wrcsubers

Hello everyone, my first post here....

So I'm completely stumped with this issue. I have a Neoware CA15, also known as an HP Thinclient C50. I have moded the case to fit a 30GB Laptop HDD, upgraded the RAM and installed XP Pro on it. It works great as a websurfer or simple application computer. I have found the USB, Audio and Network Drivers for the Motherboard, but I CANNOT find the VGA Chipset Drivers. Does anyone have any idea what kind of Integrated controller this thing has on the mobo? It has a VIA VT8235 Southbridge and HP says the board is a G160, whatever that means... Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

pybe

I have a bunch or CA15 that I have been looking to do something with. How did you get the laptop hdd in there. Do you have any info or pics?

Cheers
Pybe

BCCOMP

HI,
According to the specs of a HP C50 it takes a VIA S3 Graphics:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...odTypeId=12454

I am unable to locate the driver (yet)

If you have an error in the device manager can you:
Right click on the error>Properties>Details Tab
Post the info you find under Device Instance ID

Thanks,
Bill

wrcsubers

Well here it is, my modded CA15 with a laptop HDD in it!

So first off take apart your CA15 with the 3 screws on the back and slide the cover off and you'll find this:



On the bottom left you will find the 32mb SSD that should have Windows CE(well at least mine did). This is the module you're looking for:



Remove this by squeezing the plastic clip and pull upward. This will expose the IDE header to connect the HDD to. But before you do that you need a laptop IDE cable. You can find an assortment of them from here, The 6-inch one turned out to be the perfect length. I had an old 30GB laptop drive laying around and I secured it in part of a tray from an old laptop:



Connect the IDE cable to the Motherboard making sure that the red stripe is to the left and then plug it into your HDD minding the #1 pin as well:



With some creative bending/twisting/manipulating of the IDE cable I got the drive to fit in sideways. Hint: There is a metal piece that runs across the front of the case, removable with two screws(i removed it from my case, so you cant see it) if you remove this it gives you a bit more room to work with. You should end up with something like this:



I also upgraded the ram in this unit, you probably don't need more than 512mb, but I had a 1GB stick laying around so i threw that in and noticed a remarkable improvement over the 256mb that the unit comes with.

Push the HDD down while you slide the cover back on the unit and it will stay in place. The HDD is not secured with any type of bracket/screw or any such thing, however it stays VERY secure in its position.



I was able to load XP on it from an external CD-Drive and this is what I ended up with:



I made some BIOS changes to further increase the speed of the system, and was thinking about Overclocking the processor, but without adding a fan(which is completely do-able) I didn't want to risk having a heat issue.

My XP Install has a very harsh optimization on it, lots of services have been disabled and processes terminated to further increase the performance from the slow 400Mhz processor. If you have a questions let me know!

Thanks!

wrcsubers

I also have the drivers for all the devices in XP... sound, usb and video, let me know if you need them...

BCCOMP

Glad to hear you found the video driver.
Thanks, for posting what you did to convert this machine.
Bill