i-Opener - The $99 Computer That Cost a Company Millions
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- Опубліковано 13 тра 2024
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The i-Opener was a low-cost internet appliance from the late '90s. For just $99, you could get your hands on a pretty capable device to browse the web, check email, and do other web related tasks. But when people found out it was an x86 PC inside that could run Windows, Linux, or whatever else, the company scrambled to put a stop to people modding the thing... because they were losing money with every sale.
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction & Overview
2:49 - Unboxing
5:01 - Exploring the Exterior
6:40 - Quite the Coincidence
7:16 - Checking out a newer model
18:32 - Big Oops
19:29 - The Hacking Scene
20:44 - Netpliance's Response
21:43 - Wait, that's illegal
23:08 - Aftermath
25:57 - Getting Windows 98 on this thing
30:07 - To Be Continued...
31:40 - Outro
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#MichaelMJD #Netpliance #iOpener #Akamai #Linode - Наука та технологія
For some reason the chapter markings have disappeared from this video. I've tried editing the description to get them back but haven't been successful as of yet. Hopefully it gets fixed soon, but in the meantime here's the chapters for those people who want to get to a specific part of this video:
00:00 - Introduction & Overview
02:49 - Unboxing
05:01 - Exploring the Exterior
06:40 - Quite the Coincidence
07:16 - Checking out a newer model
18:32 - Big Oops
19:29 - The Hacking Scene
20:44 - Netpliance's Response
21:43 - Wait, that's illegal
23:08 - Aftermath
25:57 - Getting Windows 98 on this thing
30:07 - To Be Continued...
31:40 - Outro
first
Can you try to upgrade Windows Xp (Upgrade the ram for it)
@@yaysuubot
Shame it doesn't have SATA, would be cool to hack an SSD into it, then it would be snappier than most Windows machines of that era when it comes to opening programs
I think there ARE IDE to SATA converters, but those are all active converters that require external power - albeit not much.
I absolutely love that you need to unscrew a cover to unplug the keyboard, but you can just pop off the cover to upgrade the ram. Amazing!
ehhhhh Mazing
To be fair the screw ensures that it won't pop off the cover
@@SilvaDreams I'm not knocking it, I unironically love it.
That was before you could just download more ram :)
I mean, you can’t just use a normal keyboard, how would you order pizza?
Man it's just wild we were both working on videos about this thing around the same time and neither of us realized it, heh. Bizarre synchronicity in retro UA-cam land.
It's sweet to see an older model being unboxed too, this is a different experience than the 2001 model I have! Also neat to see that Netpliance was still using the IPAD acronym then, as I was mistakenly under the impression that they only used the term in pre-release marketing blurbs and dropped it by the time the i-Opener actually launched.
Looking forward to part two!
Omg it's LGR
Cant wait to see your video on this :D
@@v3xmani think his video is already out, the one about the computer with a pizza key, planning on watching that one right after this, now i wanna know what that pizza key does lol
Don't lie, Michael MJD is just you with a voice changer!
The early 2000s Internet Appliance era was so weirdly fun. Glad some of these devices survived UA-camrs like you guys cover them. 👍
I heard you mentioning it when talking to Rees. Such a bizarre coincidence.
Really enjoy that you both have a different take on the same subject!
Back in 1999 I purchased one of these for my mom to use, she absolutely loved it. One of the very first things we did with it was to use the pizza button ... Sadly it took almost a week until the pizza was delivered ! After that ordering pizza was actually very easy . This device did exactly what it was supposed to do and made a very simple portal for non-technical people to use . My mom to this day says she misses How incredibly simple it was to use
Lol I bet because back then ordering pizza online was a novelty and papa John's probably never even looked at the website orders
Your mom needs to learn how to use technology. No excuses.
@@339LloydStreetAkronOhio "Your mom needs to learn how to use technology. No excuses." As if Gen X and Gen Y people don't also hate plenty of things about computing, technology, tablets, smartphones, smart refrigerators, smart microwaves, touchscreens in cars (especially common functions buried in submenus upon submenus) etc. "Why doesn't it just work, dammit?" All while plenty of Gen X and Y people would struggle to operate a stack of punchcards or use a slide rule etc. Maybe Zoomers and younger are more flexible and less set in their ways? 🙂
@@339LloydStreetAkronOhio braindead take
@@TassieLorenzo don't be absurd. in 20 years zoomers will be complaining about the new thing
The only thing worse than accidentally hitting the Windows button is accidentally hitting the order-a-pizza button
I'm pretty sure the pizza button _is_ the Windows key, just labelled differently.
"The only thing worse than accidentally hitting the Windows button" when did accidently hitting the Windows button become bad? I mean I guess if you're playing fortnite in fullscreen or something like that
@@tzarg it’s such a common issue that newer keyboards let you disable the windows key if you press fn+windows
edit: engrish
@@lambertstarr1218 older ones have it too. My keyboard is about 15 years old and has it.
