This page is specific to NeoWare clients. For other clients, see the top level clients page.

Neoware Thin Clients are low power, contain no moving parts, are i386 compatible and come with an excelent selection of ports including on-board ethernet, video, sound, LPT, serial and USB on newer models.

Neoware markets the sale of these units for use on Citrix and RDP networks and thus will come new from Neoware with a DOC or DOM that contains a WinCE^? or WinNT^?/WinXP embedded boot OS with a graphical client manager to setup connection to a Citrix or RDP server.

According to this post, Capio and EON systems can usually PXE boot. To get PXE working on most systems you need to enable it in the system BIOS and the PXE BIOS.

And this post says "All Capio's and most Eon's use a NSC GX1+ CPU, which is well supported by XFree86 4.2. The high-end Eon's have an 800 MHz Via C3 CPU, and are also well supported by XFree86 4.2 (embedded 4X AGP ProSavage^?)."

List reader Roy Souther reports "I have bought a lot of Capio's and Eon's all different model numbers. I find the newer Capio's have much better video on-board. The Eon's have really bad video on-board so I just install a PCI video card and do not even try the on-board video for the Eon's any more. It can be a risk, buying used equipment on the Internet. You could buy one new one or for the same price 10 used ones, even if only half of them work you still are ahead of the game and you have a few extra for parts. Most of the Neoware units will work fine with the LTSP XSERVER = auto, and any that do not just set XSERVER = vesa.

I have not tried sound yet but I will be soon. ... I will post my results with Neoware thin clients when I know something.

... That is another thing I like about the Capio's and Eon's; the Eon's take a standard PC power cord and the Capio's take a standard laptop power cord, you do not need adaptors for either of them.

I could not find any good quality pictures for these units so I posted pictures of all four types here http://silicontao.com/ng/terminals/ng.php these are front back and inside views of these Neoware units."

Note well: Some of the information below is taken from ebay listings and associated photos, so take them with a grain of salt!

Capio

The Capio modles come in two general case styles, the larger split case like the CA10 and the smaller one piece case like the CA5.

Common Featres of Capio units Features

• CPU i386 compatable
• Sound: Mic In, Line Out, Headphone Out
• Parallel port DB25
• Serial port DB9
• RTL Ethernet 10/100
• VGA
• Two USB 1.0 ports on font
• PS/2 keyboard &mouse
• On-board mini IDE port (ships with DOM)

Most of the small case units require a laptop styly power code knows as a Mickey. The larger split case unit is known to require a power adaptor but some modles may only need a standard PC power code.

Most Capio units use shared video RAM that can be adjusted in BIOS. Different modles have different limits on video RAM.

Capio 620 / CP4H-CB

No solid info, probably works?

• CPU: Geode
• Video Memory: 4 MB

Connections:

• 2 USB Ports on the front
• Network (NIC)
• Serial
• Printer
• Microphone
• Audio In
• Audio Out
• VGA
• PS2 Keyboard
• PS2 Mouse

Capio 616

According to this thread, just enable PXE boot and set Boot Order Int19h. Maybe limited to 8 bit color? See the whole thread reference above for details..

The owner from this thread wrote me to clarify: "you can use 1280x1024 resolution with those at 24/32 bit colour by setting up. ltspswapd. You can eliminate the "mouse droppings" by putting "X_DEVICE_OPTION_01 = NoAccel^?" into lts.conf"

Capio 608 / CP4F-AA

Processor: National Geode GX1 300 MHz Memory: 32MB SDRAM (128MB Max) Ports: 10/100 Ethernet; 9-Pin Serial; 25-Pin Serial; Standard Audio In & Out + Mic; VGA; PS2 Mouse & Keyboard ports Dimensions: 9.5in W x 8.2in D x 1.4in H & 3.7 Lbs

Capio C50

Small case style.

According to this post, it works with LTSP.

Capio CA2

Appears to have Mic In, Line Out, Headphones Out, Parallel, 2x Serial, Ethernet, VGA, 2x USB, PS/2 keyboard/mouse.

Capio CA5

• Small case style
• 1 laptop memory slot

Capio CA10

• Split case style
• Two standard PC133 RAM slots
• CPU VIA 800MHz (i386 compatable) VIA Nehemiah CentaurHauls^? 64 KB cache
• Sound VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 80)
• Ethernet 10/100 with PXE: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 116).
• Video VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] integrated CastleRock^? graphics (rev 3).
• Two USB ports on back and two more USB ports on front
• One PCI expantion slot requires a PCI riser card adaptor

This unit boots fast but has a video problem if XSERVER is auto, recommend XSERVER = vesa. You can select shared video RAM of 8, 16 or 32 MB.

Unknown early Capio

According to this post, it works, with some additonal parameters.

• XSERVER = "vesa"
• SMODULE_01 = "sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1"

EON

The Eon's can take either normal PC133 RAM or laptop RAM. One of these is required as it does not have any RAM on the motherboard. The PCI/ISA is a shared space port. There is both an ISA bus and a PCI bus but only room for one or the other, you cannot use both. The possition of the RAM slot may cause problems trying to use a PCI/ISA card because of the location.

Picture

Features

• CPU 300MHz National Semiconductor Geode GXI x86 (i386 compatable)
• Sound: Mic In, Line Out, Headphone Out
• Parallel port DB25
• Two Serial ports DB9
• RTL Ethernet 10/100
• VGA
• Two USB 1.0 ports on back
• PS/2 keyboard &mouse
• Shared PCI/ISA slot
• On-board IDE port
• On-board DOC DIP socket
• Max RAM 256MB

Roy Souther tested these modeles and known to work well with PXE EON4000, EON3000 & EON2000. From reading the spec sheets all EON modeles have the same on-board features, chip sets and CPU features. The differences seem to be with the RAM and DOC options the unit was shipped with.

Untested but presumed to work with LTSP via PXE EON5000 & EON6000.

When purchasing used units they may come with 8MB DOC DIP or a larger DOM.

• Pros
  • Eon's take a standard PC power cord
  • PCI/ISA slot for expansion (eg video card)
• Cons
  • Slow graphics
  • Front power button and face plate break easy

This thread mentions that 64MB of memory might be a minimum for this box to work, unless the use swap option is specified in lts.conf to add swap memory to these terminals.

Neoware 200 Pro 23M

On the user list Roy Souther reported "Avoid the 200 Pro, I have two of them and they do not have PXE and I have not found anyway to install a working etherboot. I don't think they will work well as a terminal but with some effort they could be made to work as an LPT printer node."

Appears to have Mic In, Headphones Out, Parallel, Serial, Ethernet, VGA, PS/2 keyboard/mouse and PC card slot. 1 memory slot.

BIOS Settings

Hit shift-F10 right after the initial Neoware splash screen goes away to get into the bios setup. Enable PXE boot and set Boot Order Int19h.

Many Neoware systems are password protected in the BIOS and this cannot be reset by a jumper or removing the BIOS battery. We phoned Neoware and the very nice people there told us that the password was "DOGBITES" in all uppercase letters."

-- RobertStory - 05 Jun 2007

-- LinuxGuru - 05 Jun 2007