Well, the annual gift-giving season has drawn to a close and now we are left with retailers trying to get rid of all that extra stuff that thy have left over in their inventories.  Of course as a hardware geek, I’m always on the look out for another great hack. While at my CVS I came across a Sylvania netbook device for under $100. Even better, I got mine as an open box for only $30 making it an awesome find.  Read further to discover what this little beastie’s hiding under its hood.

The device touts itself as a “Wireless mobile internet device” and from the box, the stats are a little on the slim side. It runs Windows CE, has several USB ports, an SD card slot and a mic and headphone jack. The manager warned me to not expect a fast performing machine and that since it was an open box, CVS would not be able to take a return especially at the price I was being given. I told him that I plan on modding the device and would not need to return it.  He told me that although these devices were popular, many people were downright irate when they brought them back because of the device’s supposed horrible operability. I was still on the fence and told him that there’s a good chance I could do something with it and he sold it to me for $30 just to get rid of it and avoid having to ship it back to corporate.

Front of box

Back of Box

The box is small and light and shows the device as well as some specs on the back. I could see where the uninformed may be led to believe that this was a full blown laptop or netbook PC and purchase this instead thinking they got a bargain.  But, since I was out for hardware and not necessarily for a netbook, I knew immediately what I was getting into.  Let’s take a deeper look.

Closed Netbook

This image really doesn’t do much justice. This thing is SMALL.

Size against standard laptop

Here’s another pic of it sitting on my work computer. It’s roughly 1/3rd the weight, 1/3rd the height and 1/3rd the length of my lenovo T500.  Aside from the smallness of the device, I was impressed at how sturdy the device was. It’s plastic but the consruction itself was solid.

Netbook by itself

The keyboard is very small on this device however after typing on it for a while (this article was written on the netbook, minus image adds and minor editing) it quickly became comfortable, although don’t make any plans on speedtyping any time soon.

Netbook left side

On the left side of the device, you will find the mic and speaker jacks as well as the SD card slot for expansion storage.  The audio is powered by a VIA VT1613 audio codec.

Rear of the netbook

The back of the device has a wired Ethernet jack, a USB port and the 9VDC power port. Nothing too special here although I would have preferred an Ethernet jack with status LEDs. (first mod, maybe?)

Right side of netbook

The right side has two more USB ports designated by icons as for a mouse and keyboard however my keydrive worked in all three ports without a hitch.

Stock desktop

Keeping in mind that the device runs Windows CE, I fired up the stock software. It booted quickly in under 5sec to this screen.  I was able to configure it to my network and it ran quickly however I did notice that it had a problem with getting a DHCP address. I statically set it up and everything worked out of the box via corded connectivity.  There is an update (will post an update soon) that fixes this and many other issues.  Since this article is primarily intended to focus on the hardware, I won’t go into the OS details here.

Now let’s crack the case open and take a look at what’s inside.

Bottom of netbook

On the bottom of the device, there are 11 visible screw holes. The 12th is hidden under the white “Windows CE” tag and will also need to be removed.

battery pack

Once you remove the two screws in front of the bulge (foreground of last photo), you can remove the battery cover exposing the small battery pack.  I have no idea if this is an LiIon pack or NiMH or just plain NiCD. Disconnect the two leads and remove the battery.  Remove all remaining screws.

At the top of the keyboard, there are four tabs that hold the keyboard down. Push them in gently and then gently disconnect the keyboard ribbon cable from the mainboard.

Keyboard removed

Once the keyboard is removed, you will see two smaller openings with ribbons. Disconnect the left one as it goes to the trackpad. Tilt the screen all the way back and you will feel it lock into position. (No, you didn’t break it.) At this point, you can carefully remove the silver bezel from the black base. Now that the bezel’s gone, disconnect the right ribbon cable from the front of the mainboard. This is the LEDs for power and keyboard indicators as well as the left and right buttons for the trackpad. Also next to the right ribbon cable, there is a single screw. Remove it as well as the four screws holding down the hinges to the monitor and this will free up the mainboard. Do not attept to disconnect the two ribbons going into the display housing. The right ribbon is the USB WiFi module which is hand soldered and the other is the ribbon which carries the video signal and is glued to the mainboard.

netbook mainboard

Now that the beastie’s guts are on display, let’s take a look.

