Chucks Blog

Comment from David
Time May 31, 2009 at 3:03 PM

I bought the same tablet off ebay from the same dealer and it comes with a power adapter and battery but no HDD, is yours working ok? I haven’t received mine yet and i was wondering what kind of hard drive it took , i have various laptop hard drives, they all have the little pins for connectors, I think those are IDE, what kind are you using. Also i found that there are 3 different models of these and all of them have different ports, what ports do you have on yours?

Comment from chuck
Time May 31, 2009 at 3:20 PM

@David: The two I have work great, though I’ve only fiddled with the BIOS and such so far because I currently don’t have a spare hard drive to boot from. And as far as I know they just use a plain IDE laptop drive since their slightly older model tablets. Mine has a docking port in the back, and two USB ports + a charger port on the side.

What are the specifications you know so far about yours? Chances are yours is the same as mine, but you may have a slight lottery on whether the screen is designed for outdoor or indoor viewing. (I have one of both)

Also the dealer sent them in nice cosmetic condition; there isn’t a single scratch on the screen. Case is a little yellowed, but that’s to be expected with their age.

Comment from David
Time June 1, 2009 at 8:13 AM

I know that mine comes with a charger, has a hard drive connector and has been tested, I am not sure about the battery because the seller said the person or company he got these tablets from told him that 5 of them had batteries but he found that 3 of the 5 didn’t. I’m not sure about wether the screen is designed for indoor or outdoor viewing, it wasn’t specified. I don’t really mind which kind of screen it comes with but i would like it to have an outdoor viewable one. I have heard the outdoor viewable takes some getting used to. Oh, almost forgot, the description also said there were 2 card slots on the motherboard, is this true for yours? If so are they PCMCIA slots? I will let you know what specs mine is when I get it. There is a guide somewhere on the internet about a de-yellower substance you can make, it’s supposed to work really well.

Comment from chuck
Time June 1, 2009 at 2:44 PM

@David: He legally can’t advertise a battery and not send one, so chances are you’ll get one. The battery’s I have charge, but I don’t know yet how long they hold the charge for. And the outdoor viewable is just like a slightly tinted screen, so its not too hard to get used to.

I haven’t opened it up yet, but according to the description and all the info I could find on the tablets there are some internal PCMCIA slots. I’m not exactly sure how many, but at a minimum there’s one. The only thing that confuses me is whether internal PCMCIA are any different from a normal PCMCIA card. When I do open the case up I’ll snap some pictures and post them up here. (It’ll be a new post on the blog, but I’ll link to it from this one)

And cool, I think I’ve heard about that actually. But I’m expecting my tablet will end up yellowing from all the sun I get here, so I think I’m just going to leave mine yellowish tinted and save myself the effort.

Comment from Harold
Time June 8, 2009 at 12:19 PM

I just got a couple of these today (also from eBay). The two that I have have different sized posts in their power jacks. I got one to POST fine with a 12 volt adapter from my wireless router. I had a vertical green line in the display of the one that I tested. did anyone else see this? I have yet to swap the power adapters to test the other.

Comment from David
Time June 8, 2009 at 1:26 PM

Hey, I haven’t received my tablet yet but I think it will be here soon. I want to install win 2k pro but i cant seem to find any generic tablet pc drivers for win 2k. I’m worried about screen calibration mainly but having other tablet pc utilities would be nice. Are there any suggestions that you have for software that I might need? I’m really good when it comes to computers, hard ware, and operating systems but this is my first tablet pc (it will also be the first one i have ever used at all) and I have no idea about the specific drivers that i will need. Linux is also an option if you have any suggestions on it. BTW I think we should make youtube videos on these.
Thanks for all your help.

Comment from chuck
Time June 8, 2009 at 9:23 PM

@Harold: I haven’t had a green line across either of mine, so I’m assuming that your screen has a loose connector to the motherboard, or is somehow damaged. It’s also good to hear that you managed to get it POST with a 12v adapter. Out of curiosity what amperage is the adapter?

@David: I don’t know exactly what software is available for win 2k, but if you install it and it doesn’t work on its own then just upgrade to XP. Then it should definitely have drivers. Failing that Ubuntu would be a great choice, especially since the tablets are running on an older PIII processor. Also no problem, and I’ll see if I can manage to throw together a quick take-apart guide for youtube if you like.

And I recently opened up one of the tablets and explored a bit. I think I fried the motherboard on one of mine with my experiment (The seller says he might have a few spare motherboards, so no loss), but I got a bit of insight to the general layout of the innards. I also have a few pictures (albeit, slightly low quality) that I’ll upload when I get back from vacation. If you have any questions on the layout in the meantime feel free to ask, I’m pretty sure I can provide an answer.

