pins. These pins provide the voltage. Notice there isn't a standard power connection on the laptop hdd.
;)
You don't need to buy a laptop to get one though. Xerox isn't the only company to use laptop hdd's in copy/print centers
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
...they're IPO'ing next week?
Now I really will have to work on a device driver.
The real silver bullet to good programs is caffeine; lots and lots of caffeine! *twitch, twitch*
has anyone ever been denied the right to purchase the unit without service or hidden extra charges?
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I was on the point of buying one of these, but while I was thinking about it and taking a shower I came up with a progression in mind...
Now unless you're violating a license agreement by not using their internet service you aren't doing anything illegal by turning this machine into a Linux box. Sure, it seems very stupid to me that the company would sell these machines at what can only be a loss assuming they would make up their loss with the internet service -- but that's not the point here.
Whether or not the people buying this machine are doing anything wrong, think of the bad publicity this thing could cause, not to mention the potential moral guilt of destroying a dumb company. It would be different if this company were selling millions of units and only a small handfull of people hacked it and installed Linux, but Slashdot is a big site now, and our "Slashdot Effect" can do more than just take down a small web server.
Something to think about anyhow...
I'm wondering if the internal modem is a serial device working through a UART on the board, or if it is on an ISA(possibly PCI) bus, like a normal internal modem.
If the later is the case, it should only be a matter of a little solder work to get a normal ethernet NIC in there.
All this talk of a $99 Linux box puzzles me. I have yet to figure out how such a thing costs $99. If you purchase the unit for $99 and it require mods... will it not be more? Maybe all of you out there have a few extra 2.5" HDs in the scrap parts box... I don't... I am afraid that will be a few extra dollars... you can probably pick a small one up for $75 - $100... by the time you start adding things up (include your time)... you could have purchased a 400 mhz eMachine.
Small footprint... yes... flat panel...yes... $99... no.
I think this thing is awesome... I am going to track one down this weekend... I want to perform the mods... but I'm not fooling myself... this thing is not $99 when all is said and done... I figure to do it right, $350 - $400 to get it up on a network.
Side note: If someone can find a way to retro-fit this thing into a notebook case for under $400... let me know... make this thing portable and keep the modem and I am a happy Linux camper.
Just my $.02
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
This looks *way* interesting! I really'd like to buy one of these, but I just bought a G4, and have a hard time rationalizing buying another computer.
:)
In any case, that could be used for many things. It's good to see people thinking out there!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Yamaha YMF715 Stereo Speakers Doesn't say anything about the sound chip, though? Is it any good [or upgradable?]. I don't think that PLIP could get the bandwidth, but with USB ethernet, I could also plug this into my home network to play MP3's stored on my server!!
I'd be interested in getting this thing netbooted. Hooking up a HD looks like too much expense and trouble for a $100 device. I know I could get it working with PLIP, but based on my past experience with it (slow, interrupt hell), I'd prefer to use the USB port for connectivity.
Does anyone know of a way to do a PPP-kinda thing over USB? Can two PCs be connected to the same USB bus and talk to each other?
You can do other things while that's running...
...and stop complaining. Putting linux on everything (including Palm Pilots) is just a geek game. Welcome to Slashdot.
If it wasn't for people with this hackish spirit, we may never have had PC's in the first place. Do you have any idea how useless early systems like the Altair were? All you had was switches and lights, but hackers went nuts over them. Over time, they improved them, and now we have our modern PC's.
I think its an interesting post. The hack wasn't very technical, but it is kind of cute.
--Lenny
Since you can bridge USB to Ethernet, why not just use Win98 or something with some drivers that allow USB Ethernet? Since gettting it to work under Linux is definately quite a challenge right now?
:)
VNC to an X session on a real linux box... all your problems are solved. (Except local stability, but you can always resume your X session(s))
I'm buying one of these and I'm gonna use my beta Dual Link modem from 3Com to bridge the Ethernet to USB
x-empt
Ever need an online dictionary?
An IDE CD-ROM is a lot cheaper and easier to work with than a 2.5" hard disk. If the BIOS supports the El-Torito Bootable CDRom stuff, that's another way to get your favorite linux distro on it -- especially if you can get the 16M flash to work as well. Nifty!!!
I wonder if the USB port is workable with any :)
OS. Their web site said that their was no
options to connect external devices...So maybe
they "cross wired" the USB port similar to what
they did to the HDD port..(Not that it would
be to hard to fix
If someone could figure out how to get sound
with line out (Stereo speakers), and Ethernet --
this would make one heck of an MP3 player..
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The page says that you have to install a 2.5" hard drive unless you can find a way to use the 16mb flash. The thing is, it seems like you could use the flash. Anyone have any pointers here?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This would actually run FreeBSD or NetBSD really well since the USB Ethernet drivers actually work. I've got one hanging off of my second desktop and it works great, the box has been up for 60 days with no burps. Granted its only 6mbps because of the USB lameness, but hey you can't really go wrong for the cheap factor. I can even take the DIMM I pulled out of my powerbook to upgrade that thing.
I think I'm gonna go try to buy one...
I bet it does, so will all computers be like this?
I've been hunting around mailing lists and howtos for the status of Ethernet USB in Linux kernels. I've found quite a bit about the USB->USB networking.
:)
Here is a post that Free/NetBSD have drivers for ten devices. Close, you can compile free software, and it's not Windows.
because they probably sell these things at cost or below, expecting you to buy their service.
I went to my local Circuit City store. Sure enough, one sit at the counter.. Not bad at all! I asked the salesman "Do I have to signup for an ISP now or when I get home?". He replied, "You sign up for an ISP after setting the box up." I then purchased one to find out they are out of stock. But hey, in a few days I will be hacking out a useable Windows 2000 Terminal Server client and X client all in one! Now that's slick for 99.00! GeekGod
Got your attention? I want to put FreeBSD on this box, could someone who knows about IDE cables....email me? mrwhite@collectivethoughts.org thx QNX is a sweet OS... VERY Stable... They use embbeded OS..not bad, fast as heck. They claim 99.9999999999% non crashable :)
This thing uses a Yamaha YMF715 audio chip. As far as I know, it is not supported under Linux.
I am running Debian 2.2 and have seen no way to get the audio working.
EC
EverCode
Can you do an install directly from this QNX OS?
I'm thinking: compile a small distro, if you will, with just a kernel, etc. Download it through their ISP, and run it to set up the kernel and networking/whatever without having to open the box.
Of course, It also depends on what the GUI lets you do, and how much space is left in the flash drive. But it might be more of a hack for those whining that it was too easy.
Any takers on this challenge?