Netbook SOC

The entire device is powered by a VIA WM8505 SOC with a 2GB flash chip and 128MB RAM. Those extra pins have got to be used for something fun…

VIA Audio

As mentioned earlier, a VT1613 Audio codec provides sound.

Netbook Network IC

An IC IP101A chip provides us the 10/100 networking.

Keyboard Controller

The feared epoxy blob, in this case appears to be the keyboard controller.

Unpopulated header

What do we have here? An unpopulated header with two wires that run straight from the SOC to the header. Perhaps this is a 3.3v serial port?

Trackpad

This is the touchpad from the bottom. It is a Cypress CY8C214 and ironically enough is also the controller Apple uses in their Ipods. Now that we’ve disassembled the base unit, it’s time to take a look at what’s under the display bezel.  You can get at the screws holding the display bezel together by removing the four black rubber stops at the corners and the screws that lie beneath them.  Once removed, the bezel is easily separated by the use of a spudger or small common screwdriver.   Once revealed, you can see the display, the display controller board and power switch, the two tiny speakers and the wifi card in the top right hand corner.

Display Module

Now, I’ve seen all kinds of weirdness when it comes to the internals of laptops however this one had me floored.  The wifi card was not a “card” but more like a USB dongle that had the connector ripped off and replaced by a long cable to the mainboard.  The downside is that this is a very cheap move on the part of the manufacturer but the upside is that you can pretty much replace this USB dongle with one of your liking later on.  It appears that the stock card is a Ralink RT2070L chip and should be well supported in Linux.

USB Wifi

In Summary…

So after spending a couple of days working on it, I was able to locate a firmware update for the Windows CE device.  This update fixes the DHCP issue that previously required me to set a static IP for wifi and for ethernet connectivity.  There were some noticeable speed improvements to the device.  I have been able to get Debian Linux to boot off an SD card on the device and also have managed to get the onboard Ethernet to work.  I have also been able to get the device to start a blackbox X session and installed Iceweasel however the speed for page loads and views is very slow so performance will need to be tuned. Once I have it tuned properly and performance is decent, I’ll post the updated image to the site so you can download and enjoy.

All in all, I think this is an excellent find at the $30 I paid for it. It is  comprable to the Dockstars I have but even at $100 retail it’s got a lot of potential to make it worth the cash. Just be sure to download and install the Windows CE update as soon as you get it. This will help you avoid a lot of headache later on trying to get the thing to talk to your LAN. As soon as I have more resources, I’ll post a followup article with links for downloading the updates as well as the linux images.

Just in case you missed it, let’s go over the details:

• Display: HL 070 TN92 – Unknown Manufacturer -  800×480 May be TFT?
• Battery: Unknown Metal, 1800mAh 8.4v
• Charger: 9VDC, 1500mA positive tip.
• System Processor: WonderMedia WM8505+ (linux identifies as an ARM936EJ-S rev 5), unknown speed.  Research points anywhere from 200MHz to 600MHz.
• System RAM:  128MB SDRAM, unknown manufacturer. Chip number: NY64X161043
• System Flash: 2GB cumulative (WinCE partitions 500MB for system and 1.5G for storage) – Samsung K9GAG08U0
• SD expansion port
• Audio: VIA1613 codec
• Ethernet: 10/100 provided by ICIP101A
• Stock OS: Windows CE 6.0

If you’ve done any mods to your netbook, post a comment! There’s a lot of “reviews” but no real modifications yet to speak of. Hopefully this cheap starter will open up some good ideas.

Happy Hacking!

FIRESTORM_v1

Dockstar box

This is the box that the Dockstar came in.  Having not bought a non-OEM seagate drive in ages, I was pleasantly surprised that they used normal cardboard instead of some plastic case for this device.  Seagate is really pushing their “Go Green” incentive by changing the entire box (even the box inside) with easy to recycle cardboard instead of that translucent plastic “tray” that normally accompanies electronics.  While not necessarily an indication of product performance, it does show that they care about the environment.