Comment from Harold
Time June 8, 2009 at 11:28 PM

The adapter I used was also a 1Amp adapter. I did some more troubleshooting and found out that it was a defect in the screen. The seller was kind enough to agree to ship me a replacement screen, so it looks like I’ll be taking the whole front assembly apart soon.

Comment from David
Time June 9, 2009 at 9:39 AM

Got mine yesterday, used a 12 volt 2 amp adapter and it worked fine. I didn’t receive a battery with mine but I’m not worried about that because i figure I’ll hack one together myself. Do either of you have a battery that you could read the information off of and post it here? I’m a little worried though because i entered the bios settings and had to use a usb mouse to navigate with. Does this mean the touch screen is broken? I have taken apart the entire unit about 15 times (no joke) because you have to so you can put a hard drive in, (I have laptop hard drives that work) i installed a fresh install of windows 2000 from another comp and put the hard drive in and it was booting fine when I got the blue screen with a message saying inaccessible boot device, I have had this problem on an x20 ibm with no cd-rom and no floppy. I tried an install of tiny xp and it bluescreened and gave the message of windows has halted to prevent damage to your computer. I am going to try 98 just so i can play with it until I get home where I will install ubuntu 8.04. I will make a you tube vid if my camera will work right, and if you want I will take some pics and post them here. I have no idea what kind of screen mine has (outdoor/indoor), it has 2 pcmcia slots on the mother board, 2 usb ports, and an infrared port. My DC in jack has one of the larger center posts. My screen is fine except for the questionable touch panel. I also disconnected that speaker from the motherboard because everytime i turned it on it made about 10 really loud beeps. Sorry about the random rambling, If you have any tips or suggestions I’d definitely like to hear them. Have you figured out how to get the docking connector properly re-seated on the motherboard, that seems to be the hardest thing to do.

Comment from David
Time June 10, 2009 at 6:29 AM

I have gotten xubuntu 8.04 onto the tablet and it boots fine, but I have to use an external mouse because it doesn’t recognize the touch screen. I think the touch screen not working is due to lack of software drivers because all the cabling looks good. I am going to get a usb keyboard today and try to install win 2k by multipartitioning a hard drive then loading the contents of the cd onto one partition and sys’ing the other. The error I was getting in win 2000 about the invalid boot device was due to a motherboard swap with the motherboards having 2 different hard drive controllers. I love the clarity and detail of the screen, I was supprised how good it looked in comparison to my other laptops with 800×600 res screens. There is just one other thing that I am a little concerned about, heat dispersion. The unit gets kind of hot when it is on for just a little while so for me overheating may be an issue. I also fixed the inverter for the backlight, I had the case partially open testing out a drive and thought I smelled something burning so I looked inside and the inverter had a couple of loose contacts on the transformer/inductor and electricity was arcing between the contact and the board, a little solder fixed that problem, have you or Harold had any luck?

Comment from David
Time June 10, 2009 at 1:01 PM

YES!!!, I got windows 2k pro onto the tablet, I installed it on a laptop and before I switched the drive I changed the IDE controller driver in the device manager to a standard dual channel IDE controller and it worked. The device manager is showing my usb mouse and keyboard and a generic HID compliant device, I think that is the touchscreen but I have yet to find a driver. I have pictures that I will post when I get them downloaded.

Comment from David
Time June 10, 2009 at 9:41 PM

I got the touch screen to work, it takes microtouch drivers, just google for them, if you have any trouble I will help the best I can. It doesn’t work all that great but I think that it is because of it only having a 3 point calibration system. If needed I can post the drivers here I think or link you to them.

Comment from Harold
Time June 10, 2009 at 10:40 PM

I got a stripped down version of XP booting. Unfortunately, USB is not working for me on first boot. I’m going to pull the drive and install the microtouch driver so that i can at least interact with the tablet. David, would you be so kind as to look in your device manager and see what the USB controller is so that I can try to find a driver? I fear that one shortcomings of a stripped down XP install is that I didn’t get a lot of the prepackaged drivers.

