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Hacking Oracle's $199 Net Appliance
RegardsSJ writes "I've documented my progress in hacking around with Larry E's $199 ThinkNIC box. It has great possibilities for use as various network appliances. My site describes what it is, what's inside, how to add a hard drive, and how to customize and burn a new system CD. "
Not that this is better as a router than as a good cheap xterm, but I am interested in whether it can be made into a router.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I would be surprized if there ever is a Linux
version. Netzero makes their money from the
banner ad rotator.
How long do you think it would take to "fix"
that peskey add rotator thing in Linux?
AdFuel
Had an episode where the bad guys captured a scientist who built a machine that manufactured $5,000 gold bars. They put him to work and the first thing he did was ask for some raw materials including a $10,000 bar of platinum to make each gold bar.
D'yah get it?
<i>Or change the boot order from "C only" to "CDROM, A, hard drive" </i>
;-) The only choice that allow's CD booting is the default CDROM, C on this version of the BIOS. You could flash the bios. <a href=http://www.pcchips.com>pcchips</a seems to be the mainboard vendor and they have downloads.
That's a little obvious
Who can deny the snazzy of that? - The Tick
Thought a few people should hear from someone actually supporting these things. My company was contracted out to do the internet technical support on this product. Although I don't know much about the internal electronics of the NIC, what I can tell you may be of some help if you plan on pursuing this project.
The Processor is a Cyrix 266 with a single pc100 64meg ram stick. It is running using a bootable Linux CD. Included on the CD is Netscape 4.73, vncviewer, Winframe client, a few games, etc.. It has support for an internet provider (also supported by us)called NetZero (free internet access), but it also has support for paid ISPs. It simply boots, when you turn it on, loads X and eventually Netscape (which, through a webpage, gives you connection options).
There is no way to change settings for the operating system in any way. Other than adding connection information and bookmarks, etc. It only has 4MB of Flash RAM to store the information into it.
Because it is using Linux all the hardware should run on any distribution of Linux, but the hardware is of the cheapest quality possible. Having said that, from the 3 demo models that were sent to us I can definately say that the case is nothing special, looks like something that came out of the late 80s. And after 3 hours they overheat and have to be turned off. Extra cooling may be needed if you plan to run it 24/7. It also does not have a floppy drive, for those of us, like myself, still needing one occasionally.
It has a premotional price of $199 ($329 with the monitor).
Personally, I am waiting until the Web Tablet, from Qubit, comes out.
Weights only 2.5 lbs.
Active matrix 781x600 touch screen
Roams up to 200 feet from base transmitter
802.11B RF connectivity
Includes an onscreen keyboard and wireless keyboard
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
MUCH, thanks. Us old folks need black text on a white background. The worst is blue or green on a black background! Designed for unreadability.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
the 'amd' version (totally inaccurate usage of the term) is really just the mvp4 chipset that takes super-socket-7 (socket 7 @100mhz and split voltage rails) cpus.
the other (usual) choice is socket-370 and the i810 chipset.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
amptron book-pc board specs fyi.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
These things have been hacked all up and down already, and this is one of the most content-poor accounts I have seen. Here are some better resources:
I've gotten one of these myself (littlelarry.capnbry.net, currently offline), pulled it apart, soldered another power connector on, and added a hard drive. The Cyrix PR266 is pretty underpowered, but it runs linux like a scalded dog.
BryBecause it can be used as a small, cheap X terminal or other thing that can't be found easily otherwise, and what will be too expensive to replace by a full-blown computer.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It arrived via a unmarked paper box. Little did the UPS guy know what I was going do.
I quickly rushed it up to my lab and tore open the box. Inside was a smaller box marked system board.
I was confused. A system board?? I hadn't heard of these. I tore open this new box and was able to gaze upon my quary. Damn! It looked just like a motherboard!!!!
This 'system board' had a number of cryptically labelled connectors: IDE1, BANK1, SPKR. Only through my years of experience and hackerly knowledge would I even begin to discern what these cryptic labels meant. Perhaps these were just a rouse. After the iOpener incent, these hardware manufacturers were rumoured to mislabel items to prevent master hacker like me from repurposing their devices.
Straight out of the box this thing wouldn't even boot Linux. I carefully set the CD at various locations and nothing. No light, no sound. It took more than a week of work to get a booting system. I used all my industry connections to get the extra pieces of hardware I would need. Through a dealer in Chinatown I obtained a 'Slot 1 Coppermine'. Through a company in Cleveland, run by Russian immigrants, I obtained PC133 SDRAM modules. Surfing the web I found this thing used a standard ATX power supply. The fools! You can get those anywhere!
So it was a week later and I finally had a booting system. Now, could I install linux?
I took the old RH6.2 disk I had burned 6 months earlier and gingerly placed it in a salvage CD-ROM drive I found in the dumpster of a local high-tech company. It worked! First try!!!
