[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: $30 ThinNet system

[Jack Snodgrass]

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 17:59 -0500, Jack Snodgrass wrote:
> Tanners in Dallas ( Vallwood Parkway and 35 ) has several 
> IBM ThinNet boxes that have 
> Geode 233Mhz CPU
> video
> usb
> keyboard port 
> mouse port ( I think it had these... ) 
> and a few other things for $30. 
> 
> Might make an interesting linux platform if someone 
> wanted to take a look at something like that. 
> 

A few more things about this
there is no PS/2 style connectors. You have to use a 
USB mouse and keyboard.... I wonder if a usb hub would 
work, so you could add something like a usb drive... and 
have a usb mouse and keyboard.... 

it has an internal 16Meg compact flash drive that can be 
replaced. I put a ext2 file system on a 256MB flash card
and that was recognized as /dev/hda1. The orignal card 
is partitioned into /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, and /dev/hda3. 
I tried to mount /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 but my system 
couldn't detect a filesystem on them... not sure why. 
The stuff on /dev/hda3 looked like terminal ( 3270 and 55xx ) 
settings. 

Anyway... I got a 2.4.18 kernel to boot ( loads over NFS ) 
but I haven't figure out how to get the rootfs to load over NFS
and I can't figure out how to tell the kernel to load /dev/hda1
for the rootfs. I did an rdev on it, but that didn't work. 

This stuff is kinda-sort-a documented on:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/text/NC-HOWTO
but either it's out of date... or I didn't read it 
closely enough. It's a start though. It takes all of the 
fun out of hacking it from scratch thought. ;) 

I think I'll try and put a isoliunx or syslinux image 
in the CF card and see if I can just do a boot from 
there without worrying about ( for now ) nfs root... 
or maybe look at the NFS Root/DHCP stuff in the kernel 
docs... I know they mention this stuff... just haven't 
read it closely enough. 


-- 
Jack Snodgrass <jack at jacksnodgrass.com>