The original story:
In 1999, Virgin's megastore in Manhattan installed displays advertising something called "Virgin Connect". The deal with this service is that you give them your credit card number and answer a short survey, and [if your profile matches the market they believe will spend big online], they send you a "nearly free" Internet access device. By nearly free, I mean that you are charged $50 a year for the first three years of ownership. If you are a charter member
(one of the first 10,000
), they waive the first year's fee, so you wind up getting the device, plus three years of Internet service, for $100. You must spend at least 10 hours per month online with the appliance. Access is provided by Prodigy, so there's no shortage of local phone numbers. If you live in the U.S. and you're interested in signing up for the service yourself, visit
http://www.virginconnect.com/ and read the full conditions.
The Virgin Webplayer device looks very cute, and I needed another Internet computer for the kitchen anyway
(I like to research recipes online
), so I signed up for mine and received it a few days ago. Of course, being the engineer that I am, I couldn't resist looking inside and doing some research on the parts.
First thing to note: This machine is basically a PC. Although you won't find this information anywhere inside the unit, it is manufactured by Acer, who showcased the device at Comdex Las Vegas in 1999. The press releases talk about units powered by Windows CE, but the Virgin unit seems to be loaded with a version of embedded Java.
(That makes it dog-slow, of course, like everything else Java-based
). UPDATE: The machine is actually running a version of embedded UNIX.
Some proof that it's an embedded PC is easily obtained: Unplug your Webplayer and plug it back in. While the Virgin Connect logo is displayed
(but BEFORE the startup bar graph begins progressing
), hit F2 repeatedly and you'll soon be popped out to a standard PC POST screen. After a couple of seconds the unit will try to run its BIOS setup program, which is password-protected. The password must be stored in EEPROM, because I've shorted the CMOS battery on my unit and although the unit now complains the date and time are wrong, the password is still in force. There's almost certainly a way to override this, but I really can't be bothered pulling the BIOS and reverse-engineering it to find out how; life's too short.
The unit also has a software setup screen which can be accessed by pressing Ctrl-F1
(Ctrl-Music
). Every time you do this, it gives you a code for which you must enter a counter-code. I had to get into this screen when my unit first arrived; the Virgin customer service rep didn't give me much time to see what was in there.
The Prodigy Internet service looks like a vanilla PPP dialup with PAP/CHAP authentication, so you can probably use it on another machine. If you sign up for VirginConnect with a userID of "xxxx", your Prodigy user ID will be "vc/xxxx". I haven't tried dialing in direct with another computer, but I have tried fetching my VirginConnect mail from another machine
(the POP server is pop.prodigy.net
) and it works just fine.
Enough about the exterior; time to delve inside! I've annotated photographs of the mainboard; click either thumbnail below to zoom in on a full-screen image. As you can see, there are a VAST number of integrated peripherals. There is also a daughterboard with a Conexant
(controllered
) V.90 modem.
The CPU in this unit is a National Semiconductor Geode GXLV-200, which is a 200MHz Pentium-class CPU. This chip has a companion bridge and I/O controller, and an LCD controller. There appears to be some dedicated RAM for the video controller, which is odd because the CPU supports UMA and should therefore be able to use some of main memory as a frame buffer. There is also a Super I/O chip with all the usual PC peripherals; PS/2 keyboard and mouse, two buffered serial ports, an SPP/EPP/ECP parallel port, two IDE buses, real-time clock and a floppy controller. Don't try to remove the heatsink from the CPU, because it's glued on and you might crack one of the CPU connections.