... I was looking at doing a PERL-based app for my store that'd run off of Apache on a Linux box that I could access off of a web browser. (The Apache box would also hold the servers for Half-Life and serve as a fileserver for our in-house gaming network.)
But with this, I have an excuse to learn enough GTK (or maybe Perl/TK?) programming to do my app and have it run on a nifty desktop -- along with big GNOME panel buttons for in-house e-mail and maybe some HTML pages with our procedures, for employees that seem to have trouble with the way our Windows machine is currently set up.
Plus, it gets this clunky monitor off of my counter, and a box from underneath it...
Jay (=
(still geekish enough to get a tingle out of this story...)
the screen is the new sharp dualscan 800x600 16bpp you can fdisk and format the internal flash disk it will boot off the flash disk if there is no hard drive plugged in.. and you can replace the kb it just uses a ps2 plug thats how you get into setup ctl+alt+esc ! i use a dlink de620 par either net adapter and it works well.. the cpu does about 80 bogomips i swaped the winchip whith a itel 200 pre mmx 3.4v core and bogomips when about 3x i will update the page and fix the forum tonight thanks for the ./ codeman
My plan is to hack one into a wireless LCD screen Linux system for less than $200. I believe this can be done, but I will need some help. Here is the known specs:
Will anyone who has seen the actual board, or who knows anything about it, please comment on my idea? If anyone can identify the connection of the modem daughterboard to the motherboard, it's even better. Some people suggested that it was PCMCIA, in this case, does anyone know which PCMCIA controller is used?
If this can be done, and we have access to the ISA bus or a PCMCIA connector on the i-opener, possibilities are endless. The i-opener has barely enough space inside to house a small ISA card with the metal bracket removed. With an ISA Ethernet board with a boot ROM, you can build a diskless X terminal; or you can try adding a wireless LAN card like me.
If I can pull this off, I will post it as an article on my Bluetooth Central to share.
--
BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming soon.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
Just get an USB-Ethernet adapter. They will probably cost more than the machine though ...
The 2.5" connector uses smaller spacing than 3.5.
Pretty cool. But the guy should change his screen shot of the system running. He could put up netscape showing /. running this story. That would be kinda neat. Or he could put a screenshot of netscape displaying the screenshot of netscape displaying his screenshot...
I don't think X would easily fit in 16Meg. Now, you could just NFS mount /usr and get rolling ... that's cool indeed!
Here's a thought... Has anyone (company) out there tried to make an insanely cheap computer (same specs as this thing would work), require the $20/month connection, i.e. it's a service, not a computer, and just include the HD in the first place? Then just put all the word processing and stuff plain 'ol everyday non-nerds would need on it, perhaps some internet upgradability... Sounds like a good way to get some technophobes into Linux if you ask me...
(And no, this idea is not patent pending, but I bet it could be...)
I just purchased one directly from 3Com with 2 day shipping for 76.00!!!
Time to start hacking some USB Ethernet...
We all love linux, but wouldnt it work better with something like Windows 95 SR2? (With USB Support) because anything more would really choke on 32Megs, then we could use things like usb zip drives, usb cdroms and usb network cards, as it appears thats the only way to attach devices to the system.
Although, since it has an IDE port, wouldnt it be possible with some power hacks to attach a pc cdrom/zip/superdisk (after all, why wouldnt it support MASTER/SLAVE)? leaving the question on where to put them..
Another interesting idea would be to use these systems as part of your house perhaps on a wall like a picture (discard kbd and control remotely via. Linux/PLIP), or even part of your CAR! (That is a DC input correct?) some more simple hacks and you can probably wire in a Audio Out jack, (Can you say MP3Car?)
I just checked out their website. All three locations nearest me and their shipping location are out of stock. Not sure what to make of this, but I doubt they'd respond this quickly for NetAppliance.
Swap in a small hard drive, and it's a cheap computer for my neices. The whole cost, under $200 including parts...sweet!
No CD or ethernet -- that could be a problem -- but not much of one. My sister likes her Linux box, and it is only moderately better and cost a lot more.
On a commercial angle, can you immagine buying a few dozen of these and using them as firewalls? Use the hard drive to reprogram the flash disk, yank it back out, and it's ideal!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Would it be possible to put alphapaging software on it and dial in to paging services?
_____________
I've been looking at touchscreens to retrofit my sony VAIO, which has a 10.4" LCD. Touchscreens start at $200 and go up.
in the bay area, at least ;-(
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
After reading the hack, I ran out to Circuit City. They were out of stock, as were all the Circuit Cities in the area. I haven't found any other stores that carry it. But I _did_ get to look at the display machine, and it looks like it'll be a lot of fun.
So I called I-opener and bought one over the phone. They specified that I wouldn't be charged for the internet service until I actually started using it. Sounds good to me.
I was a bit disappointed by the high shipping and handling fee -- a little over $30. But I want to get one before they raise the price, so I paid it.
One note: If you're on their phone system listening to the long description of I-opener, just press "1" to buy. The description of their service goes on for minutes!
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
for my dad to replace his old packard bell machine.
Only if it came with 10/100baset so I could plug it into the network. If anyone gets the ethernet hack working on it, I am going for it (I dont have the money nor time to work on it myself, unfortunatly, and probably not the knowledge either) if it is cheap enough, I would love to put a coupla of the around my house. IE in the bathroom, etc.
-Pfhor
I have been reading up on car-based MP3 solutions lately, and most of the sites I go to say to get a certain $100 6" lcd, plus you have to buy the computer.... To me, this setup, with linux, seems like a VERY good solution for a MP3 player. Seem feasable?
Does anybody know, do they ship internationally?
Yes! I called them up, because i live in the UK and they said yea, they ship via Fedex. You would have to pay shipping.
Dan Rowe
Speaking of hardware, why does everyone keep saying to get a 2.5" drive? Is it just because of the size? Don't 2.5" drives and 3.5" IDE drives work the same? I have several 1GB drives laying around collecting dust, but they're 3.5". I don't care if I have to bolt it to the outside of the box... will it work?
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Of course, you could just use QNX, the os the iopener is _actually_ using. -William Bull bbull@qnx.com
I know this is taboo... but I am wondering how win 9x would work on this thing... (my wife hates linux solitares).
if there's a way to connect these things to my car stereo, this would be beyond awesome, not even a cd stereo costs $99 and I could have my mp3 an a LCD screen in my car!!!!
For 99 bucks
Those who dare open the box
Run Unix for cheap.
