FS: Stand Alone Thin Clients for Remote Desktop/Citrix/Telnet

N

nesuser2

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
270
Looking for $15 ea, paypal. Located in NW Ohio, heatware under nesuser2 and ebay under springmarky.

I have 3 units. I tested them all to perform well for RDP/Terminal services tasks, IE works on them and I even tested them out for telnet access and everything seemed to work as intended. I believe they run windows ce 4.10 IIRC. I ran the resolution up as far as 1280 x 1024.

Some other particulars:

Connections on this unit are: 2 com, 2 ps2, 2 usb, 1 vga, 1 lpt1, 1 smart, 1 mic, 1 headphone, 1 smart card(I'm Guessing it's a smart card slot)
Inside the unit you will find 64mb of ram and 16mb of flash storage

None of them were tested for extended periods of time, usually 5-30 minutes per unit to make sure features were all there and I cleared all settings. Anyways, the units are made by esprit and the model says something like TCE-300 and they do not require any other devices to boot up but obviously having a machine to have RDP/TS into would greatly expand their usefulness. The only thing similar I could find was $300 per unit on macmall.

Each unit has a stand and that's really it. I don't have enough power cables laying around for them but it is just a standard PC power cable. Don't hesitate to ask questions!

inside1.jpg


inside2.jpg


back.jpg


thinclient.jpg
 
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Willing to work with people on shipping and possibly price if you buy in quantity. Shoot me a message and I will get back with you. This would be an excellent setup for anybody needing to add a quick workstation.

Perhaps you could mod them to run some form of linux too? Inside it looks like a barebone PC so I'm sure you could turn it into a quick server and maybe even mod them to be a firewall? I can't remember if it has a PCI slot or not...would make an awesome PFsense or ipcop box. Now I have to go dig for myself!
 
Pix of inside?

Can you get a model # off of the board? (I'm assuming something like that only has one PCB inside of it.)

Would you take a trade for one?

EDIT: found something on goooooooooogle... sounds like the right company, and one of their products is a 300-TCE/G. Go here for their site.
 
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pics above!

I will look closer at the board and see if I can grab any numbers. I'm not sure what's up with the connection with the PCI slot. Perhaps they had something you had to purchase from them for expansion. Maybe somebody on the forum can make heads or tails of it...open to input!
 
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starhawk said:
You're welcome :D it does feel good to be helpful.
Click to expand...

I looked around briefly....looks like the link you posted is the closest match but there is no break in the connection to allow you to keep hooking it up. Hard telling though if that would really do the trick. The esprit site seems hopeless and the via site appears to be a bit more helpful in terms of product info but it is hard telling. I will look a little closer as time permits and see if I can find anything. Seems like it would be low powered enough for a green home router...just depends if it's worth all the work!
 
I got a better idea... a low-spec linux box.

Anybody know of a good linux distro that uses yaffs? I'm used to Ubuntu, but I'll experiment if I have to ;)
 
another thought...it's been years since I owned one but I bought a IDE/CF adapter and used it for some testing. The height wouldn't work unless they made a right angle one but you could easily get a couple gb CF card and be in business. I'm not sure how it would all work out but surely there is somebody smarter than I lurking around here!
 
No Molex? No Berg? C'mon man, even the DiskOnChip things usually need *some* sort of power connector...

...if all else fails, you could probably splice something out of the PCI connector. I'd need to poke some pins with a multimeter (aka VOM, Volt-Ohm Meter) to see whether or not it supports 5V cards.

Pinout here: http://pinouts.ru/Slots/PCI_pinout.shtml
...and this will get you 5V from 3.3V: http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/798
 
no molex..no berg. just a black and white wire running from the power board to the main board. Power board is about 3-4inches long and 2 inches wide and tall....

Not a lot of frills on these thin clients! Might be able to rig up a hard drive for external power though?
 
