<Anyone see the NYTimes article on the Netpliance i-Opener Internet access a
<pliance? There's mention about hacking one to get it to use *any* internet
<ccess, not just the one which you are supposed to purchase with it.
<
<Sounds like a neat hacking project. There's a USB port on the back, so a US
<-to-Ethernet converter would work there. I also read that one could lash a
<ard drive to it.
<
<Anyone done this yet?
The only thing stopping me it it hasn't arrived.
Heres the scoop:
Its a P180 (winchip, socket 7) with 32mb ram internal DSP modem and
16mb of Flashram. There is also an IDE port for 44pin 2.5" drives
(connector is mirrored pinout so any cable has to fix that. The
flashram beomes IDE-1 if there is a disk. There is USB and a Parallel
port, potenitally a second unused serial port. The video is Trident I7
driving a 10" dualscan flat pannel color LCD. The Video memory is
mapped to the main memory map (flat). Looks like it would make an
excellent lowend linbox, Winbox or whatever.
The present OS is QNX with their browser and email client, fixed target
of netplience (or their agent). The QNX demo is about the same thing
as Netplience. Anywho it's what in the Flashram obviously of fancier
quality than the demo.
The suggested application a week ago was a microkernal and a emulator for
whatever prefered Hardware/OS comes to mind. One suggestion was Supnik
or John Wilsons PDP-11 emulators and PDP-11 unix. One I've giving thought
to is DOS/MYz80 to make a really nice CP/M crate.
Oh, there are a dozen or so web pages on hacking it.
Allison
Received on Sun Mar 19 2000 - 13:19:01 GMT