[ale] Zapmedia Zapstation

[Michael Hirsch]

On 8/29/07, Brian Pitts <brian at polibyte.com> wrote:
> I thought I'd post a follow-up on about the Zapstation. I was able to
> put the BIOS chip in an Asus motherboard of the same generation and
> flash it. I had to use Asus's special flashing utility; Uniflash saw it
> as read-only. After flashing I could see at the POST screen that the RAM
> was registering as only 32mb! I put in a 128mb PC-100 stick and booted
> SystemRescueCD. Everything looked good except the locked hard drive. I
> rebooted into freedos, burned a cd with qunlock, and unlocked the hard
> drive. Now the Zapstation's linux OS loads and I'm able to navigate
> through the functions using the front-panel buttons. Sadly my usb
> keyboard doesn't work.

There are two solutions for that.  First, as Jim said, try the "enable
legacy keyboard support" in the BIOS.  Second, rebuild the kernel with
USB.  The USB port sould work, but the USB keyboard module is not
included on the device.

> I suppose I'll add a larger hard drive now and install a newer linux
> distribution. It's a shame to lose the front panel lcd and buttons
> (particularly the eject button), but a working keyboard is a must.

Another option is to create a task that run from init, or rc5.d, that
opens an xterm on another system.  That way you can use the other
system's keyboard.  That's what I do.

Michael