Slashdot Mirror
50-Dollar Hackable "WebSurfer"
evilviper pointed us to a new hack on LinuxHacker. Last time it was the i-opener, but this time its the WebSurfer. It's 50 bucks and can be had at CompUSA. They show it booting Linux among other things. Has a wireless keyboard, a real (non win) modem, and a Cyrix CPU. Looks perfect for voiding warranties.
Contrary to the people who said it doesn't exist, a coworker and I just went and bought two of these suckers at the local CompUSA for $50/each. The sales droid noted that these things are selling unusually well, but didn't ask us to sign the contract.
It's worth trying, at the very least.
----------------------------
It looks to me like you have to sign up for 2 years of service in order to qualify for the rebate. So this machine really isn't a $50 toy, :)
unless of course you want to get their service
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I think that these devices are a great idea, but can we really expect them to be happy about us running linux on them when they are really just terminals for a subscription service.
Don't get me wrong, I love linux and would like to have one of these.
My question is this. Are these machines really this cheap or are they recouping thier costs with the service. I suspect that it is the service.
Perhaps they could offer a slightly more expensive version of these devices for linux users who aren't going to use their service. This would, i think, alieviate the problems with losing revenue.
Binder
it may be morally ambiguous, but my opinion is that business models that depend on hiding information from the user, or on giving the user a package with limited rights on what s/he may do with it, are not healthy for the company, and even less for society as a whole. so I would support laws going in the opposite direction: that things are sold, and that any company trying to make money from "side channels" does so at their own risk, and that users are perfectly allowed to sidestep said channels.
200 Rebate from EarthLink!
Upon purchasing the Innovator WebSurfer Pro Set-Top Internet Appliance
customers have the option to choose one of the following:
a) To qualify for WebSurfer's $200 rebate, customers must establish a new
Earthlink (formerly MindSpring) Internet access account with a commitment of
24 months at $24.95 per month. Account must be in good standing at time of
rebate request.
b) Customers can register for the month-to-month billing plan of $24.95 a
month with a designated Internet Service Provider. Month-to-month billing
accounts do not qualify for the $200 rebate.
c) Customers can use their own Internet Service Provider but will incur a
monthly fee of $14.95 in addition to the cost of their Internet access (may not
be compatible with all Internet Service Providers that do not support PAP or
CHAP and online services such as AOL & Prodigy).
A one-time, non-refundable activation fee of $49.90 applies to all accounts at
time of registration which includes full registration and free upgrades.
Mike
...already 23 (and counting) of 'em on ebay
*grin*
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
What made the I-opener cool was it came with a flat screen. When was the last time you priced a 180 cyrix system without a hard disk? Yeah...about $50. deep thoughts.
---
Sig Return: 204 No Content
It's not your fault if they price something too low to make a profit on it.
I remember reading somewhere (it could be false) but something likg 2/3 of all new businesses fail.
They had ample time to change their practices after the iopener thing happened.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The "use your own ISP" option looks interesting. That's what I'd do if I were going to use this thing, but then I don't know how you'd go about canceling it (you could say that you canceled your service and the box was useless to you)
What a gamble... better business model than the i-opener because they can just screw ppl out of their rebate checks if something like this happens... then the company gets sued, but all the while they've got your cash and are making more!
Here's the url to buy it.
I read somewhere over the weekend that there is already a Linux hack for the "new, improved" i-opener. Anyone got that link?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They charge $100 for 3 years. This one has lcd and all. The catch: you use it at least 10 hours a month, if you want to quit and/or don't use 10 hours/month, they'll cancel your membership and you'll be charged $200-$500 (depending on when you cancel).
Maybe someone can put a hot swamp hd on it! It's very cheap anyway!
CY
/_____\. .......|
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
- Unlike the i-opener, it does not come with its own monitor, although the infra-red keyboard is nice. Too bad all the extra monitors I have laying around are busted...
- It does come with a requirement to buy two years of ISP service, but retailers aren't currently enforcing it, it seems.
- The rumor is that the $50 price was a retailer's error. Maybe someone could set the story straight here.
-JDYou can forget about finding one of these for $50 now that WIRED has picked up the story.
The story has some comments from the guy behind the hacks, it turns out that it hasn't really been very lucrative selling the kits. They also ask him what he plans to hack next, to which he says he may look at the MailStation, but has dismissed VIRGIN's i-apppliance since the service contract is unavoidable.
You would think that especially after the i-opener, and the MSN rebate debacles, the lawyers for WebSurfer would have taken a second look at their agreements with all their retailers to ensure the device would not be sold without a binding ISP contract.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
other than the gratuitious "imagine a beowulf cluster" comment . . .
:-)
:-)
in actuallity, you'd need a good dozen of these before a cluster is really effective, particularly beowulf-style. Agreed, this is a pretty cost-efficient way of doing it (going for about the price of an old 486, and with a little more muscle. That and you'd have to alter all your code to work with a cluster system, so the applications you'd run on it would be completely different. So before dropping the cash, you really need to decide what you want to do with it, not just to say you have a cluster (but if you have the spare disposable income, rock on with your bad self! Or give some to me).
