Logo

Wyse 941GXL: Hardware 

front
back

 

two

Model No: J400, Product ID: WT941GXL,
Part No: 902073-29, Manufactured January 2007.

I've included this here as it is branded as a Winterm. I assume who ever named this product had a sense of humour and picked the XL suffix as, in terms of size, it is definitely not 'thin'! The right-hand photo above contrasts it with a Neoware Capio. When you look inside (see photo below) you can see why. The steel case carries a standard VIA EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard, a separate large heatsink connected to it via a heat pipe, a power board to convert 12V to the voltages needed by the motherboard and, finally, a lot of fresh air.

BIOS/Drivers/Manual et al used to be downloadable from the Legacy Product section of the VIA website. It looks these days you'll have to search and see what you can find. A copy of the motherboard manual is here.

Specifications

The basic specs are:

Processor
   Type
   Speed
VIA C3 Nehemiah
1GHz
Memory
   Flash
   RAM
512MB
256MB (1GB max)
Video
   Chip
   Resolution
integrated Trident Blade 3D
1600 x 1200 @ ?-bit colour
Ports
   Network
   USB
   Serial
   Parallel
   PS/2
10/100
4 x USB1.1
1
1
2 (Kybd & Mouse)
Power
   Input
   Off
   Running
12V ?A
7 W
24-29W
Dimensions
H x W x D (mm)68 x 300 x 290

The embedded operating system is Windows XPe.

My one came without any operating system installed - the flash memory had been wiped clean. A copy of XPe can be downloaded from the Wyse website if you wish to reflash the unit with the standard software. (I haven't done this).

Processor

The VIA Nehamiah comes in a number of flavours (see Wikipedia). There are:

  • C5XL : The first core with the twin hardware random number generators.
  • C5P : ..a few more advancements, including a high-performance AES encryption engine.

On my unit /proc/cpuinfo reports a family/model/stepping of 6/9/4. According to sandpile.org this signifies a C5XL core.

Power Supply

The unit requires a 12V supply. Mine came with the official Wyse unit (part CFI941GXL) which is rated at a beefy 5A. This particular power brick actually draws ~4W without the Winterm connected.

There is an internal board that converts the 12V input to the various supplies required by the motherboard. This would appear to be a proprietary Wyse board.

Expansion

board

Everything you need to know is in the motherboard manual.

The flash is a DOM plugged into one of the two 40-pin IDE connectors.

The RAM is a conventional stick of 168-pin PC133 SDRAM. According the manual each DIMM socket (there are two) will take upto 512MB DIMMs giving a 1GB maximum (2x512MB).

One thing to note is that there are no spare power connectors other than a small two-pin connector that matches the one connected to the DOM.

Note: The keyway pin on the IDE connector is missing. In some thin clients this is present, at least on the first IDE interface, as it is used to directly power a DOM. In it's absence you have provide power to a DOM through a separate connector.

There is a small riser board carrying a PCI socket so that a small expansion board can be added - such as another ethernet interface or wireless LAN card. What with that and the available internal space there is considerable scope to turn this into a useful appliance of some kind.

Click on the photo for a closer look at the Mini-ITX board.

 


Any comments? email me.    Last update July 2010