I just got one of these and am going to attempt some of the hacks mentioned here, but as someone pointed out in another post, there is a lack of "definitive" information about some of the hacks. I pulled a bit from here and a bit from there. A couple of the websites were helpful, but there is still nothing detailing how to go about some of these. I have summarized the VGA and keyboard hacks in the "Answers" thread. I wanted to get some additional clarification on a couple of things before expanding that section.
1. It was mentioned that there are 3 serial ports on this. COM1 is the modem, COM2 is the IR, and COM3 is apparently unused. It was mentioned that it goes to an unpopulated 3 pin connector containing only RX, TX, and Ground. I'm presuming that connector is the 3-pin connector located just behind the PS/2 keyboard connector and to the right of the PCI slot. This is labeled 1800 on my board. Can somone confirm this and post pinouts for this port?
2. I saw that someone reported that they got the PCI slot working with a NIC in a non-AOL OS simply by soldering on the PCI connector from a dead motherboard. Has anyone else duplicated this? I just wanted to be sure that there was no need to populate any other components to make this work. I know that the PCI slot is spaced oddly for the case and the fact that the case fan is right behind it doesn't help any, so it will require either a riser or some card surgery to get a card mounted permanently.
3. I also thought I saw someone post that they had a USB NIC working in a non-AOL OS, but I've also seen references to the USB being non-standard. I've also seen references to USB drives working in DOS. Can someone confirm these?
4. There are several other connectors on the board that I've not seen mentioned. There is a 10-pin connector just to the left of the hard drive that is connected to the Conexant Bt835KRF ColorStream chip. This connector is labeled 1101 on my board. It looks like it's a test connector for the ColorStream chip (goes to the JTAG test pins). It's probably not very useful, but I wanted to document it for posterity.
5. There is another 4-pin connector to the left of the RF module labelled 1150 on my board. Any idea what this is for?
6. There is what appears to be a second S-Video connector between the exisiting S-Video and the RF module. Is this possibly an S-Video in? It appears to be missing a bunch of components on the bottom of the board, so it's unlikely it will work just by adding the connector.
Well, I just got this yesterday, so I'm sure I'll have more questions as I get into it. :)
NarShadda