I've been looking for some kinda cheap LCD xterm like this. I'm thinking about picking one of these up and moding it. Hmm, extra RAM for the Powerbook or an i-opener...such decsions. Some people have asked in Netpliance is going to go out of business because they'll sell a bunch of boxes without selling the internet service that comes with them. I highly doubt it, scores more people will buy the i-opener to use in its standard configuration with a small small handful (one out of 400) buying them to modify them. Oh well, it would be their own fault, not ours. I wonder if I could replace the processor in it...
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Heh. "Stock market?" Bigger. "Commodities market?" Bigger. "Small countries?" We may be able to slashdot the whole damned system.
Can you somehow connect an external device through the LPT port and boot from it? Also is there any way to hook up a PCMCIA card to this device? I have a wireless PCMCIA ethernet (11mbps Lucent) card that works great under Linux.
Well I decided to be a good samaritan and let netpliance know what has been going on, so they aren't driven out of business. You are welcome.
We just picked 2 of them up. They require no contract at purchase time, so we own the units without being required to purchase service.
To be nice I thought I'd be provide some links to 2.5" HDs and Accessories:
eCost - A listing of some notebook (2.5 mostly) hard drives
PriceTrack - A listing on 1.0 to 3.9 gig Hard Drives (some may not be 2.5)
More 2.5 Drive Comparisions - Just more of the same
IDE Connectors - May or may not be what your looking for
Hope it helped,
I just went to Circuit City and the salesperson said i did NOT have to sign up when buying the machine. Meaning of course that it is not required and I can do whatever i want with the thing. Excelent =)
My local Circuit City store is out of these (sold their last one this morning, probably courtesy of ./), however they are willing to guarantee the price of $99. Just ask for a "no money down special order". Good luck!
just to let eveyone know I just checked with Circuit city and they told me that you don't have to sign up for anything to buy one. Hell for $99 I spent a couple hundred on a new drive for my laptop and move the old one over.
Well you should check out this story about turning iMacs into kiosks with USB touchscreens.
Touchscreen iMacs
Should be able to purchase something that would give you a pressure sensitive screen. I don't think the voltage based ones will work. Heck I'm not sure pushing your fingers into a flat screen is such a good idea...
"I have a cunning plan..."
QNX had a wonderful little demo floppy that when booted on a PC would expand into an OS, a TCP/IP stack, email, a browser, and a dialer. You couldn't (at least I couldn't) rewrite it to make the dialer dial the same number every time, though. It would have been the perfect Mom-box if not for the setup you had to do every time.
QNX is absolutely solid, and it is unlike most other OSs in that the timing is deterministic. Means that you KNOW for certain when interrupts are serviced, and that things happen on the box in strict sequence. If you think Linux is crashproof you have not seen QNX running.
I for one would just love to have a QNX box running the Photon GUI, that little browser they had, and a few other apps....
Burn a file system and a kernel onto the sandisk.
/usr/hooka from an NFS server over the USB ethernet device. terminals all over the house. playing MP3s and reading email. quake. etc. goota go.
16 megs? Oh my god. that is a TON of space. I could get a kernel, X, sound, vi, a web server and a TON of other utilities into 16 megs. the mount
On http://www.usbstuff.com/network.html there's a 3Com USB NIC, which would probably be my best guess as a supported device.
If this would work, and you could get decent speed across it (anything's better than a modem IMO,) why fiddle around with parallel networking, or trying to hack an old ISA card where the modem is (provided that the modem _is_ connected via ISA...)
while ( ){
if ( elapsed_time > 600 ) {
system( "cd left_foot; sleep 60;" );
};
}
if ( !defined( $tp ) ) {
$tp = READERS_DIGEST;
}
# and so on. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is super cool as well, although way more expensive than the i-opener:
http://adirect.advantech .com/asp/systemsel.asp?Catalog=PPC
Advantech sells a lot of stuff like this that have tons of hack value. =)
2.5inch? Space restrictions or connections? They're expensive
Imagine how well this fits under your seat in the car?
Talk about an EXCELLENT Car MP3 player.
Im going to get mine tonight.
Ryan
Would make a nice little ... oh ... I'm in the wrong web site?
Instead of using a HD, why not just have the 16 Meg Flash boot and mount root over NFS?
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
At least on pricetrac... For the same price as a 300MB 3.5" IDE disk from them I could go to Fry's and get a brand new 10GB disk.
Can two Ethernet ports be put onto one USB link? I've been looking for a box to put xBSD and ipf on, for a firewall/NAT box, and if the USB will keep two USB - Ethernet adaptors independent, this is the solution. Takes next to no space, runs fine with that processor speed and 32MB RAM (especially considering there's no need to run X). 6 MB/sec USB is plenty fast for DSL, no?
Hemos observed that this would make a perfect X terminal with a 2.5 inch HDD.
Why would you need the hard drive? 16meg is PLENTY of room to make this thing boot off the network. In fact you could even boot locally, though you might have to get X off of NFS. (I honestly don't know how big a basic X setup for use as an X terminal is. I kind of suspect that it would also fit in that 16megs.) This eliminates the expense (and pain in the ass, did you see how the IDE cable has to be rigged?) of buying and installing a drive, and still gives you a nice X term.
I would get one, but I am doing the same thing with my old Toshiba notebook (using the included 2.5 inch drive.)
I'm living in the Netherlands and I'd like to purchase a couple of these things, but I can't order them if I don't have an US adress, anyone knows a solution for this or maybe there's a company that is specialized in this problem?
Regards,
They aren't just making money off of the ISP. If you look at the keyboard, where the function keys are, there is instead hotlinks to various services - shopping, email, even a pizza button. They probably get money from every sale made via those hot buttons, similar to amazon's web partnering.
LetterRip
It's 16bpp
All together, i bet it would be about $200 total, for a flatscreen linux terminal. Booyah!
This is a cool product, too bad its got usb instead of 1394 :(
think of it like this: Anyone who can't figure out how to hack this thing to run what they want and dial the ISP they want, is highly likely to pay these folks $20 a month for network.
You, as linux user, know where to get 56k for free anyhow, so never fret. Anyway, its a tiny flatscreen.... I'd rather shell out a few hundred to get a projector with decent resolution than a teeny weeny flatscree... but thats just me
According to the droid at the local circuit city, every CC in silicon valley is out of these things, and all of their warehouses are out too. They have zillions on order; you can order one with maybe a couple week delay.
I sure wish that CompUSA or Best Buy carried these things. I may just have to drive about 250 to the nearest Circuit City to get one. I've even got a 340M 2.5" hard drive sitting around idle (ripped out of a laptop to replace it with a bigger drive), so all I'd need would be the cable and to make a mounting bracket...