Dockstar contents

Inside the box, aside from the little “Getting Started Manual” is the following items:  A Universal power brick pre-fitted with the US style prongs, a shielded ethernet cable and of course, the dockstar itself.

universal plug sticker

Here’s a closeup of the universal plug and all it’s various warnings and certifications.  I have seen a shift towards these universal plugs and away from the more proprietary plugs that manufacturers would normally use as a cost saving process. Since there is no one world-wide standard on power for every country that Seagate does business with, why spend that money building 20+ different power adapters when all you need is one with different prongs to fit whatever country’s plugs you’re going to be selling to.

Universal Plug details

And, just because I’m a sucker for details (and I keep losing the power bricks), here’s the voltage and amperage rating of the power brick.  Output is 12vDC 2Amps with a positive tip.

Dockstar front

Finally, we get to the dockstar to find what secrets it holds.  The front panel has one LED for device status and the USB mini-B port for the Freeagent drive to sit in.  Unlike most older-style USB devices, the Seagate Freeagent is powered entirely through the USB port, eliminating the need for two cables to power one device.  Overall it’s a simple presentation of what looks to be a fairly complex device.

Dockstar Back

The back of the dockstar has two USB ports, the Gigabit Ethernet port and the power port on it.  I would like for there to have been a link and an activity LED for the Ethernet port, but unfortunately this was not implemented.  I guess I’m a sucker for LEDs.

Right side of dockstar

The right side of the dockstar features another USB port and the reset switch for the device.  The left side of the dockstar (not pictured) only has cooling vents on the side.

Dockstar Bottom

This is the bottom of the dockstar which has a large sticker that shows the serial numbers and MAC address of the device.  Of note, there was one number on this sticker which is formatted like some kind of product activation key and is formatted as follows:  six alphanumeric characters,  hyphen, six alphanumeric characters, hyphen, two alphanumeric characters, hyphen, six alphanumeric characters, hyphen, six alphanumeric characters.   At first glance, I thought these were hexadecimal numbers however the letters used were not between A-F and so it’s currently unclear what this number is for.  There is no mention of what this number is for in the documentation.

Gaining access to the insides

Typically on a device like this and most small consumer devices, there are four screws on the bottom (usually under the black slip-resistant dots) however the Dockstar doesn’t have any.  In order to gain access, I used a metal spudger to work the bottom away from the top half of the body.  There are two notches on each side of the square base, so you may need to use something flat like a spudger, small flathead screwdriver or a expansion slot blank to pry it open.

Cracked the case

Once you cracked the case open (hopefully without breaking it), you should see the small cable that connects the top USB port to the dockstar’s mainboard.  Carefully disconnect this cable and the two halves should now be seperated.

Mainboard top view

This is the dockstar in all it’s nude glory. The front of the device is to the right in this photograph. The small black square is Nanya 1Gb (comes out to ~128 megabytes)  DDR-2 RAM in a BGA package. Datasheet available here and the large square is the device’s main processor.  From research I have performed, this appears to be a Marvell 1.2GHZ processor (just like the sheevaplug devices that Marvell is also selling. I tried to pull some more datasheets from plugcomputer.org, but their datasheet listing is quite lacking.  For now, just know that it’s an arm compliant processor and when I post an update article, I will have more juicy details on the capabilities of the processor.  Also of note, just below and to the right of the processor is a small ten pin header.  Presumably this can be used for a serial port however I do not have the cable for that.  Once I get it in and test it, I will update this article with a pinout diagram for you. Since this device is so low-level I would not recommend trying to connect a regular serial port to it directly as it more than likely requires a level shifter like a MAX232 to bring the -12/+12VDC down into something that won’t blast the components.

Mainboard bottom

This is the bottom of the dockstar’s mainboard.  Unfortunately, the board is now oriented that the front of the dockstar is now at the bottom of the picture. (Bad cameraman, no cookie.)  There’s not really much to note here as the board layout is jam packed with passive components.  The large black square on the lower right is the NAND storage for the device and while I couldn’t pull up the datasheet for it, the guys over at PlugPBX already had a forum post that showed the Dockstar’s hardware specs for us.  According to their chart, the dockstar’s storage is 256MB. which should be more than adequate for general Linux fun.  The small chip just under the black tape in the upper right hand corner of the board is presumably the ethernet NIC however googling the chip numbers came up with nothing.

