At a company I saw many of these Thinstar terminals in a recycling container, ready to disassemble. I asked whether I could get some of them and yes, I was lucky.
After opening the case I saw a Cyrix Geode GX processor, operated at 300 MHz, a 64 MB S0DIMM-RAM and a 32 MB Flash module, containing the Windows CE operating system.
I thought I could make an asterisk box out of it. There were two problems:
I decided to use a 160 GB 2,5" hard disk for storage and an AVM Fritz! ISDN card (PCI) to build up my test system. On the picture above you can see the mounted hard disk (it is fixed via screws on the front panel), the installed 128 MB notebook RAM module (66 MHz or 100 MHz (which is compatible to 66), a 133 will NOT work!) and the installed ISDN interface card.
After opening the case I saw a Cyrix Geode GX processor, operated at 300 MHz, a 64 MB S0DIMM-RAM and a 32 MB Flash module, containing the Windows CE operating system.I thought I could make an asterisk box out of it. There were two problems:
- The maximum RAM you can put into the S0DIMM slot is 128 MB, so a swap partition will be mandatory. Swapping on Flash is not something you really want to do.
- The 32 MB flash "disk" is far too small to install a Linux operating system and asterisk.
I decided to use a 160 GB 2,5" hard disk for storage and an AVM Fritz! ISDN card (PCI) to build up my test system. On the picture above you can see the mounted hard disk (it is fixed via screws on the front panel), the installed 128 MB notebook RAM module (66 MHz or 100 MHz (which is compatible to 66), a 133 will NOT work!) and the installed ISDN interface card.
To be able to use a standard hard disk I had to get power somewhere. The installed flash disk got its power from a +5V pin on the IDE interface which is normally not connected (and not installed! remember the "closed hole" on IDE interface plugs to prevent them to be connected in the wrong direction?). I had to break this pin out of the IDE socket, so a standard IDE interface cable fits well. But where to get the hard disk power?
I noticed a little connector, similar to floppy disk drive power sockets, just above the DIMM-slot. Even a floppy disk power connector had the right size to connect there and - there is power! So I was able to connect the hard disk (using a 2,5" to 3,5" IDE adapter, which also presented a normal internal power plug) and a CD ROM drive (yes, that was not the best idea, the power supply got very warm due to that..):
I noticed a little connector, similar to floppy disk drive power sockets, just above the DIMM-slot. Even a floppy disk power connector had the right size to connect there and - there is power! So I was able to connect the hard disk (using a 2,5" to 3,5" IDE adapter, which also presented a normal internal power plug) and a CD ROM drive (yes, that was not the best idea, the power supply got very warm due to that..):
Powering on the system, the hard disk began to swirr and the CD made the typical knock knock noise to tell everybody that it just got power.
The next problem: How to enter the setup mode of this machine? The only thing you'll see at the beginning is a NCD Thinstar splash screen which suddenly breaks with the famous text "NO BOOTABLE SYSTEM FOUND.".
That was easy to resolve: Just press "Del" when the splash appears and a quite normal BIOS appears on screen. The things I had to change:
After some tests I saw that the system wants to use "pata_cs5530" to access the IDE subsystem, but I never got my CD ROM drive to work with that. So after taking "brokenmodules=pata_cs5530" it used the legacy "cs5530" for the IDE system and that's the reason I am seeing "/dev/hda" and not "/dev/sda".
However, after initialized all system, still there was a show stopper: The system ran out of memory. That was easy to fix: After the kernel has booted and the installation screen appears (take text mode!), I just had to press ALT-F8, use "fdisk /dev/hda" to create partitions, format the swap partition and type "swapon /dev/hda2". ALT-F1 took me back to the installation welcome screen and I was able to do the installation (minimal system, console).
Next thing was to build a personal kernel, because the standard kernel was for SMP. I turned off SMP/SMT support. I set the GEODEGX1-Flags also. I cut down the number of modules it has to build. Still, the installation took 20 hours :) The first experience about performance of these "thin" beasts...
