| This update is a BIG one.
i-opener from #I-Opener-Linux is starting to make a Linux distribution
designed for the I-Opener. He wants YOUR input on what YOU
want included in the distribution. He plans on making two versions, one
which will fit in the 16MB Flash and one which will use ~550MB HD space.
Drop him a line here
and give him your input! Also, if you can assist in making the distribution
i-opener would greatly appreciate any help you can give him.
First things, additions to the site. I've added a picture
gallery. Hopefully more people can send pictures of their I-Opener
in and the interesting things they have done to it.
Apparently a company in Taiwan named Quanta manufactures the
motherboard. They don't have a website unfortunately. They can be contacted
at +886-3 397 300 and their address is +886-3 397 300. I might be giving
them a call later today to see if I can get some techdocs regarding the
motherboard. These are the same people that make the Dell Latitude laptops,
so this is probably high quality stuff.
Looks like it's possible to connect a $99.00
TFT LCD display to the I-Opener, TFT displays are much nicer than
Dual Scan displays and have a better viewing angle.
The parallel port could be used to drive a car
MP3 player.
Reportedly the Dual Voltage hack works, which means you can buy a dual
voltage converter and use a dual voltage cpu in the I-Opener. Apparently
a 233MHz Intel MMX cpu has been reported to work like this.
eCost
has a fairly large listing of 2.5" Laptop hard drives that can be used
in the I-Opener.
Apparently, through a source at I-Opener tech support the max memory
these units can take is 64MB, and that BIOS restrictions might be
in place to prevent larger RAM capacity. Apparently SODIMM's for the Apple
iMac will work in the unit.
A 64MB SODIMM can be bought for $50.00 here,
DEFIANTLY a worthy upgrade.
Here's
the press release for NetPliance to use Trident's Cyberblade i7.
Here's the S1(IPO)
filing from NetPliance(warning this text file is over 400k.) Additional
information regarding NetPliance is here.
A clock multiplier device is available here
which will allow you to change the multiplier of the cpu manually, which
means it might make it easier to install faster cpu's. There's an article
here
which describes how-to install faster CPU's into older motherboards which
might apply here.
Extreme Computing
carries some cool devices which would be a worthy addition to your I-Opener,
my favorite had to the black mini keyboard.
A 1.2GB IBM Notebook hard drive can be had for under
$60. IBM drives are extremely well suited to this type of application
as it's a well known fact that they produce little heat.
Apparently HardData does
NOT have any of the 44-Pin IDE cables in stock, bummer.
This is the best cable hack and explanation I've seen so far, it's here.
It has been suggested that geeks with that hardware at their disposal
back up the BIOS image on their current I-Openers so that if NetPliance
changes the BIOS, people may patch theirs. The easiest solution to NetPliance's
problem is to flash the BIOS to disable the IDE port and/or disabling the
keyboard's ESC sequence. Both of these solutions would make tech support
a bitch for NetPliance and make repairing RMA'd units more costly.
Cool mounting
options.
We are looking for individuals willing to assist in making a PHP3/MySQL
back end to this website so that adding new news is much easier and done
via a web interface rather than a manual basis.
We are still trying to get some tech docs regarding the motherboard,
if you have any information please send me
a line. |
