[frgeek-michiana] Re: Netvista 2800 again..
- From: "Mike Cook" <mikecook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:19:18 -0500
> Thankfully I have never come across the problem you are describing on
> any of the Netvistas we played with. The only thing I saw that sounds
> like your problem is this, from the IBM 2800 Reference Manual:
> When you power on the NetVista thin client, the system LED shows a
> solid green color, or a flashing amber color, and the monitor does not
> display any screens. The software on the NetVista thin client may be
> damaged. Contact IBM Service and Support, and refer to “Appendix D.
> Recovering the boot block image” on page 53 for information on
> recovering the software on the NetVista thin client.
I alreday solved this problem. Seems that the WSOD-BIOS part was
totally screwed up or simply wiped out or whatever. The trick was:
The device had BIOS from 2000. I flashed it with 2001 - no luck.
Flashed it with 2002 - no luck, but WSOD wasn't present at all - at
least, the device rebooted into net-BIOS all the time without giving
any errors. So i decided to flash back to 2001 and voila: WSOD-BIOS
works now.
Strange, and took me 1 week to figure this out. I installed the
Turbolinux-Edition to flash/update the device on a NT4-server.
It now boots ipcop 1.4.1 without problems from an external IDE-drive.
My next goal is to flashboot the root-fs and to use an IDE-2,5" for
/var
The device accepts 256MB CF-cards from Traxdata, so there's plenty of
room for a tiny little firewall :)
Too bad that it doesn't like booting from CD.. :/ You have to installed
the OS somewhere else and hope that you included all drivers.. ^^ NT4
boots out of the box, Win98 needs drivers, debian (older sid) had a
kernel panic but should work somehow.
Have you thought of putting a boot manager such as Smart Boot Manager SBM
http://btmgr.webframe.org/ on the CF.
SBM allows booting from CD from nearly all PCs. There is a floppy disk
image of SBM included with Debian
> As for the connectors, the one labeled BOOTBLK allows you to recover
> the bootblock image (bios) (see Appendix D. Recovering the boot block
> image in the 2800 reference manual)
Didn't work for me, I tested it without knowing what this jumper is
for.. ;) The hardware-manual is paper only from IBM - do you have a
PDF?
This is the manual I usually consult first, NetVista N2800e Thin Client
Reference. I think it is the hardware manual although I think there is a
separate parts manual
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/netcom/pdfs/qb3a9y00.pdf - English
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/netcom/pdfs/qb3h9y00.pdf - German
There are pdfs of other manuals for thin clients here:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/netcom/html/pub.htm
> The 4 pin connector near the ide connector is power for a hard drive
> (not sure of the pinout but the mating connector is a Molex
> 43025-0400)
12V + 5V + ground + ground - no idea how many A will be there, the
layer is quite thin. But a 2,5" should work.
You don't by chance know which voltage is on which pin on the hard drive
connector on the mother board? I had it written down but can't seem to find
it anymore. I ran an older 3.5" drive with no problem; a bit of a tight
squeeze though. You should be able to fabricate a mounting bracket for a
2.5" drive and still have room left over for 1 pci card.
> Good luck and let us know how you are progressing.
Will test with ipcop "in production" as soon as I get a smaller
2,5"-IDE. The BIOS seems to have problems with devices > 8GB. But I
think the machine will work fine now. The 266 CPU is enough for a
firewall with some VPN-connections :)
The 2800 is nice because you can attach 2 more PCI-cards - so you can
use it with DMZ-nic or WLAN or simular. They sell these machines on
eBay for less than 40$. Still need a good place for the 2,5"...
greets, Hermann
I do like the 2800. It is small, quiet, and makes a great LTSP (Linux
Terminal Server Project) diskless workstation
http://www.LTSP.org/contrib/netvista/netvista.html
Have a good day,
Mike
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