At the end, my kernel boots and the last step was to install mISDN 1.1.8.
cpuinfo:
The AVM card got recognized and my module ist is finally:
Ready to fly with asterisk. Will the performance be sufficient?
The next problem: How to enter the setup mode of this machine? The only thing you'll see at the beginning is a NCD Thinstar splash screen which suddenly breaks with the famous text "NO BOOTABLE SYSTEM FOUND.".
That was easy to resolve: Just press "Del" when the splash appears and a quite normal BIOS appears on screen. The things I had to change:
- Boot from CDROM first.
- Set the CD ROM to PIO (IDE slave), my drive did not like UDMA.
After some tests I saw that the system wants to use "pata_cs5530" to access the IDE subsystem, but I never got my CD ROM drive to work with that. So after taking "brokenmodules=pata_cs5530" it used the legacy "cs5530" for the IDE system and that's the reason I am seeing "/dev/hda" and not "/dev/sda".
However, after initialized all system, still there was a show stopper: The system ran out of memory. That was easy to fix: After the kernel has booted and the installation screen appears (take text mode!), I just had to press ALT-F8, use "fdisk /dev/hda" to create partitions, format the swap partition and type "swapon /dev/hda2". ALT-F1 took me back to the installation welcome screen and I was able to do the installation (minimal system, console).
Next thing was to build a personal kernel, because the standard kernel was for SMP. I turned off SMP/SMT support. I set the GEODEGX1-Flags also. I cut down the number of modules it has to build. Still, the installation took 20 hours :) The first experience about performance of these "thin" beasts...
At the end, my kernel boots and the last step was to install mISDN 1.1.8.
cpuinfo:
processor : 0
vendor_id : Geode by NSC
cpu family : 5
model : 9
model name : Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 300.690
cache size : 16 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu tsc msr cx8 cmov mmx cxmmx
bogomips : 604.54
clflush size : 32
The AVM card got recognized and my module ist is finally:
Module Size Used by
af_packet 20232 2
mISDN_dsp 193060 1
avmfritz 21092 1
mISDN_capi 92140 1
l3udss1 37716 1
mISDN_l2 35436 1
mISDN_l1 11220 1
capi 15912 0
capifs 5896 2 capi
kernelcapi 37208 2 mISDN_capi,capi
snd_pcm_oss 46080 0
snd_mixer_oss 16128 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq 48308 0
snd_seq_device 8332 1 snd_seq
loop 17156 0
rtc_cmos 7328 0
ns558 4864 0
gameport 13448 2 ns558
rtc_core 18072 1 rtc_cmos
rtc_lib 3200 1 rtc_core
8139too 24064 0
mii 5504 2 8139too
kahlua 4480 0
sb_lib 40340 1 kahlua
uart401 10948 1 sb_lib
sound 66448 2 sb_lib,uart401
sound_firmware 2688 1 sb_lib
snd_cs5530 6148 0
snd_sb16_dsp 9472 1 snd_cs5530
snd_sb_common 16640 2 snd_cs5530,snd_sb16_dsp
snd_pcm 75400 2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_sb16_dsp
snd_timer 21508 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 52532 9 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_cs5530,snd_sb16_dsp,snd_sb_common,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 7364 2 sound,snd
snd_page_alloc 10632 1 snd_pcm
mISDN_isac 15488 2 avmfritz
mISDN_core 75256 7 mISDN_dsp,avmfritz,mISDN_capi,l3udss1,mISDN_l2,mISDN_l1,mISDN_isac
ide_disk 16128 5
ohci_hcd 18820 0
usbcore 116988 2 ohci_hcd
edd 9156 0
ext3 125320 3
mbcache 8068 1 ext3
jbd 59060 1 ext3
cs5530 5248 0 [permanent]
ide_core 115076 2 ide_disk,cs5530
Ready to fly with asterisk. Will the performance be sufficient?
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