Comment from David
Time June 11, 2009 at 9:01 AM

Here is what shows up under usb in the device manager, Generic USB hub, Intel 82371 AB/EB PCI to USB Host Controller, USB Root Hub. http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/3MTouchSystems/TS/CustomerSupport/TouchDrivers/ Select your Operating system from the drop down box, the first one, the others are older. it should say MT 7.12 Build 6. this includes the calibration tool and utilities. My touch screen doesn’t work all that great but I think it’s partly due to bad calibration and partly because it’s a serial touch screen and not a digitizer or pen based panel. I need the multimedia audio controller driver because it is showing up as unknown. How exactly did you get xp on your tablet, I tried putting a super stripped down version of tiny xp on mine but every time I boot it stops short with the error of windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your system and I know for a fact that that version will run on it because I ran it on a celeron 266 mhz 64mb ram config and a 192 mb ram config and it actually ran decent. The over heating issue I was having was due to xubuntu, It was running the processor at 65% when it was idling. you might need to install better graphics drivers because mine will run 32 bit true color. You could create a folder on the xp desktop and download a generic driver package and save it in that folder, that way you colld load them onto your tablet.

Comment from Harold
Time June 13, 2009 at 12:51 AM

I had an ISO sitting around and just burned that and installed it. it booted, but I still can’t get a keyboard or mouse working. I tried switching the USB host controller driver in another computer, but that didn’t work. Every time it boots I get an Add Hardware Wizard window prompting me to install an unknown device, but since I have no input devices working it just sits there.

Comment from Harold
Time June 16, 2009 at 11:50 AM

I did finally get USB functioning, but it required a clean install. This time, I used a win98 boot disk format the drive and put some DOS system files on it so that it would boot on it’s own. Then I copied the contents of the windows CD into a folder on the drive. Once I had a bootable drive with the contents of the windows CD on it, I put it back in the tablet. Running the WINNT executable from the I386 directory from the hard drive the install started. smooth sailing from there.

Comment from David
Time June 17, 2009 at 3:32 PM

Mine has been running ok, there are a few quirks with it like when I browse the internet with it, it will sometimes just randomly cut off, I have tried downloading a file with it and at the end of the download right before the box goes away the machine cuts off. I’m wondering if it is causing my power supply to peak and temporarily shut down and since I don’t have a battery it can’t sustain it’s self. Is your touch screen working ok? I have to press hard in some places and light in others. Maybe I will try to get xp on it again.

Comment from chuck
Time June 17, 2009 at 8:57 PM

Wow, you guys have made alot of progress since the last time I’ve been online… So much so that it’s hard for me to find the questions you had before. Just ask me again if I missed the question…

So far I’m prepping to install Windows 2000 onto the tablet, so your far ahead of me. By the looks of it a good portion of the tablets use different USB and IDE controllers, so that could make things interesting. I think my touch-screens work fine; they look brand new.

Also for reseating the docking connector: I find its easiest to just remove it from the back by unscrewing it and putting it aside when your fiddling inside the case, then placing it back on when every things hooked back up. I made the speaker stop beeping every boot by simply saving the BIOS settings, since I figured it was just like most older PC’s. You could probably add some new thermal grease to the processor heatsink that connects to the case to reduce any thermal problems, i’m sure the grease there right now is a little stale.

And I can host photos and videos you guys may have of the tablets if you need; I barely use my bandwidth allocation 1% every month.

Comment from David
Time June 18, 2009 at 11:07 AM

Chuck, could you post the specs of your battery here and also if you could, post the battery pin out or at least the positive and negative side and how they correspond to the pins on the board. If you install a fresh installation of win 2000 onto a hard drive from another laptop, change the ide controller to the standard dual channel pci ide controller, that is how I got mine to work.

My touch screen works pretty good now, I used the manual 25 point calibration to align it really well. Still there is what I call a dead zone on it (you have to press kind of hard or it wont recognize your touch), handwritten text (not handwriting recognition) doesn’t work really well on it, and I find that I have a hard time using the onscreen keyboard but maybe that is because I’m using the one that comes with every version of windows.
My audio controller shows up as an unknown device and I have let windows try to find drivers for it but it can’t. I thought that this wouldn’t bother me because I have a usb sound card, however when I plug it in the found new hardware wizzard keeps running in a loop installing the hardware and then prompting me to install it again, it isn’t giving me any errors. I know for a fact that the sound card is functioning and has been used on computers with less power. I have plugged it in and clicked cancel then went to the device manager to install it but the device manager is also in a loop, it does the thing like when you unplug or add a device while it is open the whole list will disappear and then reappear.
It has its glitches but it is a good tablet for its age and I’m not completely done fixing it up yet.

Pingback from More information on the Xplore Genesys II | Chucks Blog
Time June 18, 2009 at 7:04 PM

[...] My previous post about the Xplore Genesys II gathered a plethora of comments (Not to mention page-views!), many of which described the troubles of this tablet. While I have not made very much progress with the tablet so far, those commentors have, and described how they achieved it. [...]

