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Home / Other I-Appliances / ThinkNIC / Oracle NIC NIC - Newbie Questions

NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) akelley Profile Okay, I've read all of the posts in this board and have concluded that there really isn't much info on these devices regarding hacks, mods, etc. So, if someone could answer these questions, I would be most appreciative: 1. Is there still a long delay in getting one of these? I checked the NIC site and it doesn't mention anything about any delay - so can I assume I could purchase one and receive it in a reasonable time frame (1 week)? 2. How difficult is it to get Windows 98 on these? I've perused some of the linked sites and it appears that some of the information is a bit sketchy and out of date. I've seen people selling Win98 "Boot CD-ROMs", but was wondering what type of physical modifications need to be made, if any. 3. My idea for these devices are to use them simply as terminals for different rooms within my house. I currently use ePods for wireless portability, Win CE Terminal Services Client, and Windows 2000 Server. ePods are great for their portability, but they lack computing power (hence the use of the TS client, but still, they're even slow at even rendering a terminal screen). So my question is, how easy is it to set up an Oracle NIC in pretty much the same fashion? Obviously, the NIC will be able to handle more processor intensive apps at the client level like audio and video playback. 4. What is the default operating system that is shipped with the NIC? Some version of Unix? In this configuration is it possible to do what I mentioned in #3 above without having to MOD anything? Thanks in advance for any information you can give me! PS - Just curious as to why there's not that much activity in this thread. For $199 the NIC seems like a great deal for a terminal solution and would be great fun to hack - what am I missing? Why aren't more people hacking them? 01-26-2001 07:33:28

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email I ordered a ThinkNIC from the "offical" web site about a week ago. It is enroute via Federal Express as we speak (ran trace on it)with a delivery date of today (except it's snowing rather heavily in Central Indiana now) or Monday. Seems straight forward enough. I'm looking at it to hang on ADSL that our local co-op phone company is rolling out for those who are computer challenged but want to "be on the net" or exchange email with their kids/grandkids. Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 01-26-2001 10:27:33

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) akelley Profile Thanks for the response. Do you plan to do any mods or hacks to it? 01-26-2001 12:10:09

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) gr8_brit Profile Hope these notes help: 1) Delivery should be quick. It's not like it's an obsolete or out of date unit. 2) Windows 98 is a breeze to install -but- you have to be methodical. It took me about an hour to do mine. Inside is a 4MB (?) FLASH IDE card (really a module) and an IDE CDROM. The flash module needs to be removed and a Disk drive put in its place. I think you'll need a new 40 way drive cable too.. (but these are only a few bucks from Rat Shack anyway). The drive has to have been formated, partitioned, set active and sys'ed from another machine. You have to have the OAK standard IDE CDROM drivers installed on it. Then boot up and install from the 98 CDROM. 3) Performance is OK (mines gathering dust in the 'fun projects one day' pile of bits) and for audio and video playback the Cyrix processor is half decent. One thing (from memory!) is that it does lack a serial port (no great loss). There's also no PCI or ISA bus expansion. There is a funny looking connector internally which probably has PCI or ISA connections, but they are nothing I could find out about. (but then I haven't looked all that far!) 4) The default OS is Linux. You probably could do all that you want, but to install the disk drive requires the same steps for both OS's.. pick your favourite. (no flames - I did spell that right!) why not a lot of activity? Easy.. the unit is so simple it doesn't really present a challenge. You know that most hackers only live for the chase, right? Have fun. My $0.02 worth. They are good compact, unpretencious boxes. Enjoy yours! Cheers, gr8_brit 01-26-2001 14:17:11

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email I plan to hack the hell out of the first one, including a hard drive, network support, possibly USB hard drive etc. Believe no one has come up with a bootable CD for any version of windows yet. Could use a "full" version windows CD which should boot, but don't know where you'd go from there, without a hard drive. Be interesting to have a minimual boot, say from what's on an emergency disk (1.44), thence go up to a virtual drive on the web and go from there, all this of course without a HD installed. But, nothing wrong with going with Linux either. My ThinkNIC didn't arrive today, maybe Monday. However, (off the subject), latest version of BookPC did, which supports up to PIII-800 FCPGA for you guys who are into BookPCs. Version is 810E, and has jumpers on MB for 133FSB/100, as well as Celeron (manual now states 600 max vice 533 previous), and 500-800 socket 370 PIIIs, quite an improvement. Front of case/bezel is different molding, and DIMM sockets have been moved to center of MB. Available from www.wintergreensys.com for $178.25 +SH (no relationship, just ran into them at a computer show) with 52X CD & floppy. Nice little box! Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 01-26-2001 14:47:34

