Retro Internet Browsing - IOpener

[Mr_Vindictive]

I'm currently typing this post on a fairly archaic piece of internet machinery called the "IOpener". My new motherbord in my computer quit last night and a customer of mine just happened to ask me today if I wanted this thing.

It's actually quite an amazing piece of work.  It's basically a small flat screen monitor (10 inches or so) that a keyboard and mouse plugs into along with built in printer port, USB port, and a dial up modem.  From the speed that I'm getting online, I'm assuming it's 33.6k.

I am loving this thing though.  It brings back my days of Win 3.1 - Win 95 back when the internet was still in it's baby stages and still quite fun.  It is quite a change from my cable modem though, but it'll suffice until I get my motherboard replaced.

Does anyone else remember this thing?  It seemed to have come out at the time of the big boom of "internet" devices that only let you browse or only let you do email.  I have found info on Google that it can even be modded to run Linux, which might be a project fairly soon.

If anyone else has used one of these in the past, I'd love to hear about it.  Any experiencs guys?

[Fearless Freep]

Well...I do remember 'lynx'

[Menard]

I have never used one but have seen them before and thought they were neat. I have heard that they can run Linux. There may be some small distros capable of running on it from a USB flashdrive such as Feather Linux. There was a linux distro designed specifically for the iOpener but the links no longer work. I do not remember, but is the iOpener a touchscreen unit? I have used my Fujitsu Point 510 pen tablet to browse the internet, and it's a cool way to browse the internet. Anyway, I have Feather Linux running on an old Unisys with only 32MB of ram and it does fine and only requires a 64MB flashdrive. Of course that would depend as to whether the iOpener can be booted from a USB device. Feather is based on Knoppix and does not need to be installed. If it is a touchscreen, you will most likely loose that capabililty unless you can find a compatible driver.

[blkrider]

This guy on another message board I used to frequent was stuck with one of these...every time there was any type of technical upgrade or host change he would have all these problems....I think at one point he was no longer able to participate.  Some people eventually sent him some old hardware they weren't using anymore.

[Mr_Vindictive]

Menard,

Booting for a USB device would definently be an option, but from what I've read, it seems that the machine has a full motherboard inside.  Intel compatabile proc., and a HDD IDE port.  I could possibly hookup a notebook drive to it and run Win98 or so on it.

I'm going to see if I can use a USB Ethernet adaptor to hook it up to my cable connection.  I'm going to wait to tweak it until I have my PC back up and running, but it does look like it's going to be a fun side project.