need ideas
 

at work today, I liberated a "dumb terminal" from the trash heap. in a small case about the size of a laptop but thicker, this thing has:

-a mini mobo
-a powersupply (with fan)
-a cdrom drive (slim type like a laptop would have)
-a case fan
-a cpu fan (but I cant tell what kind of cpu it has, since the heatsink (with fan) is glued on top of it)
-i/o connections for: audio/video (rca jacks), mouse and keyboard, modem and fax, ethernet, and some other jack that Im guessing would be firewire (looks sorta like a USB, but is definitely NOT a USB port), and of course the video out to monitor.
-and what appears to be an itty bitty 4mb ram chip.

but NO hard drive

it is one of about a dozen NIC (New Internet Computer) units that allowed different parts of the plant to connect to the company network.

it was being scrapped because of a change in company structure eliminated the department of the plant where it was used. so far as I know, everything should still work (hell the thing is less than a year old).


so, what I was wondering is, besides stripping it for parts (of which only the fans, power supply and cdrom drive would be of any use to me) what can I use this for?

I was thinking of setting it up as my internet browser by networking it off my pc.

anyone got a better idea, or some suggestions as to where to find info on how best to implement my idea?

if you can add a hard drive, use it as a download box for kazaa or winmp

You could make it a home server, making you protected behind a ICS Firewall, or you could make a Digital Video Recorder (if it is fast enuf and supports a TV card, and a HDD), You could make it a small simple computer for a child to have fun on, Make it a Linux / Windows box, whichever you dont have, Make it a base station for Digital Pictures with the RCA jack you can plug it into the TV and have a SlideShow machine

Just a few thoughts, I know I could find a lot of things to use them for :)

the thing is, this mobo has NO slots of any kind for expansion of any kind. no way to hook anything else (HDD or otherwise) else to it.

we interrupt this post to bring you late breaking news.

I just looked UNDER the cdrom drive and noticed a stick of 64mb of pc 133 ram. but the itty bitty 4mb thing still looks like ram, im guessing it for the (extremely slow) video output these things put out. or else it holds some kind of stripped down OS.

any more ideas?

umm ... does it have a network card? string 'em all up an build a beowulf cluster. (hey, some folks stringed up a bunch of PS2's ...)

what ye'd wanna do with a beowulf cluster though ... is a story fer another thread ;)

As discussed you can use it as a Linux box, run P2P, Linux router, or multimedia center for your home stereo.

Get crazy and install it in your car - other people have: http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/carpc.jsp. You've probably got VIA's mini-ITX mobo.

ok folks, this:

http://www.thenicstore.com/nic/

(click on support, then hardware FAQ for a detailed discussion of what it is.)

is what I have. of course, the cd that holds the OS was not in the drive, and unless I can somehow get hold of a copy of the OS cd, the thing is worthless as far as functioning as it was designed. which is a bummer, because I planned to use it as an internet browser for my daughter when she comes to visit for the summer.

so, Im wondering if any of you geniuses can give me some help figuring out how to use this via networking off my windows 98se box. according to the website above, it uses a linux platform, which is going to be a pain trying to network with windows in the first place, and besides that, Id rather not get into using netscape (never cared much for it - not that IE is any better, but Im used to it).

question boils down to this:

WITH the cd (if i can get a copy) can I use it networked to a windows box (note I also have an old windows NT disc if that would be of any help)?

or the more likely scenario

WITHOUT the cd, can I do anything with it other than strip parts out of it?

final note, I hooked it up today and it seems to function ok, except that it wont boot coz theres no boot cd.

can you put a hard drive in and boot off a cd and put on lets say windows 2000?

Edit:
I read the faq's...thats a messed up thing.......i wish you luck...

run knoppix...no hd necessary. the lack of mem might hurt you though

Get a CD bootable version of Linux and ...

- make a firewall
- Use samba on the linux distro to mount any mp3 shares and use it as a streaming box i.e. put it by your stero and run mp3's off of it
- Become a 1337 h4x0r