Project Tablet: Reusing the RTAB910 Tablet PC
The RM RTAB910 Tablet is actually a Tatung TTAB-910e, rebadged and resold by Research Machines in the UK to educational establishments somewhere around 2003. They’re now turning up all over ebay as they reach the end of their useful school lifetimes, and I was lucky enough to pick one up for £70.
I’d been looking for something tablet-ey for roaming ebook/browser use, but the normal price for a Tablet PC is around £1000, with the only real budget option being the £350 Fizzbook Spin. I couldn’t afford either, so was saving for the Fizzbook when it struck me that I don’t really need a brand new one, and something second-hand and lower-spec would do just fine.
I say lower-spec, but compared to modern Netbooks a P866 processor and 256MB of RAM running Windows XP and Office 2003 at a half-decent speed really isn’t that bad – and I thought was pretty amazing for the price. All I really need is something with a decent-sized display thats capable of acting as a thin client into my wireless network so I can stream movies, or read ebooks, or surf the net. Then once I noticed the amount of these things being sold, I figured others might like a little how-to guide on turning these into productive members of society.
I made sure I picked a seller with a decently-high rating, and who had sold a few tablets recently with positive feedback, to limit the chances of being stuck with something unusable. Even so, I was expecting to have to maybe replace the HDD for the price it was listed or do some other work, but was pleasantly surprised when it arrived in full working order (and even a battery charge).
Specifications
866Mhz Processor
256MB Memory
20GB HDD
2x USB 1.0 Ports
Built-in Wifi
Onboard Intel Network Adaptor
Onboard Intel Graphics
- This is for the RTAB910-S01 “Student” version that I have. There was also an RTAB910-T01 “Teacher” tablet which added a fingerprint sensor for security plus a PCMCIA slot, which theoretically would be useful for adding in a PCMCIA-to-USB2.0 card.
Step 1 – Booting
The RTAB910 has no drives, so to install a new OS you’re going to need to either plug in an external USB CD/Floppy drive, or install boot files onto a USB stick. I used Hiren’s Boot CD, and followed the instructions for putting it on a memory stick. Then its just a matter of using the “Universal TCP/IP Network” option from there to map to boot into DOS with a mapped network drive – I’d rather do this than be limited to the speed of the USB 1.0 ports, plus I had no idea where my external USB drive caddy was anyway.
I took the opportunity here to clone the hard drive, which had arrived with a nice working install of Windows XP Tablet Edition plus Office 2003. My plan was to wipe the drive and install Ubuntu Linux onto the tablet. Normally I’d have chosen Debian but I recently found Ubuntu was better for quick and simple installs without having to mess around downloading essential functionality seperately.
One of the first issues I ran into is that Samba by default doesn’t accept LanMan authentication any more – see http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2008-September/061363.html for details on turning this back on.
That problem solved, the machine ghosted happily over the network, so I can put it back to a near-factory state in the future if I decide to. Or if this project doesn’t work out.
To be continued…
Hey there,
I managed to get hold of a 900mhz RTab910-T01 with docking station plus a few other accessories: stylus, mouse, usb keyboard etc. about a year and a half or so ago..
I soon got annoyed with how slow XP was on it (especially after installing SP3), so back in June/July this year I had a very similar idea to yourself!
I’ve upgraded the RAM to 768Mb, replaced the old 20Gb/Windows XP hard drive with a 150gb drive and installed Ubuntu 9.04 on there. Initially just the default install of ubuntu, but I’ve inevitably added/installed loads extra bits (Blender, Wings, CodeBlocks etc..)
From the outseet, I’ve had no problems with the wireless networking or security (it connects fine with WEP/WPA). Everything just works…Well, almost everything!
The only minor annoyance is the intel graphics driver problem in 9.04, which I’ve taken steps to partially fix (upgraded the Kernel and some other bleeding edge bits I found on the net).
The system is more stable than it was before, video works ok without crashing like it did, but some GL programs (most notably and disappointingly Blender and Wings3D) are still pretty much unusable, which is a shame!
Other than the GFX problems, the tablet runs really well on Ubuntu!
Going back to the partially resolved Intel GFX issue. I’m half thinking of perhaps creating a custom version of 8.10 (with Blender installed) and sticking it onto a USB stick to see how the tablet performs when booted from the USB!
If Blender runs ok and the rest of the system (WiFi etc) runs smoothly, then I might consider downgrading the system to Ubuntu 8.10 and then wait until the Intel graphics problem has been completely resolved before upgrading again!
Cheers for now,
Jas.
I recently got one of these (labelled RM RTAB910-T02). It came with a 30GB HDD, 256 RAM, Wifi etc. and I’ve upped the RAM to 768. I found your page when searching for ways to get a linux distro onto the tablet. I mainly use it for looking up TV programs on the internet, e-mailing from my armchair and for sucking recordings off my PVR (Topfield TF5800). I’d be interested if you have got any further forward with this. Saw this site – http://tuxmobil.org/tatung_ttab_b12d.html – which might help with any pen problems.
Hi Ian – I’m still working on and off with this, next step is to try out the new Ubuntu 9.10 distro and see if that fixes my graphics corruption issues. If not, it’ll be a case of trying 8.10 as Jason has suggested
I have an external 5.25″ USB HDD case left over from my old media center project, and I keep meaning to try stuffing a DVD drive in there to make installs easier (I’m installing Ubuntu from a memory stick atm)