ThinkNIC

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: ThinkNIC
started by: tlewis

Posted by tlewis on Nov. 16 2004,04:23

Has anyone tried to get DSL to boot on a ThinkNIC thin client? (Remember, the Linux internet appliance from Larry Ellison). It has a Cyrix 266 MhZ processor and 64 Mb of ram and a CD rom drive. The NiC live cd will not boot on a Pentium PC, it hangs up and may be waiting for special instructions from the BIOS.

Posted by roberts on Nov. 16 2004,06:30

I see that they are back. < ThinkNic >
Orginially they only provided a kernel that would support their cpu and they also had a tiny 4MB disk on a chip. Both of which needed to be present in order to boot. But I cannot answer your question, for I have not seen one in a very long time.

Posted by AwPhuch on Nov. 16 2004,17:29

roberts...that link provided above aint the same critter...thats an ISP

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by tlewis on Nov. 16 2004,18:38

True, I think the ISP service is back and they are supporting the hardware to some extent but not offering new hardware. I think I'm going to pick one up just to see if it will run DSL. Hell it's less than the cost of a round of golf or a pro football ticket.

Posted by roberts on Nov. 16 2004,19:19

I know that it is an ISP service, but they have available for download the two versions of the liveCD for the original thinkNic. But then it *is* very old software.

Posted by OB on Nov. 28 2004,01:46

I have one, and it's not working.
The problem come from the processor (a Cyrix MediaGX) who present come kind of bug, and the fact that it's *necessary* to disable completly the floppy disk driver to avoid a lockup at boot.

BTW, I'm trying to dig through the website to eventually find the version of the kernel used, and the .config file that has generated it... Not an easy task ;-)

I'm willing to post an update/howto guide/files here if I can get this damn thing to work.

OB - jaube@nist.gov

Posted by ico2 on Nov. 28 2004,19:17

whooooooooooooooot. what more can i say

and welcome to the forums tlewis

Posted by gary on Dec. 04 2004,07:25

hi guys, i have a nic and dsl 0.8 boots just fie on it. i have not yet tried 0.9 but should work too. i signed upfor the new thinknic isp. not bad, nice account manager. they are working on a new cd for the nic.

Posted by Tim on Oct. 08 2005,14:59

Hi - I just got a THINKNIC on ebay and 1.5 seems to work very well. I can even load the image from a USB pen drive, but it still needs to boot from the DSL CD. I'm looking to find a way to hack the NIC flash to point to the image on the USB with their loader, but the info is sparse on the flash hacking side. Short of that, a laptop HD is a really easy mod to this box as a plan B. Anyone else have experience with DSL and the THINKNIC ? It's really a neat little box!