Comment from chuck
Time June 18, 2009 at 7:06 PM

@David: See the new blog post linked in the above ping-back for some pictures of the battery. It’s unfortunately all I can offer to help with when it comes to the battery.

Comment from David
Time June 21, 2009 at 12:18 PM

I found out why my tablet was cutting off. The power supply that I had apparently didn’t have the power to run it, It kept reaching its peak output and then shutting down for a second. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I had a battery but since I don’t, I had to find another solution. I found an old 250 watt computer power supply that I had lying around and hooked the tablet in to that, It runs great now.

Comment from chuck
Time June 21, 2009 at 2:18 PM

@David: Isn’t that a bit bulky to carry around? I’d think a universal laptop power supply would work great. Also you may be able to contact the company that made the battery; I’m sure the phone # is in the picture of the battery I uploaded.

Comment from Bill
Time June 28, 2009 at 9:20 AM

I bought a couple of these from ebay also. Here’s what I know, and have accomplished. I have a stripped down version of XP on one and it works fine. Put in a 256meg sodimm and removed the 128meg. I put a compact flash drive into an adapter that hooks up to a laptop ide cable. Stuck it into an old dell laptop and installed the stripped down XP on it. transfered it back to the Genesys and booted it up. Lots of new hardware found and installed the drivers for it automatically. I had a usb mouse and keyboard hooked up at the time. Everything is now installed using a usb flash drive. Downloaded microtouch touch screen driver from 3M and installed it, works fine. Installed INav IGuidance GPS navigation software on it as well as the driver for my usb gps unit. (Holux GR-213) Works fine except sound. Got an old usb wireless adapter and installed the drivers so now there is internet access. Installed an OBD II program as well as the driver for my OBD II adapter so now I can read codes and info from my car. This will be mainly used in my car. I downloaded VLC media player and it works fine for playing movies from a flash drive, but again there is no sound. Next step is to either try to figure out which of the pins on the dock connector are for sound or buy a cheap usb sound card and use that for sound. You can get them for less than $5.00 from DealExtreme.com (shipped from China, but they are a good company, and ship fast).I’d prefer to figure out the dock pins since I don’t need another USB device hanging off of it. No mouse or keyboard used when in the car. I’m a diehard linux guy, but there isn’t a good gps mav program for linux so I was forced to use windows on that machine. My other one has Linux Mint XFCE running on it. I have not got around to putting the touchscreen drivers on it yet. someday when I get time. If your USB keyboard and mouse don’t work, remove the CMOS battery and reinstall. When you boot it up it will beep about 10 times then hit F2 to enter the config utility. setup the time and and date. make sure “legacy USB” is checked.
make sure you save the configuration and it should work from then on.

Comment from chuck
Time June 29, 2009 at 6:03 PM

Interesting, using it as a Carputer sounds like a great idea.

Your best bet is probably just to try and find an old car docking station for the tablet if you want sound in the car, since their built for it. I saw one on eBay about a month ago…

Comment from Adam
Time July 10, 2009 at 10:21 AM

I got one of these, but I can’t calibrate my touch screen. When I do the calibration test, it says that I did not press the calibration points in the right order. When I touch the screen it seems that the touch is mirrored to the opposite side of the screen along a diagonal from bottom left to lower right. anyone have any troubleshooting advice?

Comment from David
Time July 14, 2009 at 7:58 AM

Adam, I assume you are using the micro-touch driver, if so open the control panel (not the calibration shortcut) and click on the tabs until you find a check box or setting that allows you to do a manual linearization and then go to the advanced settings tab and you should be able to perform the linearization. This consists of touching 25 points in order as they appear on the screen and it will set the controller to what you touch, it then allows you to test the screen’s accuracy. I am doing this from memory so some of how to get the function enabled might be wrong, If you need a better guide just let me know and i’ll get the exact info on it. Also if this dosent work you could try resetting the controller there is an option for that in the utility also.

Comment from Bill
Time July 19, 2009 at 11:39 AM

chuck wrote
>Your best bet is probably just to try and find an old car docking station for the tablet if you want sound in the car, since >their built for it. I saw one on eBay about a month ago…

I’ve been looking for a docking station but have not found anything yet. If you see one let me know.

Comment from chuck
Time July 26, 2009 at 6:04 PM

This tablet uses microtouch drivers, right? If so, then maybe, just maybe the following link may provide the instructions needed for enabling the touch-screen on Ubuntu:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/success-3m-microtouch-touchscreen-in-ubuntu-583400/

I haven’t tested this, but maybe someone could confirm/deny for me?