@@tzarg It's obviously worst in multiplayer games where you lose control but it doesn't pause. But it's not only games. Pressing the Windows key changes the keyboard focus, disrupting what you were typing and potentially hurting stream of thought. If you continue typing something and hit enter you'll run something random which is also not good.
I converted one of these into an MP3 player that could be used in a car on long road trips. I reflashed the bios by hot swapping the bios chip into a compatible motherboard after it had been booted up and I had a flash utility running. The hack was a hell of a lot of fun and having winamp available in a car really whipped the llama's ass.
I almost forgot there used to be a pretty large community of people installing PCs into cars. I used to be a member of the MP3Car community. I remember people having impressive Windows XP systems with touchscreens, running the RoadRunner front end.
Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is cool and all, but nothing will beat how cool it was to start your car and see the Windows XP bootscreen on your dash.
That's awesome!!! I had a purple one in 2001. Unfortunately when I moved to Illinois, I didn't bring it with me 😢.
@@elijahwatson7837I forgot about that! I remember the forums - I still have some Pico PSUs somewhere.
@@elijahwatson7837 Oh, nevermind s1mp3 players
I hope to hell you installed that screen and ran Milkdrop2 on it as well!!
a real eye opener for the company after their losses
real
Real
Real
Real
💀
The really funny thing is that my sister worked for i-opener doing customer support and she brought home a branded mug which I've now got in a box somewhere. If I had known then how easy they were to modify I definitely would've bought a couple because I knew that company was going under from the start. So many missed opportunities.
Dunno what you would have expected with the trash specs tho. I doubt it would even play minecraft
@@TheRealHoltzy I don't play Minecraft, but most of what I use a computer for it would've been capable of handling.
@@anon_y_mousse well, considering Minecraft came out in 2009, I'd be impressed if you did manage it in early 2000's XD
You should get someone to call your sister's home asking for i-opener customer support. Think about how funny that would be.
The mouse costing ~20% of what they sold the system for should have given them all the warning signs they were on to a massive failure
It's so weird seeing every thing went so smoothly.
for real, it's shocking how long it's been since the last begw video
Not really
If you use an IDE to CF card (or SD card) it could all fit together neatly with the metal shield etc. you could even have the card accessible to swap out different operating systems
That's actually a really good idea! I'll have to pick up another adapter but that'll probably save some space inside the case.
Exactly what I was thinking
any iPad is better !
@@lucasremthat’s not really the point though!
@@lucasrem This is an IPAD, what are you talking about. ;)
Oh yeah, I remember when Slashdot went nuts about these. That era of cheap inadvertently hackable junk from companies with more money than technological acumen was pretty awesome. Anyone else remember CueCat?
' Anyone else remember CueCat?' Of course, I still have two of them around somewhere in a box with old webcams, etc. Not a lot of use with modern phones etc able to decode..
when i worked for the Oregon State BLM about 10 years ago handling files about half of the terminals including mine had CueCat barcode scanners for scanning the files, it was honestly kind of hilarious. Especially since legacy files with actual official CueCat barcodes would not scan on the firmware modified devices and had to be typed in manually only regular bar codes would scan on them.
Wow, I had forgotten about the CueCat. It's been ages!
You mean the tech that conspiracy theorists claimed would overturn the election?
I had a CueCat, from RadioShack. Got one for my Dad and others in the family. Never used it for the catalog, but still... I modified the CC to read regular bar codes and scanned all my DVDs into a library, with covers details... I think I may have a few of them in a box somewhere. I guess I can say the CueCat outlasted my DVD library. I don't touch either of them though.
That part at the end reminded me. There was this ISP that I used for free for a while that wasn't supposed to be free. You would use the disc, dial out, and go through a signup process. Thing is, while you were on the setup screen, you could use other websites. I didn't use it often--mostly only on my laptop when I was away from home. The ISP had a lot of local numbers in pretty small towns, oddly enough.
I also remember using the internet for free legitimately: with my school, and then later with some software that displayed an ad on at least 1/5 of the screen. It's bizarre that I put up with this, since now I avoid anything with ads. But you could pretty easily just cover up the ad part.
Heh, I used one of those free ad-based ISPs for awhile. Except that I had LiteStep for my GUI - which supported virtual desktops. So I could just drag the ad bar over to another desktop and it would keep running, while the ISP had no idea I wasn't seeing the ads. After all, who'd expect users to have multiple desktops on a Win9x machine? 😀
I used free ISPs back then but I still cannot get how they could get a profit 🤷. In my case, they had no ads. Ideas?
@@kdrum90 I guess it depends on the country and how the phone system works. In the UK there were "free" ISPs where the phone call cost something like 1 penny per minute, of which a portion went to the ISP and the rest to the phone company.