Just looking at the hardware overall, it would appear that the Seagate Dockstar is a very capable device that just needs to be altered to run whatever we choose to run with it.  While the software on the device (stock) comes with a filesharing service called Pogoplug, I do not intend on using that software and will be looking to get this device as far away from stock as possible.  Here is a list of some things I’ve been thinking of doing with it so far:

• Home NAS (without Internet file sharing)
• multihomed router (I have a stack of pegasus USB modules)
• semiportable network notification device (USB to parallel port, HD44780 LCD display)
• realtime data acquisition device (USB logger and serial ports?)
• Apple MT-DAAPd server for streaming music to iTunes installations on your local network

Some sites I’ve seen while doing research have mentioned things from a in-home webserver with databases, to even a PBX server (take a look at www.plugpbx.org)

The big question is:  What would you do with it? Feel free to leave a comment as to what you’d do with this device, suggestions, information, etc.

FIRESTORM_v1

BIG FAT OBNOXIOUS WARNING!:

Because of the Dockstar’s affinity to want to “phone home” thanks to the Pogoplug software,  I would not recommend plugging this into your live network just yet.  In all of the research I have done for this device, just about every site I have seen has posted some kind of warning about this.  The dockstar was originally designed to run with pogoplug which is an internet filesharing service that allows you to access your files from anywhere with Internet connectivity.  I don’t exactly trust an outside third party to have access to my files on a device that is only going to be used on a local network so I have not connected mine up to even test it.  If you are going to do any work with this device, I recommend that you use a dedicated mini-hub or switch and that it not be allowed to connect to the Internet until you have a complete understanding of what all it wants to do.

In the first post for the new “Hardware PrOn” category, we will be dissecting a common point-of-sale barcode scanner.  This particular victim is the MS700 laser scanner manufactured by Metrologic (now owned by either Honeywell or Gilbarco) which reveals a very nice discovery inside.  So, grab your screwdrivers and let’s take a look.

I got this particular discovery from EPO (see “Places to get stuff”) and since it was untagged and in their “Bargain Corner”,  I was able to get it for the awesome price of $2.   I figured that for that price if I didn’t score something awesome, then at least I’m only out  the $2 dollars.  Since this was a laser based scanner, I figured I could get another laser diode and maybe the beam splitter mirrors for working on my line generator project.

First off, we’ll start off with some pictures. Here is the gallery of photos taken during the disassembly.  You can click on any of them to get a brief description. Clicking on the image again will give you a much larger image.

As indicated in the gallery images for the laser diode mount, don’t remove the focus lens.  I doubt I’ll ever get mine put back to a working order.

Additional Research

If you want to see if yours works first, you will still need to take it apart.  On the power supply PCB, there is a brown connector with three pins.  The center pin is ground and the bottom (towards the metal box side of the PCB) will be the positive voltage side.  This device ran comfortably on 12 volts DC but can go as high as 30VDC if need be.

According to some research, this is an RS-232 barcode scanner however I have not been able to figure out the pinout of the 15 pin header in order to hook it up.  If you are able to get this information, please let me know in the comments section of this post.

As indicated in the gallery images for the laser diode mount, don’t remove the focus lens.  I doubt I’ll ever get mine put back to a working order.

What you can do with it

I’m sure that there are a lot of things that one could do with an optics setup like this.  Not knowing the optical characteristics of the optical receiver I’d hazard to say that this would be a good base for object detection and avoidance on a robot. You could read the position of the mirror cube using the pulses of the yellow wire and then some math could determine where the object is in relation to the robot.  Failing that, you could always make a line generator for some really nice rock-concert effects.  If you take this approach, I recommend going with a green laser, but you’re probably going to need a heavy duty laser or one that can withstand being on for extended periods.  Most laser diodes in laser pointers are not rated for this kind of work so choose wisely.

The new category is called “Hardware PrOn” and will include pictures of teardowns of various devices that I encounter as well as some ideas on what you could do with one if you happened to find one.