Their website says you have to order a service plan with the device ($22/mo, or prepaid 3, 6, or 12 months). However, when I called them up to order they said they won't actually charge you until you plug it into the phone lines and use their service. (We'll see if that's actually honored.. )
I want one, but they will not accept my UK phone number ;-(
I can lie about the phone number but then I may have trouble when I give a UK delivery address... I do not think it is enough of a draw to make me consider moving to the US just yet but I will start badgering my US friends for one 8-)
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I just got back from the local Circuit City (Reading, PA), and they were completley sold out except for the display model. The salesperson checked the inventory of the surrounding stores. The locations at King of Prussia, Lancaster, and the area warehouse reported zero IOpeners in stock. These locations were hours away in both directions from me. I asked for a rain-check order, but he told me it would take two weeks to receive one. I didn't order it because by that time, they might enforce in-store ISP sign-up.
/. community and internet, or just pure ignorance amused by the nice LCD. I have no doubt that both were the culprits. If I, as spend thrifty as I am, would go purchase one, I assume that thousands of other Linux users would also. But the fact that the warehouse was depleted of IOpeners, means that they must have been selling well before the /. post today. At only 100 dollars that is practically an impulse buy for anyone, computer-ignorant or Linux guru.
Is this a result of the
I know this is a bad thing to say on slashdot, but I got win 98 SE running on my i-opnener. I already had an i-opener (won at a trade show) I took a 1.2 gig IBM 2.5 HD that had all the cab files on it, booted off it, and was able to get windows 98SE installed. The Modem is yet to work, but from having An iMac 333, i have a USB Superdisk drive that runs on the USB port, and an USB to Ethernet adapter. I already have office 2000 running on it. One other thing, You can use any iMac Rev a-d memory in it. I popped in a 64 meg chip for the 32. I do think that the bios only allows 64 megs of ra, to be adrressed though.
If you have any question email me, I will try to get linux on a spare HD to Install.
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
from the pictures, it looks like they've used an old laptop mainboard design and rejigged it a bit. thus the nonstandard kb/mouse connector and teh use of so-dimm's. be interesting to find the original manufacturer.
so I ordered one via the phone. even with the $39 'shipping' charge, its still a bargain.
...as long as they don't get sneaky and change the internals so we can no longer use this as a linux box ;-(
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The whole west coast area, from my understanding is out of stock at the warehouses.... Ask to buy floor models.... I did, but couldn't... Luckily I got a guarenteed price of $99 with no service and the system will arrive within 2 weeks.
x-empt
Ever need an online dictionary?
So, does anyone know how I could get my hands on one of these units living outside of the United States (in Stockholm, Sweden, to be more precise)? Is anyone of you US residents interested in selling me a couple for, say, $125 each?
Blog Ho
Better than using plip, how is the current linux support for USB based ethernet adapters? Sorry I haven't kept up with the 2.3.x development, but USB would seem to make more sense as a network interface than the parallel port, if for no other reason than its faster and could more easily interface with a currently built network than the parallel port could (which would require another computer to connect to, extra routing, etc.
:)
Another thought... 16 megs might not seem like much for filesystem storage, but its enough to hold the kernel, and ALL filesystems can be loaded off the network once its up and running. Granted, extensive filesystem exporting can drain a network, but if the only current networking option is plip, a single computer could be set up to serve several of these screens without draining any other networking resources.
Just a thought
Cool hack.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I wouldn't worry about bankrupting the company, apparently they are about to IPO. A sudden surge in sales will probably look very good to investors (which investors are going to suspect where these sales are actually going?).
I live right across the atlantic pond. (.dk)
Any suggestions on purchasing one of these gadgets?
I, for instance, need a valid (?) phone number to get through the ordering sequence.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
Well, we stopped by Circuit City this morning to get our units--they didn't have any, but we placed the orders. Should be here within a week.
They have no way of even signing you up for service according to the gentlemen we talked to.
I have been trying to come up with the best Ethernet situation on these things. And for Linux at least, we're looking at Parallel port adapters as pretty much the only way to go. Eventaully, however, there should be a supported USB network interface that will work out well.
After talking it over with my brother, we concluded that BeOS might be the best OS to install on this thing--the USB support for the network adapters is there, so we're probably going that route instead of linux for the time being. Also you should be able to get Windows on there as well, if you want. Going to be tight on 32m of RAM, however.
I am actually planning using these for two purposes:
1 MP3 machine for my car. Looks like I won't even have to get a DC Inverter, because it currently uses an AC Adapter to plug into the wall. But its 19V, (little under 2a, if I remember correctly), which may prove to be a little difficult to get going in the car.
2 I'm also using going to be using one as a super small footprint terminal for co-located Racks. Basically hang this unit in a rack or cabinent for when we do maintaince work on the headless workstations. Otherwise you have to drag a KB, Mouse, etc, or notebook computer to work on a machine that is co-located. Not fun. With this, I can spend $100, use a couple extra 2.5" ide hard drives I've got and have a monitor and diagnostic type machine. Can control and manage the routers, switches via serial (with a USB to serial adapter) and the servers via IP on a network adapter. Pretty slick.
-k
I went down to my local CC to look at this a few minutes ago - they have one in stock. I want to use this as a terminal to play MP3's through my home theater off of my file server using a USB ethernet adapter. The unit un-hacked doesn't have an audio out - how hard would it be to make one? Hmmm... a USB device maybe? Or would I have to grab the audio signal either off the board or from the wires leading to the speaker... Could I throw that out to 1.8th jack for an input? If so - a graphical selection for MP3's onto a surround sound system! This would rock!
Could it be AMR? (=Audio/Modem Riser)
It is a standard endorsed by Intel and based on an AC-97 serial interface to the codec.
If this is the case it means that something else on the board is doing the actual DSP work and presenting the result to the CPU as a standard modem.
ZZ
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I cracked open my netpliance a few hours ago and found a bank of dip switches. What could these possibly be for?
I know some of you are going to try using the flash as virtual memory if it's possible, so I figured I'd warn you.
Despite the fact it is solid-state, flash is NOT, repeat NOT faster than rotating media; it's rather slow.
Furthermore, it has a FINITE number of write cycles, so if you do anything on it (like running a swap partition) that involves lots of writes, it will burn out in a couple of weeks of regular use.
That said, I have to wonder if there is enough space on one of these to run emacs and the other stuff I use in console mode...
I have a parallel port zip drive, would it
be possible to boot linux off that?
The Inscrutable Gargoyle
2.5" are too expensive, why not just go external. Im sure most of us have old 2gig hd's lying around...
cut a small strip into the case and feed the ide cable out. You might not want to run off it though, i imagine the larger hard drives dont care too much about saving power... maybe use a real external hd case...
