First, let me say that having the escape key delete the post while you are typing is stupid! :) I'm now typing in notepad and I'll paste it in when I'm done. I just erased 20 minutes of typing! :(
I'm typing from my recently hacked WebSurfer. It is running a 6.4 gig, 2.5" drive that was in my i-opener until last night. :) It is being powered off the power supply in an old 486, coupled with a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter ($5 on E-Bay). I plan on splicing in a regular drive power adapter with the current motherboard power lines. The card is being driven by an old ISA IDE card from a 486. I can't determine the brand. It is strictly for IDE (not a multifunction card). I should also mention that I disabled the 4 or so IDE settings in the BIOS.
I'm viewing the output on an old CTX monitor in 800x600x16-bit mode. I'll try my 27" TV after writing this.
I'm still using the wireless keyboard and built-in mouse. Much easier to use than the i-opener's keyboard.
It will be evident by other parts of this post, but I'm running Windows 98. It is the original version from an upgrade CD (not SE, no patches, etc.).
I originally had a PCI ethernet card (3COM EtherLink 3C900B) along side the IDE card. It took a long time to get the drivers installed properly and even then it wouldn't transfer data. I think I could get it working if I tried again. I'll explain later.
Since I got a D-Link USB hub/NIC in the mail today, I decided to try to get it working. The software installed like a charm. I did have to reboot an extra time because I forgot to enable USB in the BIOS. However, even after the quick install, it wouldn't send data. It was acting the same as my PCI NIC.
I tried a bunch of fruitless exercises. I then decided to give in and go get the drivers off the web. I installed win9xallc40.zip (told it to install all the pieces, but I think the install failed part way through). It *did* get rid of the PCI bridge problem and installed two multimedia devices for audio.
I also installed the video driver (w95-208.zip).
After these two steps, I *still* couldn't get the USB ethernet to work. Very frustrating.
Since the Windows 98 installation was originally in the i-opener, I thought maybe it would benefit from a good refresher. I went into the device manager and removed *all* the devices, including the system devices. After rebooting, it started relearning. It choked once. I had to delete a couple more things from the device manager and have it relearn them. I then had to uninstall the special video drivers/utils, remove the video hardware from the device manager, and reboot in order for it to install correctly.
After doing all this, I knew I was on the right track, because winipcfg showed the USB ethernet adapter instead of the PPP it was showing before. It wasn't configured properly in the network control panel, so I had to set it to 10.0.0.2, gateway of 10.0.0.1 (that's how I'm hooked to my DSL modem, which has the real IP address), and the DNS server was already configured/remembered from previous attempts. After another reboot, I was on the net!!! =)
I think the PCI card would work if I plugged it back in. This just goes to prove that Windows really likes to relearn everything instead of being given a device list learned from another motherboard (the i-opener in this case). A reinstall of the OS is probably even better. I didn't have to do this, however.
I left the DiskOnChip plugged in the whole time, never installed UMDA drivers, never flashed the BIOS, and haven't made any hardware mods yet. I do plan on trying to get the serial port, onboard IDE, and possibly onboard ethernet working, but these aren't high priorities.
Well, I'm off to hook this up to the TV and install MS Office. This one's for my girlfriend. After that, I can get back to putting the i-opener in my car with my GPS so I can do away with paper maps and avoid the bain of men everywhere -- asking for directions! :)
Any questions, feel free to ask.