@@jasonblalock4429i used one of those as well for a while when I was like 14. i would also sign up for AOL using properly formatted but invalid credit cards since they would only actually charge the cards once a month in a batch process, so you could create new accounts and use them for anywhere from 1 to 30 days. thats probably illegal, but i suppose the statute of limitations has expired so nyaaa
This has been a real I-Opener.
Lol
Got to it before I did
dudes got jokes lol
🚪
ba dum tsss
We actually got quite a few internet orders at the three Papa John's i worked at from 1998-2001.
Ooh, interesting.
ah, 1998-2008. that brief, beautiful period of time when companies forgot that they actually had to be profitable and burned trillions of VC dollars to give us all free and suspiciously cheap stuff. good times. led to real bad times, of course, but good times at first.
that is still today the US economy in a nutshell, only the intensity changes with time.
It's happening nowadays with the streaming industry.
Playstation, Xbox, inkjet printers, and many many others are still sold at a loss.
@@caelestigladii yeah but they make damn sure that you wont be able to own them and do what you want especially xbox one/series and printers, you cant hack them at all, and with printers you're paying 40+ bucks for ink that would cost a tenth of that price if they sold it at a normal profit margain lol
@@caelestigladii And how about mess that is cellular phones? So many modern phones have absolutely eye-watering price tags, but depending on the contract you're willing to sign with your provider, they'll "sell" you a phone at a deep discount or give it to you for free. Of course it's the service provider assuming a risk rather than the manufacturer, but it's kinda the same concept.
I was in college when this came out and I was too poor to even afford the $99 price tag. I was sooooo disappointed because everyone else in the CS department was buying these and hacking them.
Now the question is, can you get a hold of the ThinkNic? It was an even more esoteric Internet home appliance.
😢 what a shame you couldn’t get one back then, now I must step down the rabbit hole of the ThinkNic. It was really a esoteric os but somehow lovely and funny 😂😂😂 how it looks
I had one of those too. The Oracle network appliance that actually had a DVD player, 16mb flash, and ran Linux. It came with a set of speakers, a full sized keyboard and mouse. It actually was cool. I didn't play with it as much as the iOpener though. I think the iOpener was more fun. Maybe I was tired of tinkering around by then.
I decided to google, it and wow - almost nothing... However I am certain when I got it, it was a division of Oracle. It was a black case and keyboard with letters NIC (white red white). Someone has to do a YT story on this device.
@@danilko1 i haven’t found it so far
I remember when 100 dollars was a lot of money 😢
The IPAD bit is hilarious, considering Apple didn't want to call it the iPad originally, they wanted to call it Personal Access Data Device, which Star Trek fans will recognize as the ubiquitous PADD.
Very good video, never heard of the i-Opener until recently. Also I think every keyboard should include a pizza key 🍕
Comes with software to set your preferred pizza brand and address, then boom! Pizza with one click
You never heard of it till you saw LGR's video?
@@IAmNotAFunguy Yep
That one toddler when they see the pizza key
Toddler: oooooh pizza
Pizza delivery man: ma'am your charge is 1000000 dollars
Regarding the IDE cable pin swap, this also happens when the pin header is installed on the *bottom* side, or if a header was swapped for a socket. I recall encountering other 'appliance' PCs with the same modding issue.
Thanks for sharing that info! So no anti-mod but a technical/mounting reason? That sounds legit to me. Hard to imagine that just a pin-swap is worth the effort to prevent people from hacking the machine.
I have seen this cable before, it's a known solution in pre 2000 computing, capturing paralleled signals ? parallel file transverse cable ?
The cable laid out flat, the headers would be on opposite sides to each other, not just opposite ends. Then one side you rolled over so they are on the same side. Still a somewhat custom thing, easy do to though.
This kind of loss leader hardware hacking still happens today. I had to install lineage OS on a Amazon tablet that's ad and data subsidized
There were clusters made up of PS3 consoles back in the day for the same reason
You can just ask them to remove the ads. Say you are having problems. They won't even pushback.
So many devices store cached data, but devices like this are fascinating to discover ages on, where you can use their native software experience to view data of the time. Many Palm, Cybiko, Newton, etc saved their emails locally for next sync but not much more. It's great to see cached websites, headlines, emails (privacy aside there are still some great finds here!) captured. It's a great digital time capsule.
The funny thing is that this is meant for novice users and refers to itself as the iPad, and I'd argue not just the name is a coincidence, but also the often use cases of iPads themselves. My sister (love her) is not at all computer savvy, but has an iPad with a keyboard to handle all of her computer needs.
Honestly that's all most people need nowadays. I have a pretty good desktop PC, and my non tech-savvy wife prefers to use the phone even if the computer would cut the time down by 50-90%
@@kevin7649 Need and want are two different things. People have been conditioned to be computer illiterate, because while it reduces productivity, it makes them easier to control.