"i want to transfer to theory, everything works in theory"
How would one go about installing BeOS on this with no CD/Floppy drive? I run BeOS on my main computer, but have no idea how I would install it on one of these. Does it have drivers to support all the hardware on these? If so, BeOS on this will make for a great system to put in my living room to play mp3's, check mail, and view the web. That's really all I need for $250 or so.
If you're interested in hearing directly from the creator of this hack, join #I-Opener-Linux on any EFNet server. Peep's dedicated to the cause...
Just went down to Circuit City and bought two I-Openers for $99 a pop (one for me and one for my boss). There wasn't any kind of contract or anything -- just $99 for the thing. Mine has a 180 MHz WinChip, 32MB ram, and a 10" 800x600 display.
/etc
/app/start-photon
/app/start-photon ! I did this, and now my system does nothing. I will have to get a harddrive to boot from now.
Fun things to do with an I-Opener:
1. - Plug in a normal PS/2 keyboard (one with an ESC key). Or, you can take a laptop PS/2 "Y" cable and plug in both the mouse and keyboard (the mouse and keyboard are reversed, ie., plug the mouse into the keyboard connector and the keyboard into the mouse connector).
2. - Wait for the system to boot up and go into the tutorial. Let it get far enough into the tutorial that it waits for your input so that it doesn't keep getting in your way.
3. - Press ESC-4 a few times. This will bring up a shell with root access. You are now in the QNX operating System.
4. - The first thing you will want to do is allow root to login.
: cd
: chmod +www passwd
: vi passwd
(delete the first "x" in the root entry)
: chmod -www passwd
now you can login as root without a password. Note that this change is not permanent. To make the change permanent you have to make the change to the passwd~ file. Note, the system won't let you make the change to the passwd~ file, so you have to mv passwd~ to passwd_old and then copy passwd_old to passwd~ and then make the change.
5. - do a "ps". Probably the very last thing you will see is something like "/app/start-photon".
6. - kill the
You will now be at a text-only screen where you can login as root.
Notes:
- Don't delete
- Hitting the power button to power off only powers off the display (it might also put the processor into sleep mode, I dunno). Powering off doesn't "power off". You have to disconnect power to do a hard boot.
- These things have a telnet daemon and a www daemon running in the background by default.
I'm sure if you knew QNX well enough, you could just use the underlying system there to dialup to the internet, download a linux kernel and install it onto the flash directly. But seeing as I've pretty much hosed up my system by deleting a startup file, I'm going to have to hook up a hard drive anyway.
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at verinet dot com
Have you seen the number of hits on the linux-hacker.net page??? its going up like nuts!! im thinking there may be just a wee bit more than 1000 or so people getting these for hacks... -zr!
Please respond! I'd really like to have the little toy...
... I forgot to mention :-(
See this post.
According to this guy, it can use iMac DIMMs, but the BIOS is limited to 64MB.
Anybody tried using one of those D-Link / Xircom parallel port to Ethernet converters? I know, USB would be faster, but in the mean time :)
Well the CC's in Southern Wisconsin (Milwaukee Area) are all sold out.. but I placed an order for 2 of these.. I can't wait.. to get them and play around with it.
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I probably am) but, if the flash RAM is really just a 16MB CompactFlash card, couldn't you just replace it with a larger CompactFlash card (I think they go up to 128mb) or even one of those tiny IBM CF-slot microdrives for 330mb? More than enough to put all your basic Linux+Xwin into...
Is it QNX4, Neutrino, or what?
Is the software completely static and embedded, or can you install more apps on it? Like, oh, say ... bash and gcc? Might this be a good starter QNX box instead of just a single-purpose web surfing box? Inquiring minds want to know.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
does it have enough juice to decode mp3s?
16 megs of flash to speedly boot from, an IDE CDROM for the mp3s.. At that price, I should get one for the living room and one for the car..
does any company ship those suckers out of the US for a reasonable cost?
Sound like it would make a good Windows box. I wonder if you could play everquest on it , with a one of those 19.2kps wireless modems and a battery pack.
I can make these machines do anything I want. Make this world anything I want it to be. Just so long as concentrate hard
What is interesting is how no one has suggested PicoBSD or embedded Linux for the 16 Meg flash disk.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Now this just leaves connecting it to a network, might be able to use a USB-ethernet adaptor(?), since the kb has a two-plug hub built in.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
There is no need to post BS here, so please don't..
Windows 9x and NT do not support the embeded video of the system, and since you make no mention of the needed disk hack, I doubt you ever were able to hook-up a hdd to one.
You walk into the living room, and see a pretty, scenic 8"x6" picture hanging on the wall, with a nice picture frame. You blink, and realize the picture just changed. You walk over to the picture, and notice that, in the wall just below the picture, is a panel that matches the rest of the wall perfectly (sheetrock, painted to match), but you can't see how it's actually attached to the wall. You press it gently, and it flips out at you, rotating, the same way a self inking stamp does (you should play with one of those for a half hour sometime, they're cool). Behold, a keyboard and trackball. This process disabled the screensaver slideshow you just saw, and you find an X desktop. The "picture" was one of these iopen things, mounted into the wall, so that the surface is flush with the wall, with the case removed, and a picture frame mounted around it. 8"x6" was my calculation, based on 10" diagnal, I could be wrong.
The consensus: The SanDisk is NVRAM, not flash. The IDE connector must be fabbed via the instructions here. USB will support multiple NICs but is an I/O bottleneck. Stated by MrBlaq: If you bought the box from IOpener, do NOT boot the machine while it is connected to a phone line unless you want to start ISP service. You can see a dmesg at the URL above.
I've checked netbsd.org and there don't seem to be any mini-distro's like there are for linux. Pointers, websites, FAQs on installing Free/NetBSD onto a 16MB Sandisk, where?
if at first you don't succeed, shoot the consultant who suggested you try in the first place...
Well I live in PA (East Coast). What do you mean by 'no service'? Do you mean they're not requiring you to purchase this ISP plan deal? Or that circuit city (et. al) won't provide service at that price? I was curious about that myself. If, when you purchase one from circuit city, they also make you sign a contract to purchase the ISP service stuff, or something to that effect...
I don't see anything at www.sandisk.com about an NVRAM product instead of CompactFlash or similar flash memory.
So if it is NVRAM, is it battery-backed SDRAM, or EEPROM? There must be some way to store to it from the outside since a) the browser stores cookies b) netpliance states they can update the software on the machine when it is connected to the net.
What would be the best way to access that storage? Could the QNX or BIOS be made to boot a USB storage device, which could then write over the QNX on the Sandisk device?
