Thin Client LCD Interface - Stage 1

Recieved the TC-10 I ordered last week - and have started having a play.

Arrived well packaged with wireless keyboard - but absolutely no instructions or drivers.

Took me around 5 minutes to work out how to turn it on too - which wasn't a good start! (the switch is a board mounted micro pushbutton which isn't labelled either!)

Visited their site, and downloaded alll the drivers required. didn't have a large Compact Flash card so purchased one off ebay ($20 for a 1 GB - more than enough to install a basic o/s)

I previously purchased an IDE>Compact flash adaptor - so simply used that and plugged it into my normal pc - booted off a 98 floppy (thanks to: http://www.bootdisk.com) fdisk'ed & formatted the CF card, transferred system, and copied the win98 setup files onto it (I knew my old 98 cd would come in handy one day!) & the lan/video/sound/touch drivers from EarthLCD's site.

Next mission was to get the TC-10 to boot off it.

Plugged in the CF - and booted it up.. No luck - got the old non system disk error.

After I while I worked out that it had an on board 32mb "disk on chip" which I had to disable (was set to the primary) in the BIOS, and also had to enable Dos support, and selected win95 as the operating system (never seen that before in a bios!)

Did the trick - Booted straight away, so installed win 98 (damn it looks dated), the drivers, and all was good!

Next step was to get a terminal services client up and running - first I tried was from my old Windows 2000 server - but the client doesn't do full screen or auto logging on - so after a quick google I found the updated client built for XP http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools/rdclientdl.mspx which works well in 98 - and allows settings to be saved as RDP config files!.. So now automatic connections are working

Stage 1 complete:

• I have a working touch controlled thin client (for under $700!)
• Boots straight into a remote desktop session
• Connects directly to my MCE box (as a test).

Stage 2

• Clean up the Thin Client OS (remove components I don't need)
• Create a custom boot/shutdown graphics ( so it doesn't look like Win98)
• Create a nice desktop image (As it takes a couple of seconds between booting up and connecting rdp)
• Hide desktop icons/start bar (again - to lose the Win98 "Feel " :P)

Stage 3

• Build the touchscreen UI (this will one take a while :o) )

Will keep you posted - and maybe get some photos up soon.