The other day my wife and I were out at the mall.
It was a week before we were due to go to virginia on vacation.

Anyways the cellphone rang it was my friend Ryan who had just moved to Chesapeake bay MD.
So he says "come over and see me" hey, there goes chincoteague island, same sorta place only free.

So we decided to buy a TV set, 52" projection HDTV.

Anyways this is leading somewhere I promise lmao.gif

On the way out of the store I noticed an MSNTV2 sitting there, open box item for $20.

I grabbed it just for craps n giggles and returned home.

As I suspected you need to pay for a service, even though you may have broadband (like me).

I looked on the net and it seems you can hack the MSNTV2, replace the bios and its boot OS and put linux on it.

Now inside it has a compact flash card, 64mb.. the hack is very easy, basically you need a special serial cable, you flash the bios after pinning this into the motherboard (very easy to do) and then flash the bios, then you put some linux files on the flashcard and let it boot, and then stop the boot replacing some command text stuff.

Its moderately hard to do by the look of it but seems very possible... I have ordered a cable and some stuff and will be putting linux on soon.

Now, this does then require a USB hard drive, but I have a spare 1gb laptop drive laying about and gonna order a USB2IDE adaptor and put the drive in the MSNTV2 (whilst small itll easily take a drive) then mod the back and run the usb loop into the MSNTV2.

My point is this, the MSNTV2 has an ITX mobo in it with the TV out built in, a 733 celeron, 128mb ram, network cable and pretty much everything you need onboard, and, they can be had on ebay for less than $5 LMAO.

They also come with a wireless keyboard AND a TV remote.
Theyre small and sleek (would EASILY fit under the seat of a car) and once linux is on you have a car pc a la mode for less than a total outlay of $40.

An ITX motherboard ALONE is over $180.

Sound good? watch this space.. Mine isnt going in my car (yet) but Ill keep you all posted and updated, Im also going to mod tons of LEDS into it and repaint the shell kameleon.

 

Thats pretty cheap for a computer. I just did some reading on it. Looks pretty easy to hack. If I ever get my hands on one for cheap, I will load linux. Problem is, I'm just to lazy. lol

 

There's a dude using 10 of these in a cluster.. total outlay? less than $200 lmao.gif

Once I have mine 'done' I will willingly send the serial cable on for free ON THE GROUNDS that whoever I send it to uses it at once and passes it along to others to use.

Mine is being made up by a friend of mine in the UK (cost about $2) and mailed over..

I cant wait, gonna mod the crap out of it lmao.gif

 

thats really cool. So it has usb, how about a pci slot? (just thinking of the things that can be done....)

 

it doesnt have pci slots, it doesnt need them.

onboard is a dial up modem, LAN, 2xusb and svideo and RCA outputs.

it uses a small external psu and you would need one for the usb drive (obviously) but its all pretty much ready to go out of the box smile.gif

 

Is it a VIA mobo? Can the RCA out also be coaxial spdif? If it has digital sound I'll pick up some just for HTPC use.

Hmm, nevermind, looks like it's just stereo, which is of no use to me. Still, seems like a good deal for the size.

 

it's intel all the way, intel north and southbridge.

video outputs are RCA and Svideo smile.gif

 

Do you have any websites you can give to help a friend of mine do this? Any info or websites showing how to mod it would be awesome wink1.gif

 

See PM brotherin smile.gif

Also this, this is what it looks like when you remove all the plastics..

Hey ! looks like one of those expensive car pc cases, doesnt it? lmao.gif



Fons, check the mp3car post thread thingy I did, new larger more detailed pic of the internals on there bro smile.gif

 

what links did you send to majik? can you just post them here or can i get a pm?