I am thinking that the i-opener would make a fine X terminal with USB ethernet. I can see a bunch of them in a classroom connected to a Linux server. Hard or floppy disks would only get in the way.
Since many classrooms just don't have the power outlets to support laptops, it might be feasible to string some DC power cords along with the UTP5 cables to each i-opener. Being able to boot from the internal Sandisk would be a great benefit, instead of adding a hard disk. And certainly in this case the classroom wouldn't have phone lines to the outside to use the internet, so a Linux server would be very desirable rather than having each student with her own laptop, as Maine Gov. King wants.
Maybe if there were a lot of i-opener terminals to install in one place, a bunch of the Sandisk chips could be burned at once and then placed in each machine and sealed up. Hey, maybe this would be a fine service somebody could provide for the rest of us.
Even if netpliance is not successful in their business model, the i-opener appliance itself might be available from whoever in Taiwan makes it, for approximately the same price, to some genius who can bundle it with Linux and applications and some desirable purpose such as the classroom computer I mentioned above. It wouldn't need the modem daughterboard and so could save 50 cents or so.
Anthrax just came through portland last month...
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
Just go to #I-Opener-Linux on any IRC EFNet server. Speak with the creator of the hack himself. Now currently serving over 150 users, with over 1000 users assisted. Source for information and relevant URL's.
Linux version 2.2.14-15mdk (root@kenobi.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)) #1 Tue Jan 4 22:24:20 CET 2000
relocating initrd image:
initrd_start:0xc0faa000 initrd_end:0xc0fff935
mem_start:0xc0274000 mem_end:0xc1e00000
initrd_size:0x00055935 dest:0xc1daa000
Detected 200462336 Hz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 79.87 BogoMIPS
Now how is that possible?
Since I can't buy this stuff from here in Belgium (you have to give a dial in number) I'm wondering if anyone could contact me to buy one together; I pay you and you send me one... please?
/pyder.....
please ignore the horrible spelling... it's still very early for me...
Best regards,
Cpyder
++32-486-676-007 or e-mail
_
/
\_\ sig under construction
I have a friend who works with the tech support for the netpliance i-opener. He has mentioned a few interesting points that I shall pass along.
1) They apparently cut all sorts of corners in bringing this baby out to the world before the competition. The units apparently cost them ~$600 per unit and they sell them at 199 (99 on sale right now).
2) They don't require any sort of contract because they don't need to. Theoretically they are the only ones who can provide the service for them.
Definitely a loss up front, but they plan on making it up in the service.
3) Netpliance is set to have their IPO sometime really soon. One wonders if they'll postpone this or not.
4) As of today there was no official netpliance party line on the situation.
basic summary of the interesting posts:
1) winchip 180mhz chip with 32 meg ram/16 flash
2) ram is upgradable to 64 via standard laptop type memory upgrade (hear that imac memory will work) bios might restrict use of more ram
3) I bought a USB->Ethernet controller from ChumpUSA for ~40 today and it came with a Turbolinux CD (SMC EZ connect USB) so I presume there is usb->Ethernet support on the cd 8-)
4) There is a 44 pin IDE header that will only work with the 2.5" notebook drives. Normal IDE uses 40 pins and have seperate power input, whilst the 44 pin versions provide power on the last 4 pins to the notebook HD's (one will notice the lack of a power plug on the notebook ide drives).
5) 10-inch 16bbp color bax res is 800x600
can't think of much else. looks neat, I gotta get me one of these babies!
what about USB zip drive? this would make the HD issue moot...
If there's one IDE connector, and there is a memory device on it (as the master, presumably), would there be anything preventing one from rigging up a cable and attaching a hard disk as a slave device?
Unavailable everywhere. You can't order one online. Go ahead, try.
Trying to procure some real-world karma points?? Feeling guilty? Pansy.
You need to find video drivers for it there friend. BeOS dosn't support the I-Opener's chipset yet. XF86 does. That means that *BSD and Linux will work, BeOS won't. FreeBSD-Current has good usb ethernet support I hear...
Desperation is a stinky cologne
You can run VESA 800x600x16 on BeOS
According to the dmesg output on that page, the chip is running at 200Mhz. So there. If that parallel port ethernet adapter works correctly, I'd be interested in one of those things as a quake box.
Diehard
The way I see it you should be able to flash bsd (or linux when it gets usb network support) and psuedo remote boot... With the kernel on the flash it could load and bootp the rest...
Is there any way I could attach a parallel network adapter or something and use the 16meg of flash to have the system network boot?
I personally can't see why not... but...
I was thinking, just hook up a regular hard drive to it with linux installed... setup the flash area to boot the system with network support and mount a NFS share from a central machine.
That way, I could have a dozen of these suckers around my house.
- Hugh Buchanan
- Userfriendly.com
Murphy's law is certainly in effect for this company. Check out this URL to see when they're supposed to IPO :p
3 ,00.html
http://www.hoovers.com/co/capsule/3/0,2163,9957
i plopped down $20 as a down payment. and they didn't make me sign any isp contracts. If they make me sign an isp deal when i go to pick it up, i'm gonna raise hell.
So does the modem work with the hacked i-opener?
The modem isn't a winmodem, but I haven't heard anyone say they're able to drive the modem.
Can you switch to Linux, then use your current dial-up ISP?
Also, if you can escape into the native QNX, can you use it to access/change the ISP settings?
My friend Rob and I went to Circuit City up in Nashua, NH this afternoon to buy a couple. They were sold out. In fact, every Circuit City within an hour's drive of Nashua was sold out of them - most had been sold in the last day, as far as the sales rep knew! We went onto a backorder list, with 8 more people ahead of us.
/. effect applies to meatspace, too. This is probably the first time that a consumer electronics chain has been slashdotted...
So now we have proof that the
Imagine the faces back at headquarters when they see the weekend sales figures. They'll be so excited, waiting for all the new ISP subscriptions that they'll expect to be getting - I feel kind of sorry for them.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Just spent the last 15 mintues on divixcity, er I mean circuitcity's web site looking at "Express Pickup" locations for Florida. Sold out at every location. I'm going to head down to my local CC and see about picking up a floor model. Anyone in Florida get one of these beauties, or did we just have none to begin with? Bry "No PC Should Run With The Case On" Mayland
I ordered two today. A friend ordered two also. I checked it out at circuit city, it looks sharp. 1.48A @ 19V. Could possibly power it in your car... have some mapping software on it and an mp3 player. In any case, after hearing the sales guy chuckle when I asked if the service subscription was mandatory, I let him admit that Netpliance knew exactly what was going on. He mentioned that it was an organic process... that the /. effect really hit home, and that certain patches of areas were ordering more than others. Another chuckle came out when he was taking down my address and informed me that the engineers at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana were snatching them up like mad, along with some research park in Raleigh, NC. While processing my order, we made smalltalk and he mentioned that they were IPO'ing within the week and I asked if they were worried about all the recent developments. He said that despite the fact that "the engineers and executives have been up for 2 days straight," presumably working on a technical or marketing "fix" most likely, the PR people were going to sell it as a positive thing. Don't know how they'll put that one off though. Later he comically asked me what I was going to use it for and we discussed the logistics of installing it in the car. At least they have a sense of humor about this situation. Hope the execs have better luck with their next startup...
