Free Mailstation - modification challenge

[fred the owl]

I recently picked up an earthlink mailstation at officemax for the
sweet price of $30, with a $30 mail in rebate. The thing is pretty
snazy, with a fat monochrome LCD, and a compact keyboard. The problem
is, all it is good for is sending email, and to do that you have to
sign up with earthlink.

My challenge is this: is it possible to modify it to make it useful?
They are free, so everyone pick one up and start experimenting! im not
very skilled with this sort of thing, but one idea i has was: use the
current lcd controller and screen, and the keyboard, but remove the
rest of the circuitry and use like a z80 processor or something and
basically have a z80 powered laptop. think of the potential, add a
pcmcia interface, an IDE bus; i don't know how plausible this is, but
the freaking things are FREE so it would be sweet to make something
useful out of em. btw, if they arent free in your area, i wouldnt
spend any money on em. wait till they go on sale, itll happen

 

[Wud]

you'd probably be better off trying to write some kind of code that will
fool the earthstation into thinking its communicating with earthlink, but
infact pulling your actual email account... i used to sell these things,
they would be cool if it wasnt for the only for earthlink problem


"fred the owl" <owlsoft99@excite.com> wrote in message
news:bd73884f.0310311524.3d828b89@posting.google.com...

I recently picked up an earthlink mailstation at officemax for the
sweet price of $30, with a $30 mail in rebate. The thing is pretty
snazy, with a fat monochrome LCD, and a compact keyboard. The problem
is, all it is good for is sending email, and to do that you have to
sign up with earthlink.

My challenge is this: is it possible to modify it to make it useful?
They are free, so everyone pick one up and start experimenting! im not
very skilled with this sort of thing, but one idea i has was: use the
current lcd controller and screen, and the keyboard, but remove the
rest of the circuitry and use like a z80 processor or something and
basically have a z80 powered laptop. think of the potential, add a
pcmcia interface, an IDE bus; i don't know how plausible this is, but
the freaking things are FREE so it would be sweet to make something
useful out of em. btw, if they arent free in your area, i wouldnt
spend any money on em. wait till they go on sale, itll happen

 

[A. Walsh]

perhaps check on the slashdot website (http://slashdot.org)
There have been write-ups/postings about all sorts of 'hacks' along
these lines. There are also writings about many other topics
(Slashdot = "News for nerds. stuff that matters").
Best luck with your mod.

owlsoft99@excite.com (fred the owl) wrote in message news:<bd73884f.0310311524.3d828b89@posting.google.com>...

I recently picked up an earthlink mailstation at officemax for the
sweet price of $30, with a $30 mail in rebate. The thing is pretty
snazy, with a fat monochrome LCD, and a compact keyboard. The problem
is, all it is good for is sending email, and to do that you have to
sign up with earthlink.

My challenge is this: is it possible to modify it to make it useful?
They are free, so everyone pick one up and start experimenting! im not
very skilled with this sort of thing, but one idea i has was: use the
current lcd controller and screen, and the keyboard, but remove the
rest of the circuitry and use like a z80 processor or something and
basically have a z80 powered laptop. think of the potential, add a
pcmcia interface, an IDE bus; i don't know how plausible this is, but
the freaking things are FREE so it would be sweet to make something
useful out of em. btw, if they arent free in your area, i wouldnt
spend any money on em. wait till they go on sale, itll happen

 

[FinePC]

I have a mailstation and was planning a mod. I want to connect the kbd. to
my PC. I got the thing opened, and noticed that there was nothing standard
in there. I am assuming that this is not a simple matter of addapting the
kbd to the electrinics from a full sized kbd.

Any pointers, ya'll?

tia,everybody!

 

[FinePC]

Accually, whom ever sends me five bucks first can have the rest of the
MailStation.

email me at micapfine at juno dot com

 

[Lenroc]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 07:08:21 -0700, FinePC wrote:

Accually, whom ever sends me five bucks first can have the rest of the
MailStation.

I saw them new for $10 before $10MIR at CompUSA...

--
Lenroc