Return to the archive index

OT: ThinkNIC

From: Robert Wohleb <>
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 18:20:44 -0700

Has anyone done any hacking of the ThinkNIC (http://www.thinknic.com/)? 

The thinkNIC is a cheap (~$200 US) internet computer with a 200mhz proc and
64 megs ram. It has no HD and boots from a laptop style cdrom drive. It
runs a hacked linux dist with X and netscape. The few configurations are
done through scripts and Netscape and then stored in flash memory.

I've been playing with it a little bit. And it appears to have one IDE
channel that the cdrom is on. There is an interface board between the MB
and cdrom on this connection that sets master/slave for the cdrom. It
appears to set it to slave though. I will be trying to atach an HD soon
with the linux dist from the cdrom for hacking purposes. The system also
uses one pc100 dimm ram board. I mounted the cdrom and started going over
the linux dist. It appears to boot up, create a ram drive, default to run
level 4, and then runs a hacked version of rc.sysinit (no other rc
scripts). X is started and the only thing that comes up in X is netscape
(no gui menu). X is set to 800x600 but the X config file has modelines for
1024x768 also. It is just set so you can't swith it on the fly.

Anyone have any more info that I can have before I hack into it deeper?
Anyone have any advice on setting up a bootable linux dist that is on cdrom
on an HD?
Anyone know what the hell a boot.cat files does since all it is a hand full
of bytes (around 6) of non 00 hex value in a file of a bunch of 00 hex bytes?

I tried dissasembling the boot.cat file with no luck. Net searches have
turned up nothin on what it does. All I know is that it and an .img are
required to make an ISO image to burn.

Any info is appreciated.

/-------------------------------------\
| Robert Wohleb                       |
|                                     |
| System Administrator                |
| Parafoil Software                   |
|                                     |
|                |
| FAX:	(520)752-7373                 |
\-------------------------------------/

--
Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of
"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to 
Wear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org

+Previous Message in Thread | Next Message in Thread

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH)
Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

Archive created with babymail