Artifact Details

Title

System Unit

Catalog Number

102807561

Type

Physical Object

Description

Object is the system unit for a "New Internet Computer" system. It consists of a black metal box standing erect on two detachable plastic feet. On the front is an illuminated reset button, an illuminated power on/off button, and a CD-ROM drive tray. On the back is a variety of connectors including, an RJ-45 plug with a LAN icon, two RJ-45 plugs with a telephone icon; a DB-15 plug for the signal cable from the linked monitor; two USB-A ports; mini-DIN ports for the linked keyboard and mouse cables; three audio ports, and a 2-row DB-15 port.

Refer to the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Internet_Computer) which says in part that it "was a Linux-based internet appliance released July 6, 2000 by Larry Ellison's and Gina Smith's New Internet Computer Company. The system (without a monitor) sold for US$199.... The NIC boots from a CD-ROM with a custom Linux distribution developed by Wim Coekaerts. It has no hard drive and no way to install additional software."

As received the device had a disc in the CD-ROM drive, but it was not an official boot disk, rather a writeable CD on which was hand-written "HUSH 3.0" and "02/04/02". This disc has been sent to archives.

Refer also to a Linux Journal article which describes the device in great detail (https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4475) which says in part, "At $199 for a main box, speakers, keyboard and mouse, the NIC provides a surprising host of features. A color-matched $129 15-inch monitor is optional. Perhaps the best feature of all is that the NIC runs Linux! All the software you need to start surfing the Web is included on a bootable CD-ROM that sports a Linux 2.2.15 kernel, Netscape Navigator, and connection software for dial-up ISPs, DSL, cable modems or an internal network. ... The NIC is a single-board computer sporting a 266MHz Cyrix CPU, 64MB RAM and a CD-ROM drive. The front of the unit sports a power and reset button. On the back, you'll find two USB ports, two PS/2 ports for the NIC keyboard and mouse, a video out connector for a monitor, an RJ-45 jack for built-in 10MBps Ethernet, two RJ-11 jacks for the NIC's built-in 56K modem and a (curiously) nonfunctional joystick port."