• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Netpliance IOpener

Happy to help! My mod was fairly simple. It consisted of a CPU upgrade, CPU heat sink/fan, RAM Upgrade, BIOS Replacement, and the hard drive. :)

I'm definitely interested in seeing your results. Have fun!

Heather
 
I'm going to necro another old thread. Anyone know how much RAM these can accomodate? I have three of these. One new in box, another that might be a newer revision, and another that's already hacked. I know the screen is horrible, but was thinking of using it to display PDFs for my presentation at VCFSW next year. The more RAM, the merrier.
 
pkhoury said:
Anyone know how much RAM these can accomodate?
Click to expand...

If I had to put money on it I would guess it's *theoretically possible* to put 256MB in one, but the practical limit might be 128MB.

(I've seen pictures of one with a 128MB SO-DIMM in it, so that should be known to work. From experience with that vintage hardware I would guess that you *may* be able to get the "lower density" 256MB SO-DIMMs to work in it, IE, the same ones you need to upgrade things like the original model iMac G3s, but those were kind of rare. A hand-me-down 256MB from the last generation of Pentium-III-era laptops using SDRAM instead of DDR will probably be too dense to work)
 
Just keep in mind that they really are just Windows 98 machines. 64MB is more then enough to run it. The IDT WinChip and lack of L2 cache really hold these back performance-wise. Split voltage mods and CPUS with more cache gave a nice speed boost. The IDT WinChip 2 was a popular, but hard to find replacement. I had mine going full tilt with a parallel to SCSI adapter along with a CD-ROM drive and Zip for removable storage.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
If I had to put money on it I would guess it's *theoretically possible* to put 256MB in one, but the practical limit might be 128MB.

(I've seen pictures of one with a 128MB SO-DIMM in it, so that should be known to work. From experience with that vintage hardware I would guess that you *may* be able to get the "lower density" 256MB SO-DIMMs to work in it, IE, the same ones you need to upgrade things like the original model iMac G3s, but those were kind of rare. A hand-me-down 256MB from the last generation of Pentium-III-era laptops using SDRAM instead of DDR will probably be too dense to work)
Click to expand...
I actually checked after I wrote my post and it has PC100 128MB in there. I know I have some 256MB SODIMMs, but I'm pretty sure they're mostly PC133, which has a 50/50 chance of not working.
njroadfan said:
Just keep in mind that they really are just Windows 98 machines. 64MB is more then enough to run it. The IDT WinChip and lack of L2 cache really hold these back performance-wise. Split voltage mods and CPUS with more cache gave a nice speed boost. The IDT WinChip 2 was a popular, but hard to find replacement. I had mine going full tilt with a parallel to SCSI adapter along with a CD-ROM drive and Zip for removable storage.
Click to expand...
I was probably just going to use it to display PDFs. The previous owner has the IDE cable coming out of the box, so I can technically do Linux or Win98 on it. It'd honestly be funny if I put on a full build of QNX on it, just not the same crippled version it came with.
 
I still have the keyboard for one, not sure why. Must have thought that someday I'd find myself in critical need of a keyboard with an integrated mouse and "pizza" key.
 
For anyone looking for the Bios V540a.bin, see attached
 

Attachments

  • V540a.zip
    135.9 KB · Views: 1
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top