The v2 was still easy. I've hacked both v3 (my personal unit which I still have) and v4 (the one with the RiSE CPU, but old sound chip). The Dolly cloning method was used on both.... its janky but it worked great. At least one of the units had epoxy on the BIOS chip, which thankfully I didn't have to touch. I opted for the v2 hack kit and a TennMax "lasagna" cooler with the a hole in the metal shielding over the fan area. Worked great with no heating problems.
There will always be workarounds for any inexpensive device, because regardless of any type of hardware, people will still find ways to combat its limitations.
Why didn't iOpener just sell it for a fair price or even a healthy profit like Apple? I guess the specs didn't stack up against the iMac of the time (with old-fashioned CRT display) but it would have been worth a shot, surely?
@@TassieLorenzo Because it was a crap anyway. Used 486 would not cost much more, and you could do lots of thing with it.
First LGR, and now you do an i-Opener video. Neat! I'd definitely love to see a follow up video with the proper drivers installed.
Unoriginal
Actually very original. It takes a lot of work to put this video together. Even LGR is not accusing anything improper.
@@hewhohasnoidentity4377 Sorry, but it's just playing into youtubes algorithms. Content creators complain about them, but then play along with it anyway.
Today I learned once someone covers a topic on UA-cam that makes it off limits forever
@@winlover37 This is especially difficult if they are independently working on it at the same time, but hey - the rules are rules 😅
The hilarious thing is, they completely missed several obvious markets for a machine like this. They could have cross subsidised themselves by selling these as web kiosks, or as POS terminals with some pretty minor changes. The form factor is literally perfect for those use cases, and they could have made their money there, maybe sell these for $200 for home users, still cheap, and still capable. Could also have just onsold upgrade kits to those wanting. proper OS.
How they missed the mark for kiosks and POS terminals as an option tiven the fantastic form factor for those uses boggles me.
these would have been great for internet cafes
POS systems need all kind of special devices attached to it, and POS systems (and kiosks!) with a screen like this were often touch screens. So I don't think it would've been feasible for either use. Also ruggedness comes into play.
Wow this took me back. My roommate (she was a technical genius) found out about these on slashdot and picked one up for me when she got hers. The pair we got had teh BIOS chip epoxied in the slot. A few hours of scraping the epoxy off very carefully, and we could pull teh bios chip and reflash it. Added a low profile CPU cooler fan, and got the kit you mentioned to mount he HDD and flip the pins. Was pretty ok for a couch PC.
We went the linux route for the OS. Roommate was actually a contributor to the kernel, so she knew what to do to get it running well. the ghosting on the cheap screen made it impossible to use to play games, but was fine for web browsing. Oh, and it was a straight swap to drop in a AMD K6-2 processor. Not bad for 99$
Not an i-Opener, but a couple of years ago (2020 IIRC) I was able to get a mid-range (by 2020 standards at least) Windows 10 Lenovo laptop for $200 during a Black Friday sale. I haven't touched it yet because I currently consider it my backup computer, but the fact that in 2020 I was able to pay $200 for a computer that even at "mid-range" spec is thousands of times more powerful than every computer I ever used growing up and only a fraction of the cost is mind-boggling to me.
What’s really weird is how, for most tasks outside of things like video games and video editing, computers really haven’t got much better in over a decade. I was using a 2010 HP EliteBook laptop until 2021, and with a ram upgrade and an SSD it was still perfectly capable of handling web browsing and productivity tasks. In fact you can even go a few years back to the Core 2 days and still have an acceptable productivity machine today.
Now imagine using an 11 year old machine in 2010…
@@elijahwatson7837this isn't entirely true, your laptop is a mid-high end machine
an HP mini back then costed $329 and it only had an Intel atom N270 and 1gb of ram
Nowadays for that money you can get a quad core Ryzen 3 with 8gb of ram and a 256gb SSD
An Intel atom would be a pain to use nowadays, while a Ryzen 3 can even do light video editing and gaming, something the atom can't even do when it came out (other than flash games or popcap games)
My question is where are they going to go from here. Both computers and smartphones are plateauing they keep getting stronger but are running out of ways to even use that power. And then we have the inevitability that I’m pretty sure we’re going to transition to full blown cloud computing in the next decades and many people won’t own much more than a monitor/screen. Shits gonna get weird
@@monhi64 Cloud requires always-online connections, so the bottleneck would be internet capabilities instead. I'd rather not.
I would definitely want to set up my backup computer. Get the minimum software you would need out of the box running on it. And if you some sort of sync with your web browser, you could set that up, too. And, then, of course, keep regular backups.
This gave me the same vibes as the local store which sokd Chromebooks and Chromeboxes at really low prices and me figuring out they could run windows in 2016.
Core i3 mini PC for only 69€ and 99€ if you included a bigger mSATA SSD and another 4GB stick of RAM.
Reminds me of foreign teletext like Prestel.
I remember going though this crazy faze. But anyway, I upgraded the CPU in mine (added a very thin fan) and could Dual boot Windows and Linux and I also remember building a custom Linux (2.6?) kernel with backported USB support. I think I still have the i-Opener somewhere. I guess I contributed to the downfall of that poor company...
How funny that buying their product contributes to their downfall 😂
This is a lot like the Virgin Webplayer, but that had a 200mhz processor and a IR keyboard/trackball. On mine I added a wifi module, hard drive, and reflashed the onboard Disk-On-Chip boot drive. I think most I could get it to run was Puppy Linux 2.14,
Just booted it up again, it's running Puppy 4.31
That's pretty cool!
My brother and I went in together on the Virgin Webplayer. Still the iOpener was more useful. The things you forgot you did, for the fun of it. But now I remember I was part of the Co-Op that bought a bunch of these, together.
Ahh such memories of hacking my own V2 back in the day. Really cool in the early 2000s to have such a thin all-in-one even if it worked like garbage
man, it's so awesome to hear that a company went bust due to their printer-ink-grade subscription business model... wish it happened more lol
They were just too ahead of their time.
I know you said you want to keep this thing stock but if you find another or wouldn’t mind I would absolutely love to see you push that thing to the max. Fantastic video as always!
It's so weird seeing every thing went so smoothly.. a real eye opener for the company after their losses.
wow that's a shocker! LGR did a Video on this very same Computer 8 Days ago and Michael MJD is doing a video on this Today wow! Michael you should get in touch with Clint & see if you both could a PC Project together! now that's something I'd watch!
I think they've been donating each other stuff but yet to actually collab.
@@thesidneychan I think your right but imagine if they did a video together imagine how many views both channels would get
honestly having a proper soundblaster pro compatible sound card with gameport support (at least according to the device manager in 31:28) is surprising to see i feel like they just went with off the shelf components thinking it'd be cheaper but figured out it wasnt way too late
This is one of the most fascinating early 2000s computer things I've ever seen
Said $199 instead of $99. Still a loss, just not as big. Besides their business plan was the video console model.
What about preserving a copy of the data that came with the unit before you mess with its internal memory chip to get 98 running? I always say businesses (looking at you gaming) should never sell hardware at a loss.
In the UK, our equivalent devices were way more low end but still more expensive.
Two that immediately come to mind were the Amstrad E-Mailer which was a landline telephone with built in very basic computer (I believe it was an 8 bit device) and the Bush Internet TV which was available as a 14" CRT TV and as a standalone set top box.
Both were extremely limited, not a patch on a PC and nowhere near as hackable as the i-Openerb ecause they were made very cheaply. No loss leaders here!
Amstrad sure knew how to use the oldest possible devices and sell them for a shameless price.
good old Alan Sugar…
I think I narrowly dodged the bullet with the *e-m@іler* device; I bought one BNIB but cheap from a car boot in the early 2000s (Think I might've paid £2,- for it) intending to keep it for when I got my own place. Sold it on eBay for £10,- a couple years later, and my only regret was never thinking to try to hack the thing. ☎💨😇
But if I'd stuck to my original plans, that would've been a _terrible_ way to e-mail, on a non-portable account (Compare to web-based mail services), and I think Amstrads access charges were something ridiculous like 30p/e-mail or something like that. I know they charged 20p/SMS, and that was double the cost of doing that on a PAYG mobile at the time. 💸
I wonder if anybody ever successfully replicated the Amstrad service-end, effectively letting those things continue working? 🙂
we have to standardize the pizza key maybe it can be configurable for any pizza website you want to order from
I had one! It was my gateway to the internet in ‘99 and I used it for about 3 years before getting my first Mac. It worked really well for what it was. Mine came with a printer too - not bad for $99 back in the day!
It's a shame this device couldn't have seen more success. I'm a big believer in the idea of a more accessible operating system for people who just want to do the basics, and it's a shame that stuff like the WOW! Computer have tainted that very idea for a lot of people.
dude, chromeOS is doing exactly this
@@user-jz8po2eu2d ChromeOS is nothing like this, and ChromeOS devices can ever be looked at as permanent solutions to this given the ridiculously short certification period for ChromeOS devices to continue getting updates.
Current operating systems are accessible enough. Most of the people are not such morons as some companies believe. You could actually teach a granny to turn on computer and start Chrome or Firefox.
@@aleksazunjic9672 My mom is literally boomer, and she can use online shop (Shopee to be exact, one of biggest online shop app in South East Asia) and QR code payment apps on her smartphone. Even she is very active in online Karaoke apps named WeSing, an online Karaoke apps made by Tencent.
Neat to see another perspective on this after the LGR video a week ago
Agreed! I still can't believe the odds that we were both working on a video about this around the same time without realizing it.
@@LGRhiiiiii LGR
@@LGR at first I was like didn't I watch this video like a week ago?? When I got the notification haha. Crazy coincidence
Thanks for doing this amazing video, research and debugging. I'm the owner of one keyboard like that, but had never seen the computer it was supposed to connect to, so that was a fun discovery process!
To my limited testing so far, the keyboard is "almost" meeting PS2 standards, but not quite. It's missing some crucial keys (the F keys, and Escape key for example) for it to function on a normal PC. Maybe I should disassemble it to see if the missing keys could be re-added or re-routed somehow to the rubber ones.
the pins are swapped to support a DOM, or disk on module plugged directly to the pin header. without a cable the pins would be upside down.
if your pins were cut you could just put the header on the other side and the pins would be in the right order.
First it was you and Action Retro making videos on the ELO touchscreen Mac, now its you and LGR both making videos on the i-Opener. There must be some sort of conspiracy afoot!
Manual: "The computer just asked me to order a pizza. What should i do? "You accidentally pressed the PiZzA button, it litteraly makes sense." " . 💀
Oh, this brings back some memories. I bought one of these right before it hit Slashdot after seeing it on Ken's site. And then it hit like the next day or two afterward. The warehouse didn't have any in it, and then Slashdot made mine become backordered. Fast forward, and I get a letter saying there were new terms and conditions that I would retroactively be bound to (what you mentioned) - even though I already paid for the darn thing and was just waiting for it to come in.
Anyway, I bought one on eBay for $129 because the Slashdot effect had it backordered forever. And I wound up getting a V2 like you did. My BIOS wasn't messed up like yours was; I was able to get the kit and simply do what you did. I went a bit further than you did - I put a fan and heat sink on. Hard drive bracket. I added an audio out jack. PS/2 splitter. Upgraded the RAM. Upgraded the CPU. Put a parallel port Ethernet device on there. I do remember there was an issue with the USB chipset; any Ethernet USB adapters we ran eventually quit working. (I think just about anything USB wound up being flaky.) We eventually had to get parallel port Ethernet adapters. (They even stopped working in Linux!) The last thing we eventually looked at doing was trying to replace the screen with an active matrix screen before I moved on to a different hobby machine.
It was quite a fun system to play around with! I ended up selling it to a lumberyard as a thin client Wyse terminal emulator. (Unfortunately, they're long out of business, so no idea what happened to it.)
Just happend to saw a picture of a windows sideshow device on reddit and thought it would fit your channel well. They were basically little secondary screens that were attached to some laptops, and allowed you the check your mail, view photos, listen to music and more. Would be interesting to see a video about them.
LOL, I remember a friend I nabbed two of these at Circuit City, then we stuck in PATA drives in ours, months later got a $500 bill in the mail from Netpliance (Circuit City apparently gave customers addresses to them without permission). Neat little machine but abysmal LCD. Still have mine and it still works.
Oof, that sucks. I was wondering if Circuit City passed on customer info to Netpliance but didn’t find any info on it. Pretty wild that they actually did that when they didn’t have permission.
@@MichaelMJD Yeah, and I remember it being kind of a nasty threatening letter. I believe Circuit City got my address because I had once signed up for their DIVX rental service.
@@rbus Wow. Two dead end services.
@@brodriguez11000 hah, I never once checked out a movie on Circuit City's DIVX rental service but watched plenty of DivX-encoded movies (not-related).
A few questions:
Firstly, Did anyone create any restore images for the OS? I can't seem to find it on internet archive at least.
Given that the I-opener could run Windows, and I assume because QNX could run from a floppy disk on a regular PC, that the Netpliance setup could run on a regular PC too?
Secondly,, have there been any community projects to recreate the services this device used. Since the ISP was changed over quite easily, I'm guessing the majority is going to be simple news feeds off a webpage that's controlled via domain/DNS settings. We have the ability to run our own dial up servers now, surely it'd be possible to get this thing back up and running using some nice newer services.
I remember buying one of these for $99 specifically to convert it into a cheap PC! I don't remember if I bought the crossover cable or made my own, but I remember someone had posted the missing drivers so in the end I had mine setup with a USB web cam and used it to monitor my dogs while I was at work. It was a fun project at the time...
It’s funny to think it still takes you to the food website for ordering when at the end of 2001 they quit processing orders for PapaJohns and the latest dates for this machine are 2002.
keycap manufacturers should take note of that pizza key. i would totally replace right ctrl with a pizza key
While watching I was thinking that this is ancient and way before my time. But then I remembered that my parents bought their first PC in like 2006 or something. In Siberia. The city I was growing up in wasn't even that major. That's only about half a decade apart.
This is a walk down memory lane. I bought one of these for the $99 before they locked it down, bought the full kit, built the modified PC with Windows installed as a fun little project as it was pretty novel to have a compact all in one with lcd screen at the time. Ultimately the performance was too slow as a power user and I didn't have any real use for it.
I remember hearing about these at the time, but never got to see one. Thank you very much for sharing.