Maybe. I'd definitely be interested in what +V is going into that board. If it's +12V, you can turn that into +5V with a 7805 VReg IC (+2 caps for ripple suppression) and stick a 2.5" HDD in there (may need to be a 1.8"...). If it's +5V... you're good to go. If it's 3.3V or lower... grab that boost regulator from Pololu, yer gonna need it ;)
 
How many watts is the PSU?

+5V, BTW, is *perfect* -- that's what a 2.5" notebook HDD runs on, IIRC.

EDIT: Thought of this just after I hit post -- can you get any info off of the connector on the PSU that goes into the Mobo? I've got me a wicked idea, but I've gotta be able to splice into that connector, and I don't want to do much soldering ;) especially since I suck horribly at it...
 
there is a sticker on a big cap in there that says output 5v 4.5a....that help? The power portion is not very big at all...
 
That helps a little. Still need the part # for the psu-to-mobo connector. I've seen it before, I just don't know what it's properly called, and my usual sources aren't talking. If you can't find a part number on the connector itself, or it's too hard to read, or it's a lot of trouble, don't worry about it -- there's always wire nuts. (In fact, I rigged up a molex-to-berg connector cable once with nothing but the wires and some electrical tape. Looks like cr*p but it worked fine!)

Now...

(Volts) * (Amps) = (Watts) and for a given power supply, that rating is absolute worst-case maximum (if not magical thinking). So 5 * 4.5 = (5 * 4) + 2.5 = 22.5 Watts :eek: that's not a power supply, that's a battery charger!

Unfortunately, there's not enough info out there for me to calc out how much that board pulls. I can tell you --based on a lot of sleuthing at VIA's website-- that the processor on that board can't possibly pull more than 7W. But without knowing how much pull the RAM sticks and chipset and IDE connector pull... I'm SOL when it comes to just using raw math.

If you have a Kill-A-Watt type meter, I'll ask you to put it in between the mainboard and PSU on that thing and then boot it up. No need to keep it going once it's gotten to the main screen, should only be about a minute or two... but I gotta know how much juice that board pulls.

If you don't have a Kill-A-Watt that works inside the box, you can plug one in between the box and the wall -- a power supply only pulls as much as it has to, and I can easily convert between wall current and inside-the-box current. It'll have a bit of an error margin, though.
 
Grrr. Aargh. Math makes my head hurt ;)

So screw the math... I think I'll go the CF+Adapter way. It's probably safer, anyways... what info I *can* find out about those things sez that they pull a max of about 35mA, at either 3.3V or 5V. This means that --adapter included-- I'm looking at a total pull of somewhat less than a 1/2 W with that method!

I got only a few questions to ask at this point. I know I want one :D

(1) What are the dimensions of the unit? goooooooooooooooooooooogle won't tell me.
(2) What type of RAM does it use? DDR? PC100? PC133? Something green from Mars?
(3) Do you take trades? Partial trades even? If so, do you see anything here that you'd consider for a trade or partial trade?
 
sorry...no kind of killawatt around these parts

8.5x9.25x2

^^ the 8.5 and 9.25 are actually a little bit smaller...one is just under for the bubble front of the case and the other is more like 9 1/8 but close enough right!

The ram installed is PC133. I am positive I have some 128mb sticks laying around but not sure if they were 133 or not...or if it matters a lot(sometimes they're picky...sometimes they're not....sometimes people care...sometimes they don't). To me...if it ran, any memory upgrade would be worth it. I assume the going rate for any PC100 or PC133 sticks would only be a couple bucks at most but I will likely do some testing in case others are interested.

I looked through your list and the only thing that interests me much is your mini hp but i'm certain it would just lay around and not get used so I will have to pass. I've got oodles of stuff laying around that I don't use as it is. Shoot me a msg if you're interested in any memory or whatever and I can get one boxed up and weighed to see what we're looking at!
 
just stuck a couple sticks in to test...100 and 133 worked fine. I had a stick of hynix that didn't work(beeped at me). I can test the stick to at least boot and include it for $2, the original 64 will be included as well as I sure don't need them! I have 6 sticks that I just tested to boot..most of them were 133 and were micron, probably dell pulls but i don't know for sure. I have more if by chance I need to get more for interested parties!
 
