[K12OSN] DiskOnChip Programming

[Daniel Loomis]

I recently purchased an Acute Network Technologies (ANT) WinCE thin
client on eBay just to see if it could be made to work on an LTSP
system.  The terminal is well-built, has 32mb memory, 233mHz Geode cpu.
The network interface is provided by a standard rtl-8139B chip.  I am
not sure of the video system. There lots of used ones that can be
obtained for a song on eBay.

The specific model I have is an ANT TC-5000 that boots WinCE 3.0 from an
8 mb M-Systems DiskOnChip.  These are programmable EEPROMs that emulate
an IDE drive.  Linux is well supported and there are utilities and a
linux compatible filesystem that can be downloaded from M-Systems. I
believe they are programmable via tftp download.

I have no idea how to create a pxe boot image and download that image
onto the chip.  That may require some special hardware. If anyone knows
how to do so, has the hardware to program these chips and could create
them at reasonable cost, that might open the door to using such thin
clients on LTSP systems. It sounds like a great project for someone with
the skills to do it.

The specific chip on the ANT TC-5000 is an MD-2800-8ID.  I believe the
part number indicates it is an 8 MB chip emulating an IDE disk.

Dan Loomis
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
El Dorado, Arkansas