so here's my iopener tale:
I bought a v4 iopener from ebay, and hooked up my 10GB IBM laptop Hard disk to it. It got detected in the BIOS, but I couldn't boot from it, I always got a "Invalid Boot Disk" error. So I bought a BadFlash bios chip, replaced it and my hard disk worked fine.
My LCD screen got damaged during shipment, so there were a lot of dead pixels on it. I replaced the LCD with the one in my dead Virgin Webplayer. Who would've thought both the LCDs on the Iopener and Webplayer were exactly the same, even down the model numbers?
I also popped in the 64MB SDRAM from my Webplayer into the Iopener.
I copied the setup files to the hard disk from my main computer and I installed windows 98 on a 1.2GB primary partition and windows xp on a 2.4GB partition, the rest of the hard disk space is dedicated to the setup files and isos of a few old games CDs.
I had an old version of partition magic (version 4) I had used that for partitioning on the IO in windows 98. I also installed boot magic, so now I can boot either into DOS (on the 16MB Sandisk), Windows 98SE or Windows XP Pro.
The CPU that came with my IO is a Rise 266. Windows XP refused to install on it stating that the CPUID was missing. So I borrowed a AMD K6-2 500 from a friend and used that for installing Windows. I ran it at 200Mhz, I didn't make any modifications to the motherboard, just the CPU Core Voltage switch. Later I got my hands on a Pentium 166 NON-MMX which I popped in and is running at 200MHz now.
The HSF setup I'm using a custom one. My Pentium 166 came with a HUGE passive heatsink, I cut it down to size and attached a small fan to it. I had to cut a hole in the outer casing and RF sheild because it's so big.
Now, I managed to do some benchmarking on all three processors and I've posted my results at http://www.geocities.com/x51854181/iob/index.htm
I've also put a few pictures of my custom HSF setup.The benchmarks were done in windows 98 se.
After working with all three processors, I've noticed that the coolest running processor is the Intel Pentium 166 overclocked to 200. that's 20% over spec.
Using Motherboard monitor, and after about 15mins of Sisoft CPU benchmarking, these are the temperatures I got:
Rise
CPU - 45
System - 47
AMD
CPU - 49
System - 56
Intel
CPU - 34
System - 35
As you can see, the intel processors run very coolly even if its overclocked 20%. Even after about 24 hours, the temperatures on the Intel system never rose above 38 degrees
I confirmed these temperatures with the ones in the BIOS.
So now, I have my iopener running happily with the intel processor for quite a few days now, no problems whatsoever. Of course, its SLOW, but its still bearable. I play my old versions of Command & conquer on windows 98 and I use Windows XP as a Digital Picture Frame
:)
I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
oh, and XP won't load with the Rise CPU installed, it just reboots. and reboots, and reboots again, like a continuous loop.