Here's the thing. I'm flat broke :(

I sold my Acer (oldish laptop), and that'll give me $80... in about a week. I *just* got a new debit account w/ my bank and up to that point, I was firmly in the "you no can haz paypal" demographic. So the Acer buyer is sending me a USPS money order.

I also sold an old, ragged flash drive, but I'm only getting $7 for it. (I'd be getting more if it hadn't had a netbook fall on it about 6mo ago...) *that* is going paypal to my father, who will hand me cash when the payment appears in his PP account.

Common sense tells me that the $87 I'm getting is not going to cover $40 of computer + an 8+GB CF card + adapter + RAM. My only spare RAM is a DDR1 PC2700 stick, and somehow I don't see that fitting in this thing. No offense to you, either, but I gotta have a 256MB stick at least. I'm gonna be trying to put a flavor of Linux called WattOS on this and it won't install on a 128MB sys.

So here's what I'm seeing...
$40 for the computer
$6.50 for the CF adapter (@ Mini-Box.com)
$1.00 for the special power cable that the CF adapter requires
$15 for the RAM (2nd-cheapest PC133 stick on Newegg)
... and I'm left with $24.50, which then has to cover my shipping costs for all of the above and buy me a CF card. Not gonna happen.

FWIW one of those thin clients would fit in a USPS flat rate box for $10.70 shipping.

:( :( :( I feel really sad right now...

EDIT1: just had a thought... what would you take as a trade or partial trade? I've got lots of stuff I'm not using that isn't in my FS thread ;)
EDIT2: could you find something worth $15-20 in my thread that you'd be interested in? I can afford this if it's $20+trade...
EDIT3: just realized that newegg is not the only place to get old-as-dirt RAM... will start asking around for prices...
 
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I did a little more digging for some ram, found a bucket I hadn't gone through yet. I have some 133 PNY 256m sticks I can include @$8ea and some hp 133 256m(infineon) sticks that I can include for $10ea. I have some KVR that I can include at $10 ea also, but it's pc100..256mb. Let me know if I can be of any further assistance!
 
Just an update for everybody. I have legs for most of these...but not two sets. which is what is pictured in one of the URL's. I can include one leg each or for the first 3 sales I will include 2 sets of legs. They are just 2 pieces of plastic that snap together and hold the unit upright. Also, I can box them each up at 11x10x4 @ 4lb 9oz. It doesn't pack it like fort knox but since there are no moving parts, it should be ok.

You know where to find me!

EDIT: First come first serve on the ram...can look for more 256m sticks locally if somebody is interested after I run out.
 
Price drop to 30 for each unit, I know there are plenty of people that need a nice RDP terminal or telnet setup for their server room!
 
Bump, make them gone...would obviously be more inclined to cut deals if you buy in quantity but I have slashed the price again! i want these off my desk..I can only use 1 computer at a time so out they go! I'll take everybodies moldy xmas money...you didn't know you wanted a nice thin client until just now, now did ya!?!
 
Has anyone purchased any of these and installed their own OS on it?
Very tempting but I want to know if I can boot from USB or somehow install another OS on it like freeNAS
 
sold one...still pending payment, sorry! I believe in one of the links somewhere here it does discuss some of the specs of the machine so perhaps that would help in trying to figure out what it could be capable of. I'm happy to answer any other questions!
 
adding another bump to the list. Looking to find some toys I'm looking at, getting these gone would sure lighten up the load! Every little bit counts!
 
any takers? glad to make a good deal for anybody that wants to buy them all...inquire within!
 
price lowered. Do a little searching, a forum member has bought one of these and has had favorable results making it into something a bit nicer than windows CE!
 
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