If you're looking at two boxes (the iOpeners have really nice monitors, I agree), a better way to do it might be to network the boxes with a REALLY fast card, and convince the system it's really one SMP box instead of two. That way you can still tweak code, but run normal applications on it if you want. Then you can do something other than crunch inordinate amounts of numbers.
It's a good hobby, keep at it
incidentally, "holy joe" by Haysi Fantayzee is a great bouncy song to hardware hack to. I only mention this because I'm listening to it now
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Aside from the fancy case and custom supply, this is nothing more than a $70 MediaGX installed systems board! You can prolly snag one at the next computer swap meet, complete with TV-out and onboard sound.
It is a cool hack tho..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I have a couple boxes with the 200mhz MediaGX chips in them (bought them for $50/ea several months ago.) I did manage to get Linux running on them, but not reliably at all. Who knows, maybe this box will run it better, but just be aware that you might be wasting $50.
There's a little technical info about the problems available here. According to Kira:
"...the cache controller is totally, completely, and utterly fubar. It basically doesn't work. It has difficulty in maintaining coherency between the instruction and data caches and this causes gradually-increasing system instability."
This may not be the case with the 180mhz chip--anyone had any luck with the 180 & Linux?
numb
How long can you stay dialed up and inactive - does "10 hours per month" mean you need to tap the keyboard every few minutes, or can you dial up one evening a month and let it stay on all night?
Can you dial into other ISPs? (e.g. dial into your home Linux machine's modem?) If you do all your browsing through The Anonymizer , can they track anything?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The Internet Appliance was supposed to replace the PC, not be converted into one. It seems that there are more people buying these contraptions simply to hack on them than for the "as-intended" use!
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
"the problem may have been that there was a stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf!" - David St. Hubbins
Hmm...this is rather interesting...when you fill out the member application the 'Member Agreement' is in a text box at the bottom of the form. An _editable_ text box. When I filled out my application I removed the 'not' from section 2.2 and hit 'i agree'. Processed without errors.
Of course, the halfassed solution for this is for companies to start using Torx screws, like those found on your power supply. You wouldn't believe how many people are too lazy to buy another screwdriver..
The $49.99 deal was with Earthlink... Pay for 2 years upfront (sign up in the store at time of purchase), and they'll give you the device for 50 bucks. Unfortunately, as a CompUSA manager told me, they were under contract only to sell Prodigy service with their computers, and selling Earthlink would violate this agreement. (The manager said this was explained to him by an Earthlink representative.)
So... CompUSA was starting a big push, and advertised the device WITH OUT ANY FINE PRINT at $49 on their website, and listed as an "In Store Only" Item...
Some people got them, some didn't... Stores even in the same town had different policies decided for several days by each store manager (some of them didn't even know what the heck the thing was).
It is my understanding that since those days of inconsistency (Probably April 23rd-29th), the stores have since made some action to prevent this discounted sale.
It's a propreitary Cyrix device, and is fairly nice for the price, but you do have to add harddrives, or mess with the internal QNX software. TV Output is typical basic 640x480 scan conversion. There are other features on the motherboard that could add onboard IDE support, network support, audio in, etc... so it is a fun toy to see what all you can do with it.
AntiPasto
I applaud the ingenuity and effeort required to come up with one of these consumer-device hacks. Converting an I-Opener/WebSurfer/other 'embedded' system into a nearly fully-functional PC is a great project, and can be great fun for personal use (MP3 players, smart-home controllers, etc).
However, I see at least one potential problem down the road if companies attempting to bundle services with hardware find any new device built on commodity hardware standards immediately ripped open and repurposed. Have we all forgotten that we live in the age of the DMCA? Proprietary, closed standards, systems, and software are not dead, and the major corporations whose bread and butter come from providing products and services no one else can replicate simply due to the obfuscation of their workings can be counted on to protect their interests in court.
What ever happened to the true DIY attitude of computer hobbyists and hackers? It may feel great to see that cute little plastic appliance booting Linux, but that doesn't mean you've actually built something, just stood on the shoulders of countless other engineers and programmers to give yourself a feeling of technological prowess.
Basically, if you know what you think a perfect system would be, pull together some people and build the damn thing! There's no reason that open hardware construction couldn't be just as sucessful as open software, and Sony won't be sending out the lawyer ninja to kick anyone's ass for building their own homebrew hardware.
I found this when looking for more info on the MediaGX board on google./ SBCMediaGX.htm
http://ww w.arcomcontrols.com/products/icp/pc104/processors
No mention of price though. Mabe someone could put together a cheep Webplayer Wannabe bundel made to be a cheep linux box. I think there is a market for this. Mabe a "GeekBox"... a "SlashBox"? hummm....
49.95 * 1.0825 (sales tax here is 8.25%) == 54.07
24.95 * 24 == 598.80
598.80 + 54.07 == 652.87
199.95 * 1.0825 = 216.45
Total money saved by using their ISP offer == - 436.42
Sounds like a deal that really sucks to me.