I quickly had root and the system was mine. Now all i need to do is build an enclosure for this thing and I've turned this 'system board' into a full working Linux box.
While my skillz are probably beyond those most of you posses, never fear. I'll be putting up a web site on Geocities to help you lusers transform the Tyan 'system board' into a working Linutz box.
$ netstat -t
$ ipchains -I output 1 -d x.x.x.x -j DENY
Hm, looks like just a few seconds.
Hell, with most window managers you could just stick it on another virtual desktop, or otherwise "hide" it without the app even knowing what happened.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
ThinkNIC ported thier version to Linux somehow. The programmers who designed NetZero don't see much of a market in supporting Linux versions (for some odd reason). They are more interested in getting a Mac version out (and no, I don't know when).
Thought I think the reason for not getting a Linux distribution out might be that they are not too familiar with Linux, or that we would all have to re trained on Linux to support it.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
You can but a similar system off ebay for around $150 (one with a hard drive even). The company is not losing money on this one. All the parts are cheap and easy to find. The reason i-opener was losing money was due to the lcd monitor. So if 3,000 Slashdoters buy these, they won't get mad at all.
is actually the bigger problem. The French can't even keep basic . and , and : in the same place. I can deal with a few letters being in different places, but if you have to shift for . that's pretty damn stupid. Compared to that the German layout is almost benign: the Y and Z are swapped, but at least the punctuation cluster is the same.
A very small case like this with an intergrated power supply and a motherboard tailored to fit inside is perfect for a lot of custom devices. Such as an MP3 player, for example. Hook the audio up to you stereo, connect it to your network, whip up (or go find) some software with a nice UI that can pull MP3s off another host on the network, and you're set. Or put in your own HD and store the stuff there.
> well, its sitting here, unused. want it? ;-)
:-)
Sure, I'll have it. Mail me for details
Lary's ego...
BOrED.
But unless one of the things screwed up is the business model, no one minds what the hackers do. The real person to protect the device from is the clueless newbie. I'm sure the only reason is that there are so many more of them than us, but I find it funny that the things we have to work so hard to get around are put there in futile attempts to safeguard the device from people who have no idea what is going on.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
... and we won't see them until the E.U. becomes one-big-country like the U.S.
Think about-it. Why some Sweedish company will provide someone who lives in Italy with a low cost toy as they know upfront that they won't dial to their ISP service in the other part of the Europe.
Setting up branches in each end every contry given the actual laws is too much trouble (and that's why you don't have RadioShack Europe and cue:cats). And add to all this all the laws in all the eu countries and the fact that the unit must have versions of the software and keyboards for all the languages spoken here.
You can have the following:
- Emigrate in U.S.
- Build your own stuff
- Get one from ebay
- Get a plane, spend a weekend in US of A and buy from there. (enter into each radioShack you can find, pose as an american (it's easy, just speak with american accent and pretend you know nothing about the metric system) and get a shitload of cuecats. (If you do so, please send me one too:)
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1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
I was a very early adopter of the I-opener (still have my hacked one sitting here collecting dust from non-use; was more fun to hack than actually use) and I also just got a tivo and hacked it as well.
but the book-pc is a real pc with no need to "break in" to it. it has onboard video (both composite/s-video AND svga outs), onboard digital audio sound (real spdif digital in,out via the uber-cool cmi8738 chip), onboard 10/100, usual ide and floppy, 2 usb, 1 printer and modem. only thing missing is serial and you can steal the modem port for that (still looking for pinouts on that header, though).
its $179 for a barebones system (add cpu ram and hard drive). I threw the installed cdrom drive away since its junk and added a 2nd hard drive in its space. makes a most excellent mp3 player. with the 60gig's of storage I have on there and an external audio alchemy DAC connected to the spdif out, you get sound quality that is truly cd or better (better since you control the audio circuitry via which DAC you buy and connect).
you can get a socket-7 version (what I bought) which uses the mvp4 chipset (very standard) or you can get the [cough] i810 set and futz with the agp port a bit to get video/X11 working. I didn't have a cel370 chip sitting around and I did have a k6-3 being unused so I ordered the socket7 version ($15 more). didn't regret it - X came up pretty easily.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
There is a significant difference between this system and the ones whom you refer to - this company does not sell ANY kind of service along with this computer. It is a stand-alone unit, without any kind of mandatory server that must be signed up for.
The problem that caused the earlier legal hassles was that people figured out how to hack the various boxes to (at least potentially) avoid the service that was generating revenue for the company, and in many cases making up for the fact that the hardware was being sold at a loss. Since the NIC is sold without any such commitments and is able to connect to any service the purchaser wants to use, why would the company -care- if people modify it?
I game, therefore I am...