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) Easystreet Profile Try a Scovery......you can add a floppy,hd,CD-rom or surf the net with the installed software......2 PCI slots,2 USB ports,NIC onboard,2 memory slots,small footprint......Mine has an AMD K6-2 450 overclocked to 550 01-26-2001 17:05:26

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) akelley Profile What's Scovery? 01-26-2001 20:09:19

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email Go on down this board under "networking" for info on Scovers. Took a look at Siemens native board. The newer ones also have a 810E MB in them which makes them form/fit/function identical to the newer BookPCs. Also, look alot like NI7100 which are also on this board separately. Bottom line egghead.com had them on sale in middle of 2000 and looks like no longer available except "used." Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 01-27-2001 06:26:23

Good Luck On Scovery (modified 0 times) CaptRR Profile Scovery is a nice little computer (I have one) and would be a good option if not for one little problem. I don't think you can get them anymore, egghead ran out several months ago, and the scovery scene has pretty much dried up. I wish someone else would develope a cheap little computer like it, WITH A PCI BUS, that could be bought. CaptRR 01-30-2001 23:08:02

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email FWIW, the NIC I ordered and was told shipped on 1/23 has not arrived. FedEx has listed it "enroute" until day before yesterday, then "ready for delivery", and yesterday "in transit" again. Looks like it is in a do-loop. Emailed ThinkNIC yesterday suggesting they should look into it but nothing back from them. Worst case, I'll refuse to pay credit card - best, somehow it is delivered. Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 01-31-2001 07:28:51

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email After follow up by ThinkNIC CSR, NIC "shipped" via Fed Express arrived today, 2/1/2001, some 9 days after being shipped. It is serial number NIC10101001384 which probably translates to the 1384th unit. Software is version 1.2. Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 02-01-2001 13:41:07

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) akelley Profile ProrscheMan, So how do you like your new ThinkNIC? Done any mods yet? What are your plans for this? Have fun! 02-02-2001 14:40:34

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email So far I've booted it up, etc. (it's really really slow on booting up as others have noted) asked ThinkNIC for version 2.0 of the op system CD, taken the cover off and eyeballed it (and now have a semi-circle bit of plastic that was double-taped to the case lid in some manner to divert air around the CPU fan ), found that it doesn't like my older CTX monitor which runs Linux Red Hat 7.0 @ 800 X 600 perfectly well (and also found the "fix" suggested of booting up the NIC without the monitor powered up for 45 seconds doesn't work for this NIC), asked codeman on this board if the adapter to mount a 2.5" hard drive is available (no response yet), and put together an order for a 2.5-3.5" drive adapter. So far, everything seems to be straight forward. Space is tight, the docs completely suck - if it wasn't for the info on this and other boards forget it for T.C. MITS! Don't look back, I may be gaining on you! 02-02-2001 16:30:52

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) akelley Profile PorscheMan, Sorry to hear about some of your problems there. Since I have never seen one of these ThinkNICs, I'm of little help with suggesting any workarounds or solutions. So, these devices are actually quite slow? I thought that these were supposed to be like network clients. Once they're booted up, how is the performance? Does anyone know if, in their "virgin" form, a ThinkNIC can login into a Win2000 server? Can you run Citrix WinFrame on these boxes? Basically, I run all Microsoft stuff (yeah, MS Slut, I know) and would be looking to use a bunch of these ThinkNICs as basically dumb terminals on my network. If this works will relatively little work, for $200 it's not a bad deal. Anyone? 02-09-2001 07:26:17

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) PorscheMan Profile | Email Only implied it took forever to boot up, something like a minute twenty. Once up, does fine. Think its got a 266 in it. Netscape on Linux worked OK. Don't know why it wouldn't work as a terminal fine. 02-09-2001 16:04:46

RE:NIC - Newbie Questions (modified 0 times) spincycle Profile since the OS natively supports Java (as I've read at the web site) Metaframe or the like should work fine. It's also 10/100 so latency shouldn't be a huge issue. It would seem to be an idea dumb terminal. 03-09-2001 11:21:50

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