--lithboy
Someone could make a lot of friends by putting together a distribution of FreeBSD which has the following, all graphical: -- Web browser PLUS mp3, pdf, etc... -- easy configuration for using different ISPs -- drivers for USB and parallel port Ethernet How to get it on board without cracking the case? Easy. Use the QNX root trick to get to the modem, then set up a server with a couple modems which lets people (remember, not hacker.gods, just people) download just enough of FreeBSD to get it talking to their LAN over either Ethernet approach. The install finishes over either USB or PLIP. Or if the install is small enough, download the whole puppy over the modem! Set the browser default to go to the distribution information site. Now the really classy hack would be if you could get an iopener _already activated_ to visit this site over the iopener service and successfully download the new distribution. Yes, I know, the iopener won't download executables, but you can trick it into downloading a "graphics file" by naming it *.gif or *.jpg then renaming it in QNX. Use this to bootstrap as above, eliminating the modem-server approach entirely. For people unwilling to even learn to type QNX commands in order as required, you could set up a ship and return service to put FreeBSD on iopener boxes for a small fee. Anyone serious about making this work? -- Andrew Clark clarka@firstlight.net
http://snoopy.net/mailman/listinfo/iopener
:O
Check it out... full-featured listserv.
I am the list mom.
"What have I done?"
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
BTW, the free BeOS download should be available in less than two weeks...
standard vesa 2.0 mode. No accel.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
I'm really interested in one of these as an MP3 player. I don't mind coughing up the $20 for the drivers, but how do I hook this up to my stereo?
Do I have to wire in my own connection? Splice however it gets to the speakers? *shrug*
RE:Service Agreement = My Thoughts
by Thinker
My thoughts.... Netpliance - Rise to the occasion! Turn your setback into an asset that money couldnt buy - by handling this gracefully.
I also was told on the phone that there was no obligation to buy the service, and I am sure that the previous poster who said that the terms cannot be changed ex post facto is right. Sure, they could pull a "bait and switch" act, but the net result would most certainly be a class-action suit and perhaps more damagingly, TONS of bad publicity. From some people who could conversely, be their biggest supporters if they just approached this calmly and rationally. i.e. face the music. Honor agreements.
They would be smart to chalk one up to experience rather than get themselves involved in what most surely would become an incident that would generate a terrible amount of bad publicity for them. Plus, the groovy iopener boxes in the Linux community would, through being so cool, and by virtue of the nature of the hack, and the conditions under which this whole thing unfolded, and the levelheaded way they responded to it.. (hint, hint) generate business for them in the rest of the world..
Lets face it, they can afford to take a loss on some of the units if the net long-term result is a good name and the Internet elite's respect for Netpliance. In other words, this story will live on far beyond these two weeks..
Conversely, the various other, less-friendly options would surely backfire..
The /. community is very influential, despite what some people might think..
But more importantly, goodwill/goodfaith is important..and it can make or break a company.
Why don't they just start fresh and face reality. They made a costly mistake, that if played right, could be turned to their advantage by an act of good will.
Honor agreements, move forward honestly..grace under pressure = long term business success...
That's a truth one can't deny...
And who knows, maybe they might want to re-evaluate their long-term strategy..
One option after eating their losses would be to .... Leverage that good will..
For example, make an semi-expandable iopener II with an internal hard drive, and Linux or NetBSD preloaded, and sell it for say, $499, with no agreement required... Sure, they wouldnt make a huge profit on it.. BUT if they did a decent volume on it, it would reduce their cost significantly by increasing their volume..
Another neat angle would be to position that box as an educational tool, for parents to buy their kids.. "learn computer science with iopener" They could throw Apache on there..add some lesson plans (on an optional CDROM drive..)
"Internet jobs pay big bucks"
Get my drift?
Thoughts?
#i-opener-linux experimentation reveals the
:(
interface to be a standard serial port plus
four extra lines, two for incoming phone line
and two for outgoing phone line.
so, you've got a COM1 port to play with. no bus.
sorry
it has a USB port though. lots of stuff can
fit in a usb port. like a $4o USB to ethernet
adaptor. also available in wireless.
look again. 800 * 600 16bpp
Why don't somebody buy a truckload of these machines and put them up on eBay? Preferably someone who is prepared to ship internationally.
When I called the guy, he said that they had gotten 30 calls this weekend about them. "We never sold any before Saturday!" I think the /. effect kicked in. Is this a first for us affecting real things, instead of web sites and the like? I'm just impressed that there are 30 other people in Ft Worth who read /.
I think they're both on the same controller.
From the website's DMESG output...
VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39e irqs later
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will http://www.linux-hacker.net/iopener/dmesg.txtprob
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe000-0xe007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
hda: TOSHIBA MK2103MAV, ATA DISK drive
hdb: SunDisk SDTB-128, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: TOSHIBA MK2103MAV, 2067MB w/128kB Cache, CHS=525/128/63
hdb: SunDisk SDTB-128, 15MB w/1kB Cache, CHS=490/2/32
Also, if you take a look at the picture, you can see the connector above the chips. Top of the pic.
I finally ordered mine directly from NetPliance. The Circuit City locations in Portland and all the way up to Seattle were sold out and had them backordered. Apparently when the price dropped to $99, everyone and their dog decided to buy one. BTW - Does anyone else think that their shipping charge is a little steep? $38.00 to ship a 5lb. package!? And it's not even next day or 2nd day.
A new site listing various other Web sites for the i-opener hack: What do you want to i-open today? http://www.higuchi-clark.com/iopener/ Also with totally subjective "eyeball" ratings.
I am doing and have done several similar "conversion" projects with embedded computers and Linux.
/. before, but in a nutshell:
.1" used by pretty much all other header connectors - damn metric system!)
My first conversion of this type (other than laptops, which I was running Linux on way before it was cool, and when video drivers were a really ugly problem) was an Epson IM-403 cash register computer. (Available from Timeline, the surplus guys, for $99.) It's got a lot less stones than the iOpener, and no screen, but it does have a nifty if tiny little UPS that lets it ride out most power glitches. I've posted about this project here on
- 486SX33 CPU, pretty nice little BIOS
- nice little Chips and Tech video controller will do 800x600 max to std VGA connector
- four serial ports (great for control projects!)
- a parallel port
- socket/tray for a 2.5" IDE notebook hard disk (will accept even the tall 17 or 19mm drives, so you can put IBM's latest monster in it)
- a single ISA half-card slot for the obligatory network card.
- Socket for up to 32MB of RAM (plenty for a decent Linux system - I've run several versions of Caldera on the box, but recommend sticking to slim WMs for obvious reasons.)
- Flat ribbon connector for Epson floppy (know where to order one, if you need it.)
- Tiny little NiCad UPS built in. This is one of the coolest features, and the reason one of these is my primary file server at home. It will only keep the box alive for a few minutes, but that's always been enough so far.
These run Linux fine, or if you just need vNC, you can run the DOS vNC client with the packet drivers or a stripped Linux with the SVGALIB vNC, either of which should fit on a floppy. [As an aside, I have one extra IM-403 with a 3GB HDD that I'll sell for $120+S&H in the US, if anyone's interested.]
(BTW, anybody know where I can get a multiport network card (2 or more Ethers, 1 half-size ISA slot) that works under Linux? If so, I've got my new firewall...)
Also, I'm just starting to hack on a little ARM-based *touchscreen* webphone. These were built at enormous cost by AT&T and Philips before they decided they cost more than the market would bear. (They would have had to sell them for about $600.) They run AT&T's Inferno operating system, and are pretty darn nice speakerphones in addition to finally having the holy grail I've been searching for: a *touchscreen*. I think I can lay my hands on a couple hundred more of these at ~$200 each +S&H, if there's interest. They aren't speedy, but they have a built-in web browser and use one of those little WebTV-style wireless keyboards. Although I don't know of anyone that's replaced the OS (althogh ARM Linux is out there...), but there are hacking instructions available that show how to get root in Inferno. They don't have E-net connections, but do have two PCMCIA slots, so decent networking should be possible.
I've done a lot of hacking with laptop hard disks, and it's extraordianrily difficult to get the 44-pin cables for these things, especially if you want a cable to support two of the little drives. (Which I'd like to do for several machines I've got, including my FIC Sahara Databook, which uses a notebook CDROM on the secondary IDE channel that could give me a place to hang a backup drive. I can't even find anyplace to get a cable like that *made* anywhere here in Austin! You can get the connectors from Jameco, but I haven't found out where to get the dinkier ribon cable these need. (The 44-pin IDE 2.5" drive header uses 2mm pin spacing rather than the standard
Also, a local computer shop once had sockets and little plastic cases to allow a 2.5" HDD to be plugged into a 3.5" drive bay socket. They don't have them anymore. Anybody stumble across these in your searches?
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
We've ahd this discussion before, but the rules are very simple: It's VAXen, not VAXes, but it's boxes, not boxen!!
BOXEN IS NOT A WORD!!!
DEATH TO "BOXEN"!!!
SAVE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!
Can anyone give the the inner dimension of the monitor base. I put a USB Hub inside.
There is no spoon.
If you don't like EULA's, why don't you just rewrite them before signing (clicking?) them? Take the proverbial big red pen and make a few judicious alterations *BEFORE* agreeing to them. Who says they are set in stone?
The law gives specific rights to copyright holders. But, when I buy a program, I *OWN* the media. I can do anything to that media that I desire. Including altering it's contents, packaging, whatever...
Is there a lawyer in the house? Is this legal? And if not, why is it legal for them to arbitrarily impose contractual restrictions upon me for which I receive no compensation?
I am working on a similar project , my guess is that this thing costs them no more than 300$ for the hardware +100 $ for administrative etc.
which is a standard VESA 2.0 mode. no accel.
if you don't know what you're talking about, please don't post. not that the S/N ratio could get any worse..
QNX was also a real-time OS; not many Unixes could do that. For lots of applications, just being fast is fine, but if you're trying to control hardware that wants its interrupts handled in N microseconds so you can tweak physical behavior, it takes lots of support from the interrupt handlers and schedulers. Masscomp was one of the early players in the field, and some of the later System V releases had optional real-time schedulers. There were POSIX real-time specs around 1990, but I got the impression nobody much cared about supporting them. It's nice to see that there's some real-time Linux work going on as well.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This arti cle describes Larry Ellison's newest spinoff which is going to manufacture $200 Linux Net Computers. side note: here in Richmond, VA (corp. hq of Circuit City), they ran out of the i-opener and told me even their warehouse did not have them.
Go here for display drivers for Win9x, Win2K, and XFree86:
http://www.tridentmicro.com/htm l/driver/blade3d.htm
Please: Can someone confirm that these work under Windows?
I have been wracking my brain and tearing my hair out for months after we found these shitty little boxes didn't work. Thank god I thought of this slashdot wheeze - I will be made company president for sure. -The Salesman
I hope the SEC is looking at this.. something is definitely fishy...
Hello! I'm not clear from reading the posts, if after installing a new OS if you will be able to log into your regular ISP (earthlink, etc.) via the built-in modem? I thought there was some discussion that the modem is not standard and would not work? Is this correct? Is the modem still a mystery? I have one on order at CC. and today I got my Mother to order 2 more. I better be able to get this hack to work or I'm in deep water:-) Thanks Jerry
I would love to know the Serial or model of the lcd. As would most others. If you can get your friend to give up the info on the LCD and the maker of the Motherboard many of us would be iternally greatful
And the net result is that this may cost them a *lot* more than if they had simply left well enough alone and dealt with it in a straightforward manner...
Is there anyone out there who knows the inside story on this ? Please speak up.
Check out the verbage on http://www.netpliance.com after clicking on "buy One" button. "By purchasing the i-opener you are agreeing to use the i-opener Internet service. The fee is $21.95 a month and will be billed approximately 2 days after the i-opener is shipped to you. Modification of the i-opener in any way is no longer physically possible and is in violation of our terms and conditions.
SecurityGeeks.com story points out that Netpliance has changed the rules on it's cool flatscreen machine.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I-opener on ebay
Yes, but whats that got to do with the price of tea in D'ni?
I just when to check that the price had not changed for the I-Opener and was greated with a message stating that I would have to obligate for their internet service when I purchased the box. Ok, no prob pay for a month then quit. It also stated that the I-Opener was no longer able to be hacked as stated on the internet. Anything shipped after 3-20-2k is supposidly un-hackable. Can anyone verify this statement?
Is there anyone out there retrofitting/modifing units at a specified price?