I won't dismiss the fascination of opening up a black box like this one and turning it into a web-enabled toaster, but I don't see why someone would want to buy such a device to turn it into a cheap firewall/router/webserver. Why ? because you can build a better PC for the same money. Sure it won't look as sleek as Oracle's little box, but a Pentium 266 with mb and ram can be purchased for peanuts. Even if you do run up to 199$ in parts, the assembled product is still much more upgradeable and versatile than a bastardized Oracle box.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Actually NIC doesn't discourage people to play ..
with their NIC. On egroups they actively
participate in the discussion on thinknic-tech.
Unlike devices like the i-opener they don't
rely on a monthly subscription service for
their revenue. So bascially they don't care
about hacked NICs and they love to see people
do cool stuff with their NIC. Just keep in mind
that fiddling with the hardware does void
the warranty. So basically you get the hardware
at very small margin, the software for free,
and you can make your own CDs to make it
a router, mp3 player or whatever else you can
think of
Order them over the web! http://rswww.com http://www.maplin.co.uk Cheaper and better quality than Tandy (generally)
Please have a look at the archives for the thinknic-tech mailing list at egroups - you'll notice lots of @oracle.com addresses in the responses. They've been very supportive of the burgeoning developer community for these boxes.
As a side note, we've just rolled out 125 of these boxes as X-based terminals on our High School campus - booting completely off the network and they just plain rock. My hat's off to the company for producing such a flexible piece of hardware!
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
I 'HIT THE MONKEY' and bash that little poop thrower hard, right in the jaw. And where is my $20, this is a fscking rip off. I am going to beat the hell out of that dam monkey next time I see that little SOB. I got a nice metal 32 bat waiting for him, COME ON SHOW YOUR FACE YOUR MONKEY COWARD, I WILL WACK YOU GOOD!!!
Dam monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey.
Then they throw me in this tree and I dig at the tree for an hour and there is no MONKEY CASH, THERE IS NO MONEY.
you can't make money off the monkey. Dam monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey. Can't sleep or will miss monkey.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Check out the BBS here. This started as a I-opener hacking site, but has evolved into a more general internet appliance, etc. hacking site. Recomend it to everyone.
This is an honest question posing as a troll/flamebait.
Given recent history, is this activity illegal under the DMCA? It would certainly appear to be reverse engineering, and I'm wondering whether Sun could claim (fairly or not) that they've implemented "technical measures" to prevent such. I'm not suggesting they would, but I would be interested to know whether The Collective views this as a possibility?
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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
I've got a test/demo lab with a bunch of routers and switches and firewalls and things. This is the cheapest mostly-full-functionality box I've seen - you can plug it into an Ethernet and ping it, and if you use the hacking instructions described here to burn a fancier CD, you can telnet and ftp to it. I do have some cheaper solutions (we've got leftover Pentium 60 desktops), but these are much smaller, can probably run keyboardless(?), and do the job.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If I ever run a business I would use this device for all my desktops, along with a black 15" LCD monitor at 1024x768. The sleek design and good looks of the systems would be a startling difference to customers who are used to seeing huge bulky computers and monitors.
I would have the machines boot from a file server and authenticate all the users using LDAP and openssh.
When users logged into a machine their home directories would be mounted to the local machine. Thus, all files would reside on a network file server for easy backup. All shared directories for this persons groups would be mounted under the users home directory, allowing shared access to the files that are needed by a team of people.
This way, if there is a problem with a workstation it will take about 5 minutes to replace the box and get the user up and running again.
Since all the files are in one location, updating the desktops or the applications is as easy as upgrading the files in a single location.
The company would use web based e-mail, appointment, contact management software to schedual appointments and business applications would all have to be web accessable or I wouldn't use them. Apache web server, PHP 4.x and MySQL would be the companies basic infrastructure for writing web apps that are fully integrated with all the information that the company has.
As the demand grows the database can be pulled off to a seperate server, upgraded to a proprietary database if needed, and the front end webservers can be clustered together to share the load across multiple web servers.
This also seperates the tasks performed among the various systems... The workstation performs the presentation of data... The web servers run the apps and provide business logic... And the database servers store and manage the data. This allows any one layer to be upgraded without affecting the other layers. (If testing was performed adequately enough!)
I would train people on the software that is provided to them, but such training is often needed for people to get the most out of new MS versions as well anyway, so this is not an additional expense. All training would be video taped and classes would be available on the web.
Home access would be done through VNC, using a seperate terminal server. This would allow access to the companies computer resources no matter what kind of computer the employee had at home. And if the employee didn't have a computer at home and needed to work, a ThinkNIC can cheaply be sent home that will connect to the companies terminal server and provide a VNC session that way.
The final thing that I would do is make all the workstations part of a large cluster that would allow excess processor to be utilized by the main server to perform the companies heavy number crunching. In a CAD/CAM or multimedia environment the secretaries computer can be used to render a video.
-- Never make a general statement.
This box isn't hiding information - you may have a software license for the box, but much of the content is covered by the GPL.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks