I haven't seen FuturecomGlobal / 21st Cent Tech sell any of their XP embedded machines on ebay in well over a year.
The operating system is stored in a 64mb compact flash card in the machine. The machine shares this storage with both the operating system as well as utilizes some if it as a "hard drive".
Note: Being on a CF card I would think it would be easy to remove the card back it up and place other operating systems on it
(or larger cards or CF hard drives
). Since it is an x86 system I'm surprised the Linux boys don't jump all over it.
The hardware specs for the Neta 995 and 985 are the same:
From the 21stCentrury Tech. Website:
Specifications:
National SC 3200 CPU Processor
(up to 266MHz
)
128MB SDRAM Onboard Memory
64MB Onboard Flash Memory
<--This is a CF card on the 985!
10.4" TFT Touch Screen Display
If you are asking how hard is it to load programs into a 985 I would say not as easy as with a normal CE machine
(although not impossible
).
I am a little rusty on what I could get done with a 985 or not. I don't remember Activesync being usable. I know that you can copy files by use of PCCard memory cards
(or a CF card with a PCCard adapter
) or "Thumb" drives in the USB port.
You can download some files from the net. Realistically, I don't believe there are nearly as many options for software.
I remember talking to a FuturecomGlobal representative
(over the phone
) about some of the limitations of the unit. The representative indicated that you could "turn on" the normal CE shell
(versus the "Viva" shell that is normally present
). I would assume that this involves changing a few registry settings, etc. This may provide a few more options.
Note: The 985 is a nice piece of hardware with a great screen. I worked well for us because we wanted to use it as a Citrix client.
Well as usual, this is a bit long winded.
I hope that I answered your question. If anyone else out there in "Factorland" has any more information, maybe they can add to this or clear up any mis-information that I may have provided.
DG