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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
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
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.
BryIt 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?
Lary's ego...
BOrED.
... 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 ($15 more). didn't regret it - X came up pretty easily.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I won't dismiss the fascination of opening up a black box like this one and turning it into a web-enabled toaster, but I don't see why someone would want to buy such a device to turn it into a cheap firewall/router/webserver. Why ? because you can build a better PC for the same money. Sure it won't look as sleek as Oracle's little box, but a Pentium 266 with mb and ram can be purchased for peanuts. Even if you do run up to 199$ in parts, the assembled product is still much more upgradeable and versatile than a bastardized Oracle box.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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