Wyse X90cw: Hardware 

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The X90CW is one of the C family of X Class laptop style thin clients. Essentially it's a fairly standard net-book style laptop with an 11.6" screen. It's relatively small, light and portable.

In July 2020 I heard from Russell who had recently got hold of one but it had no working battery. In searching around he noticed that X90CW was identical to the Benq Joybook U121 Ecoand surmised that the X90CW was just a rebadge of a generic product. He wondered who the OEM was and what other variants might exist.

Specifications

Processor
Type    Speed	Intel Atom Z520 1.33 GHz
Chipset
	SCH Paulsbro
Memory
Flash    RAM	2GB 1GB (Max 2GB?)
Video
Screen    Chip	11.6" WXGA 1366 x 768 LED backlight GMA 500 integrated in SCH Paulsbo
Ports
Display    Network    USB    Serial    Parallel    PS/2	1 VGA port 15-pin D-Sub for external monitor 10/100 Integrated Wireless 802.11b/g/n 3 x USB2.0 none none none
Power
Battery	6 cell Li-Ion 5200mAH (up to 8 hours)
Off    Idle    Running	0W 13W ~16W
Dimensions
H x W x D (mm)	26.4-31.7 x 290 x 209

The operating system is Windows Embedded Standard.

CPU

The CPU is an Intel Atom Z520 clocked at 1.33GHz. (Single core with Hyperthreading).

PCI

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) HD Audio Controller (rev 07)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 07)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 07)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #1 (rev 07)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #2 (rev 07)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB UHCI #3 (rev 07)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) USB EHCI #1 (rev 07)
00:1e.0 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) SDIO Controller #1 (rev 07)
00:1e.1 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) SDIO Controller #2 (rev 07)
00:1e.2 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) SDIO Controller #3 (rev 07)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) LPC Bridge (rev 07)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation System Controller Hub (SCH Poulsbo) IDE Controller (rev 07)
01:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 03)
01:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB363 SATA/IDE Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. SD/MMC Host Controller (rev 80)
02:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technology Corp. Standard SD Host Controller (rev 80)
02:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. MS Host Controller (rev 80)
02:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technology Corp. xD Host Controller (rev 80)
02:00.5 Ethernet controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMC260 PCI Express Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

Power Supply

The external power supply is rated at 19V 3.42A. The one that came with the laptop was manufactured by Delta Electronics and carried the part # SADP-65KB A. eBay will find many supplies that quote the main number - many laptop chargers these days are 65W 19V supplies. I wondered whether the A on the end may indicate the type of tip fitted but I almost immediately found one with a straight connector on the end of the cable - my one has a right angle connector. Anyway, as far as I can determine, the plug appears to be a standard 5.5mm/2.5mm plug.

Expansion features

Everything is accessible on the underneath of the X90cw. Unlike some laptops/netbooks there are no expansion components located under the keyboard.

Memory

Ram: There is a single SODIMM socket to take the RAM. I fitted a 2GB PC2-6400S Hynix part which worked perfectly. The maximum amount of RAM mentioned in the Wyse datasheet is 2GB. I don't know if that is their application limit or the physical limit of the hardware. The SCH US15W datasheet does say Support for a maximum of 2GB of DRAM.

SD Card: There is a card slot on the right-hand side of the X90cw. The data sheet identifies this as a 'Media slot 4-in-1 (MS/MS-Pro/SD/MMC). In a brief check I made of this socket it successfully recognised an anonymous 2GB SD card I had. It gave r/w errors with a 16GB SDHC card, so it is probably SD only.

Wireless

802.11: The X90cw comes with a wireless card fitted. I was confused for a while here as I assumed that it was a mPCIe expansion card and yet it didn't appear in the PCI listing. It turns out that the card - an AW-NU706H - actually appears on the USB bus:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 5986:0241 Acer, Inc BisonCam, NB Pro
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13d3:3273 IMC Networks 802.11 n/g/b Wireless LAN USB Mini-Card
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0011:7788 Unknown Flash mass storage drive
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

The first item in the list is the integrated webcam, the next the wireless card and the last the 1GB flash drive that I'd booted Tiny Core from.

The AzureWave AW-NU706H is described in its data sheet as being an USB Half-Mini-card. This is an area I don't know much about - and wasn't even aware of before I came across the X90. It seems to be mixed in with PCIe but using USB 2.0 which is also available on the BUS.

Bluetooth: The X90 has an FCC/CE label on the bottom which mentions an AzureWave BT252 Bluetooth module. I can't see any sign of bluetooth in the Tiny Core data, but it does appear in the Windows Device Manager.

Mobile: There is a similar slot to the one used by the wireless card just by it. This has some aerial cables by it labelled WLAN. I subsequently got hold of a second example of the X90 and this one came with a Sierra Wireless MC8780 mobile PCIe module fitted here.

mPCIe

There is another socket near the SATA connector. Initially I wondered whether it was mSATA socket for another SSD but anything I tried plugging in here was not recognised.

This is a nice area for confusion in the absence of a definitive statement on a spec sheet. While mPCIe and mSATA use the same physical style of connector they are electrically different. mPCIe utilizes the same PCI Express signals used by desktop expansion cards while mSATA uses the SATA storage interface employed by SSDs and hard drives.

In February 2019 I heard from René who cleared up my confusion. He wrote:

"I tried out a mini PCIe to dual TransFlash (microSD) card reader from eBay This worked (after enabling the second sata port in the bios). So this is a real mPCIe socket."

He already had a normal 60GB SSD fitted on which he had installed Linux Mint. The 128GB flash appeared as a second drive.

This is a neat way to boost the storage on your X90CW. It tucks the flash drive away inside the X90CW and gives you much better data transfer rates than the external USB2.0 ports.