Windows-based terminals - what can be done?

[Peter Stuge]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 05:04:37PM -0400, Thomas Fritz wrote:
> I have access to a few WBTs at a surplus place, and I've dug up the 
> specs on them:
> 
> Cyrix Pentium clone - 266MHz
> up to 128MB SDRAM
> ports: PS/2 keyb/mouse, 2 USB 1.1, 2 serial, 1 parallel, 10/100 
> ethernet, and sound in/out
> 
> the chipset(s) include a SuperIO 97317, and a CS5530 (which handles the 
> soundblaster compatible sound and presumably the video).

Expect this to be a GX1+5530, or maybe even a Geode (SCx2xx) system.

LinuxBIOS is running on both those platforms and there is some kind of
support for the 97317 in the freebios tree, but findgrep yields nothing in
freebios2, I guess it simply hasn't been ported over yet.


> The board has an Award BIOS little square-like ROM,

This is probably a regular flash ROM in a PLCC package.


> and a larger 8MB ROM which holds Windows CE.

What kind of ROM is this, exactly? Can you peel off the label and read
what's printed on the chip(s)?


> There are also various places on the board which could have had various 
> optional features, but there is no IDE, floppy, etc...but I think if I 
> solder on a PCI slot where it belongs I could hack some more 
> funtionality onto it for testing.

The CS5530 and SCx2xx (which have the 5530 integrated) have IDE, but there
may just not be a connector for it. The IDE pins may also be multiplexed
away for some other use in this particular system.


> I've been thinking of how to go about hacking this thing, and the 
> easiest method I'd like to try first:  Burning a new ROM to replace the 
> Windows CE version.  I doubt this thing would be easy to flash the BIOS, 
> if it even had that capability.

Maybe, maybe not. With a little luck the HW designers have wired the flash
memory to always be writable, given the right software commands of course.


> I'm not looking for graphics, a text screen will be more than sufficient.

Either should be possible.


> On this, I have two questions:  What's my chances for success (educated 
> guesses?), and has anyone done something similar?

I'd say you'll succeed given time, you will have to learn the quirks of this
particular system and then likely make a port of freebios2 to it. These two
processes are usually concurrent.

If it's an SCx2xx system, check out the nano stuff in the freebios tree, and
port it to freebios2. :)


//Peter