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Neoware CA15 Firmware 

BIOS

The Neoware CA15 has a standard Phoenix AwardBIOS. The boot options are:

  • LS120
  • HDD-0
  • SCSI
  • CDROM
  • HDD-1
  • ZIP100
  • USB-FDD
  • USB-ZIP
  • USB-CDROM
  • USB-HDD
  • LAN
  • Disabled

This makes life easy for us and most Linux distributions will run straight from the box.

Firmware

The CA15 can come with a variety of firmware.

NeoLinux

I had an email from somebody with one running NeoLinux. He had inadvertently set the screen resolution to one not supported by any of his monitors and wanted to know how to recover the situation. My CA15 is running the Thintune OS so I couldn't provide an instant solution but made a few suggestions. He ended up taking the approach that I took with with a CA5 and typing 'blind' (see CA5 firmware for details).

Things may vary depending on exactly how your CA15 is configured, but his solution was:

I have found the ALT + keyboard sequence to restore ezConnect parameters to the factory one. I take this sequence from another CA15 installed and working.

ALT + S for Desktop setup

Hold functions and press "Arrow right" to access to desktop menu. Then, Arrow up to select the last function "Factory Default" and press the ENTER button twice.

Thintune OS

Having dug out the CA15 (BV-B2-CC) I decided to have a quick look at the embedded Thintune OS. This had been set to automatically boot into a session and I had no control over the terminal at all. Some work with Google found the solution....

CA15 Thintune boot screen As the system boots press the F7 key. I don't know exactly when it needs pressing - I just kept it up for a while until I saw the key code being echoed to the screen. You then have to wait for a while until some internal time out expires.

Failsave login screen At this point you're presented with a login screen for "Jstream Failsave system".

The default password of jstream worked for me.

Failsave menu screen You're then presented with another screen with three options:

  • Enter Failsafe mode (Starts the Control Center)
  • Factory Defaults
  • Factory Defaults (keep licences)

I took the easy route of a factory reset. The CA15 then rebooted to a convential desktop and gave me full control over its setup.

Control Center menu screen

The Control Center screen lets you set many things including the screen resolution.

 


Any comments? email me.    Last update June 2012