Well the unintended foreshadowing they made is hilarious. When the i-Opener became the "I Opened" and booted straight to Windows. This rolled a fresh breeze in, which even they didn't see it coming. Turns out their business model was short sighted, because under the lens, focussing to get revenue by the sub fee was pretty dilated. And the nerve billing customers a cancellation fee - well the FFC got their sights on them.
What would have happened if they just charged a fair price for the hardware in the first place?
@@TassieLorenzo It still would have died. Computers were advancing way too fast then, especially for an underpowered machine.
Nice reporting! This reminds me of when Micro$oft was losing money on their X-box hardware and got pretty perturbed about people installing Linux on it.
When you mentioned Circuit City. I remember that store chain. Too bad they went belly up and sold all their real estate. My dad used to work for them back in the day when they did VCR repairs and such. I miss the chain type of electronics stores. We still have Best Buy, and all the other smaller chains and individually owned electronics shops. I personally do computer and electronics repairs and your showcases of all these old and lesser known consumer electronics, mainly computers is a real informative thing of a blast from the past and some of them are nostalgia.
I had one a long time ago, I had XP embedded running on mine from a wise ide flash drive, I added some slim fans and it worked great, it did word and basic functionality. It didn’t like big games but it did what I needed it to do.
I'm afraid of updating the BIOS on my MSI GL65 Leopard laptop because I soldered in the 2nd m.2 bay components so I could have a dedicated nvme drive for my games instead of installing them my OS drive. It's nice now having 2 m.2s and a 2.5" drive.
dang I want a pizza button. the IPAD part made me loose it 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Videos like this mess with my head because this thing is over 20 years old. When I was a kid, that would be like looking at hardware from the 1960s, unbeliveably ancient to me then, yet now hardware from 2001 just dosen't seem that old to me at all, I was doing pretty much the same things then as I do now on computer hardware, yet I imagine kids today find this to be ancient. Anyway, great video on an obscure piece of Millenium hardware. Thanks for posting!
*edit* Also LOL they got Slashdotted! Now THERE is a throwback term to the late 90s/early 2000s!!! Holy moley!
Oh man, I had one of these, first mod was to install Windows and put a fan cooler. Then I cut out a hole in the back to put in a passive heatsink and put it in my bedroom as a media PC running Winamp. I think it's still in my shed.
This was a real eye opener for companies on what not to do
came here for this
im still disappointed
Don't offer cheap hardware.
99 bucks for the hardware at the time was probably what the parts were worth in comparison to the second hand market at the time, except for the screen. That would add to the BOM significantly at the time.
For contrast I got my p100 in 1998 built for about $200Aud (still runs) with plenty of upgrade potential (I ended up getting a k6-3 later)
I know it’s been mentioned but with a small CF adapter you could probably fit a laptop blower style fan pointing directly at the fins and use some electrical tape to direct airflow!
I love learning about obscure tech. This device kinda reminds me of that other Internet-enabled/easy-to-use-for-the-masses device that had a stylus stored on top of the screen that would light up for new notifications (idk if this channel talked about that device, but I totally forgot the name). In a better world, this device could’ve been sold by AT&T or some other carrier and the internet subscription would’ve been included in the price tag, or this could’ve been easily used in some internet cafes, or imagine if Starbucks had internet terminals (did they have internet terminals at some point?)
Wonder if you could run Mac OSes, BE-OS, or even OS/2 on it. Windows 3.1 or earlier would be crazy to see.
Mac OS of the time was powerpc
@@kyle8952 you might be able to slap Mac OS X Rhapsody on it though (doubt it would have any driver support though)
BeOS and OS/2 Warp are usually fairly easy. I also love how Warp includes the whole Windows 3.1 (optionally).
This is easier to open and upgrade than latest hp laptop
I used to have one! I even bought the kit and installed Windows/Linux on it. If I remember correctly I got the version that needed a replacement bios and it was glued in with epoxy that I had to chip away but I don't really remember.
The optional mouse costing 20% of what the computer did is nuts. If I had any idea about this device here in Canada some fifteen - twenty years ago, I'd have absolutely sought one out.
wow that meme about gas prices is an antique!
i guess it's i-Opener week here on retro-tech youtube haha, nice :)
in the 90s - Early 2K, the company also made terminals for the travel industry that interfaced with SABRE, airlines, hotels, car rental and this side of their business was probably quite profitable.
1) Is amazing that some of my fav YT channels were working on the same stuff without knowing it.
2) Is incredible that more than 20 years later, M$ is considering going in a subscription model for Win for the general user and the system evolved in being more closed than ever, "simplified" and with ads. All things I "love" and will surely make me go to Linux as a main O.S. for now on and not the other way around.
3) That "news" and photos... That was an "I-opener" on how world economics are now and a reminder of heavy stuff that happened back then too...
Did yall see the 9/11 article?
At 16:19 ?
i wonder how no one's yet made a revival service for this thing yet. they've made one for WebTV but not for this?
i feel like someones gonna make it soon
Skipped a fair bit of this because I'd already seen LGR's video, but it was interesting seeing how it could be hacked to run other OSes and watching you actually do said. I'm looking forward to watching you try this thing out properly running Windows 98.
I remember seeing one of those at Circuit City back then! I thought the circular mouse pointer thing was clunky at best.
I had no need for an i-opener because in late 1999 I had gotten a Packard Bell PC from a pawn shop for $199.
I had heard about people hacking the thing and I chuckled.
Oddly, I never noticed the Pizza Key.
pretty fascinating how you cover similar things as other UA-camrs often, not a bad thing. LGR just did a video on one of these.
They might share stuff between them, like lgr had it and after he made his video sent it to mjd?
I mean how much original content can you make about retro tech. He can’t just make new things up lol
I imagine they all share hardware among each other to assist having content. Can't be easy nowadays, especially with how popular collecting older tech has gotten.
edit: my original comment to you was kinda mean, im sorry. don't fret so much about youtubers doing similar things, there is room in the world for many takes and outlooks. sorry for the attitude earlier
LGR is not everyone's cup of tea, the bulk of people watching one probably aren't watching the other, they both tend to cover things from drastically different perspectives even when they do overlap, and more free content is more free content. You're not LGR, and nobody actually has the right to complain about something in someone else's name before the person/people in question speak out, so... where is the problem? 🤨
I'm sure it's a crazy thing to say, but will this also work if we try to use a Sata based SSD to this?
And just check the performance. Maybe try Xp.
Idk, just my wild thoughts. Lol.
Amazing video though! 🙌🏻👏🏻
XP requires a 233 Mhz processor and 64 MB of RAM, so it would need to be upgraded to do that
It looks quaint now, but for people who didn't know any deeper about computers back then this would have looked slick and futuristic. At least until they had to use it regularly.
Especially compared to the beige towers and chonky CRT monitors that dominated home computing at the time.
I do remember this machine. Never got one (didn't want to pay the monthly ... there used to be free dial-ups at that time I used, lol). Didn't know anything about the hacks. Great flash from the past ... thanks for your work!
i want to see more of this shenanigans. maybe run linux as well. cheers.
The internet was so exciting back in the day.
I was on the early end of the internet using a AOL CD from a computer magazine and my wife’s company notebook computer. I used to brag to people about being on the internet only to realize later that I hadn’t even left the AOL portal.
There was a computer company that was giving away computers but you had to watch ads on a small part of screen and they gave you limited internet access. Extra internet time cost you a small fee but still had ads on screen.
As it turns out, any company that has their products begin with an "i" just seems to be pretty scummy with money
Mitsubishi iMiev?
iPhone?
Imagine if MJD did a face reveal and he looks exactly like the XP bobblehead.
that is what he looks like i refuse anything but
@@fakie_kickflip💀
Congrats on 400K subscribers!!!
Could you fit a second USB port in there? Like i see the solder pads, but does it have the the other components needed for the usb port to work?
This is exactly the kind of weird projects that i like. I could see myself making one of these for dos game, maybe run windows 98SE. Or an XP nLite or something.
I was relieved when you pulled out a second unit to demo the original software because I was like....noo don't boot it up yet! There's a exploit involving the initial bootup process that's gone forever once you finish it! :D
But thankfully you already knew about that. :D
Used to own one of these in the early 00s. My high school spanish teacher would have me help fix any computer issues she had and one day she gave me one of these that was just sitting in the closet.
Sadly I did not keep it as I didn't have the power adapter it needed so using it was a hassle. I did read about hacking it at the time but since it required a special cable it wasn't something I could do. I recall the version I had was one where they put epoxy over the BIOS chip too so removing it to flash in an external flasher wasn't practical either. (you seemed to have forgotten to mention that. They epoxied down the bios chip in some later revisions!)
Would definitely like to see you get drivers on it. Would like to see how bad Doom looks on that LCD panel. :P
Also there's an unpopulated second USB port pad on the motherboard. Curious if the SMD components and such related to it are present and simply soldering in the port would be enough to make it work. Would be cool if you could get a second port working. It would only require cutting a hole in the metal shielding since the case already has a cut out for it. Not sure where you'd find a matching port to solder in. I guess you could sacrifice the one from your second unit but surely there's spares with the right formfactor on digikey or something....
I imagine you could get one of those backpack Parallel port external CD drives too for some CD shannangins! Something I've wanted to do if I ever get one of these again.:D
Funny thing that for once, there's more RAM than internal storage in a computer
I have one of these . i acquired it for $20 back in the 2000's and started the mod on it but never finished it. I do however remember buying a custom PCB that you would attach to the IDE header and then could use standard cables . . . I may have to dig out it out of storage.
Such an amazing device! A very similar case to what happened with the Intel Dot Station aka "Paquito" computer in Spain back in around 2000-2001
This video really opened my Is - I-Never knew about this million dollar tech fail