DSL on a internet applianceForum: User Feedback Topic: DSL on a internet appliance started by: mrsailor Posted by mrsailor on Aug. 01 2005,17:09
The IA-1 is a device designed to dial up the Microsoft Network and be an internet terminal. It originally ran wince.It is a neat device, manufactured by Compaq with far more abilities than MS ever used. It has a 16Meg internal compact flash disk which is /dev/hda. I have Midori linux (a teensy linux for these type of devices--a bit long in the tooth now) on it. It has a slot for a second CF disk which is /dev/hdc. It has 32 Meg of Ram, 4 USB 1.1 ports, a Lucent winmodem, a 2Meg Cyberblade video card (shared memory so that reduces main down to 30Meg) and a AMD K6-III+ 400 Mhz CPU (it originally came with a AMD K6-2 266 but it was socketted so I upgraded it) as well as a IR controlled keyboard with an integrated mouse device. By using a 2.2 G microdrive in the CF slot, I got a hard drive on /dev/hdc. This gave me swap space. I was able to install DSL by using a CF to IDE adapter (that I bought from the DSL store last year) in a desktop that I have and making sure the microdrive wound up being /dev/hdc on the desktop so that lilo would be correct. I popped the microdrive back into the IA-1 and booted it and presto! I had DSL. I then got the 2.4.31 kernel (as long as I was going to compile a kernel) and pruned it down to have only the drivers/modules I needed plus selected optimization for K6. Plus I turned on the msr feature for AMD chips so I can use k6mult to adjust my multiplier on my K6-III+. Otherwise, it will only be using 4x instead of the 6x the chip is capable of. Wow! I cannot believe how fast it runs now. The addition of a USB ethernet adapter was all I needed to get access to my broadband. Thanks DSL for making my IA-1 live again. |