The chip has the following problems we know about
1. Some XFree releases have a lot of bugs in MediaGX support. Use 3.3.3.1 or 3.3.6
2. The RDTSC handling is funny. Linux will disable
the TSC and handle it fine
3. The SB emulation has bugs. 2.2.15 has workarounds for both the DMA counter bug and the DMA emulation bug.
4. The PCI bridge is a bit dim. Its fine for most stuff but put a tv capture card there and you may have issues. Its not clear whose fault that is
Otherwise its a good little CPU, it has 16K cache only but with good latency and the video from main memory does hit performance. Figure P120-P150 for a MediaGX 180Mhz.
Alan
http://www.virginconnectme.com/
this product is put out by a company called ian (internet appliance network). i had the opportunity to meet the guy who created this little piece of hardware. i can tell you that up front, the hardware is very sexy looking. i don't know much about the insides, but i *do* know that they are already working on a second generation, and they are hoping to support broadband access in that one.
the current model is limited to a supply of around 10,000, first come first serve.
the deal is you pay $50 a year for 3 years and agree to be online for 10 hours a month. that's it.
oh, and BTW, they fully invite you to hack it and run whatever OS you want, provided you stay online at least 10 hours a month. (at least that's what i was told a week and a half ago.)
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
...here's the FAQ for the Websurfer, it is a set top box that plugs into a TV and allows internet access (i.e. It turns your TV into a WebTV).
If this is anything like the i-opener then the machine costs more than it is sold for with the intention of making some back on subscription. Am I the only one who feels that this kind of hack is a little morally ambiguous at best? I know that is probably not against the fact of the law but in a world where we are taking stands against unjust law left right and center should we not be respecting the intent of deals like this?
The WebSurfer is $199.
They have a deal if you sign up for two years of Earthlink it is $49.99.
some people were able to get by this cuz the workers at CompUSA were stupid. They wised up, real fast.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Hey look, these guys put out a neat little terminal that gets people onto the internet and lets the company make tons of money from ISP subscriptions. That's great. But if they screw up their end-user agreement such that it's possible for anyone to buy the thing at a low price without obligation to purchase the ISP, that's their fault. If I then come along and modify the thing to do what I want, I own it, I'm not violating anything, and I can do what I very well please with it. It's not like these guys are some kind of charity and we're blatantly violating the spirit of some covenental agreement we signed with them that happens to have a loophole in it ; we're doing what we want with something we own.
People get taken for a ride by the twisted wording of licencing agreements, credit card terms, and tons of other fine print every day. If it turns out that one of these big boys inadvertently gives everyone a much better deal than they originally intended, there is nothing legally or morally wrong with taking advantage of that.
Frankly, what really is disgusting, and IMO morally wrong, is for companies like iOpener to then turn around and cry outrage and blame "hackers" for "lost revenue". It's typical of our corporate culture to pass the buck for your own screw ups, and the iOpener fiasco is just another example of their willingness to scapegoat anything non mainstream to get their way.
At any rate, I was all excited about getting one for $50, to play MP3s on, but for $199 (and with all the other pieces parts I have lying around) I can build something just as good and more expandable.
Happy Beltaine!
Beyond the obvious "it's cheap because it's intended to be bundled with a service" similarity, there's another thing that this machine and the I-Opener have in common: they are physically small (they don't take up a lot of space) and a bit underpowered compared to today's mainstream PC, which is one of the reasons that they _can_ be so cheap.
People want these cheezy/cheap PCs. This WebSurfer machine, especially with its TV-out, reminds me of Commodore's ahead-of-it's-time CDTV. CDTV was really an Amiga 500 packaged in what looked like a regular audio CD player -- something that would look at home on your stereo rack. But it was really a general-purpose computer in disguise, and you could do just about anything you could imagine with it.
There's demand for this stuff, but it seems like the manufacturers are missing something. They seem to think that if a device is targeted as having a specific embedded purpose, then it doesn't need to be programmable. (Do any of these guys remember the personal computer market of the early 80s?!?) That's one of the reasons people are trying to rip out the embedded QNX (or whatever) and stick Linux on them. Some users want to really customize these machines to do whatever THEY want.
And that gives me an idea. When I was picking out components for my firewall/music box, I didn't really _want_ a conventional PeeCee case. I wanted something that would fade into the background and look inconspicuous, like a stereo component. I checked out a few Micro-ATX cases, but for various reasons, nothing was quite right for me. So I gave up on the idea and got a minitower (but at least it was a cool one ;-).
I think the world wants more variety in computer cases. And no, I don't mean another iMac clone. Start with the old pizza box or generic audio component size, make sure it has room on the front for
- a DVD/CD drive
- maybe a Matrix Orbital display
- an IR port
make it BLACK, then somehow figure out a way to put a regular-sized ATX motherboard in it, while also figuring out a way to cool it sufficiently. This would totally kick ass, and I think it would sell well to amateur hobbyists that want to build their _own_ appliances.Alas, I think the computer industry doesn't recognize the existence of hobbyists anymore.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The most informed speculation is that the price reduction (from $200 to $49.95) was intended to be for a bundle of the box plus internet service.
Comments on the websurfer-hacker mailing list suggest that these boxes are not as useful as the I-opener