| If you don't mind taking it apart, and putting it back together, then by all means yes. My wife uses my (who am I kidding - HER) dot.station every day, and it has run continuously for months now. I upgraded the hard disk (the original was failing), and added a CD-ROM (which wasn't strictly necessary), but I am otherwise using the original components. I also loaded WindowsXP on the machine, and it found all the hardware straight-away. All said, the dot.bob has been one of the best machines I have owned in terms of stability - and well worth the money I sank into it. ($80 for the machine + shipping, $40 for the slim-line CD-ROM, $60 for a 120GB HDD)
Two notes:
1) The trick to disable write-protect on the flash memory is well documented, and can be done reasonably easily with a paper clip. However, you have to short the pins while the system is booted (and thus powered up). Make sure you know exactly what you need to do BEFORE you do it.
2) You will need another system running Linux (even if only temporarily) to place a copy of the BIOS utility and ROM on the target hard disk. The easiest way to do this would be to boot a Knoppix CD on another PC, and mount the dot.station hard disk. At any rate, a basic knowledge of Linux is required to unlock the BIOS. However, once you get the BIOS updated, you can drop a CD-ROM in, and install whatever you like.
Good luck,
-radarman | |