Comment from joe_tim13
Time September 11, 2009 at 4:21 AM

Hi Guy’s . i’m looking for U all my life. I’m joe from Romania (EastEurope) and hawe a few problems with my Genesys.
Maybe i get help from U? Evrything work’s fine and then….my Hdd crashes. Instaled win2k on a new 10Gb Hdd, but….my touchscreen dos’t work at all.(i tried so far a lot of microtouch drivers…but nothing seems to work) maybe i must do somthing in my Bios?

Comment from chuck
Time September 11, 2009 at 9:55 AM

Hi there joe,

If your having a problem with the touchscreen after a hd crash, its probably being caused by an OS problem, and not a BIOS one. Check and see if there are any unconfigured devices on the machine, And then check for any loose wires or such that attach to the screen. You may have accidentally pulled one out while replacing the hard drive.

Comment from joe_tim13
Time September 24, 2009 at 6:51 AM

hi there….for all thei wanna buy a dockingstation for genesys2 , i foundit here:http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200377615852&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT . have a nice day all of U.

Comment from greg
Time September 30, 2009 at 12:19 PM

Hi All,

I purchased two of these quite a while back. I fried 2 motherboards and a ballast before putting them away for a while. Since finding this site I’ve been successful in loading one with XP. Ican not find anything that will make the touchscreen work or be recognised. I have found old literature that says they were originally equiped with CIC 2.04 which was also used on Fujitsu pen tabs. I have a Ghost image of the XP install I’d be willing to share if anybody is interested. I did have a hell of a time getting xp to install from the hard drive. I’ve contacted Xplore and Stratix both of whom say that they no longer support them to see if they still had drivers. They have my email and said they’d see what they could find. That was it. Origionally Startix wanted $100.00 to install Win 2000 on the drive with the drivers. Now no longer supported.

Comment from joe
Time September 30, 2009 at 12:31 PM

hi all of U. i solved the problem,work’s fine with xp tablet edition. touch drivers from 3M, garmin mobile PC, vag com 409.1, bs player ,winamp-tablet skin… also find an audio output.(i hawe send some pictures to Chuck and somethime when is not so wery busy i’m sure it will post the pictures here.) now, the next chalenge is to repair the batery pack .

Comment from christopher henneck
Time October 3, 2009 at 1:48 PM

Hello all, im chris and i ran across this busy forum(thanks chuck!) I have tons of parts for these (GI,GII and the 12.1 GII maximus)i am very knowledgble about them i even have literature about them from xplore. How i got tons of this was i had a friend who was working there about 6 or 7 yrs ago, i was into computers and they were moving locations of business here in austin,TX. Any who my bud called and said they were gonna trash about 100 systems and accessories and would i like to have them .UUUUUUUUUUmmmmm yeahhh..i get there and there are about little over a 100 complete units , but the gold mine was all the accessories there. i.e. hard drives, memory , screens ,mobos,battries . you name it and it was in the 2 truck loads i hauled to my house. well if any 1 needs a question answered or a part for these (chuck gets first dibs,sorry guys) get a hold of me.! Crazy ass story but funn its been. sincerely C

Comment from Bill
Time October 3, 2009 at 7:27 PM

I could use a couple of batteries and a couple of 256 meg sodimms if you have them, How much? email me directly at wscalione at nc dot rr dot com

Comment from greg
Time October 5, 2009 at 2:37 PM

Hi Christopher,
Would you be interested in selling a Maximus?

Comment from Greg
Time October 18, 2009 at 10:01 AM

Just bought another. This unit has a different monitor,touchscreen, and touchscreen controller installed. They also hard wired a gps module internally. I’m still trying to get the gps working. When I do I’ll post board connector detail.

Comment from David
Time October 18, 2009 at 12:05 PM

It’s been a while since I last posted, got busy with college and work, I am now using a 16V 3 amp adaptor I think because it cuts off with 12v and I couldn’t figure out why. I still have windows 2000 pro installed on it and have tried to install windows xp from the hard drive on multiple computers but always end up with the ntldr is missing error or the your comp. has been shut down to prevent damage… etc. If anyone who has successfully installed xp on the tablet could tell me how to in a post or could give me a link to instructions (I have googled already but the steps i follow don’t want to work for some reason) I would greatly appreciate it. I also would like to know how to tell if my touch screen is broken, I do have the drivers, I had opened it up and gotten the model number that is how i found that they took microtouch drivers. i have done the linearization and calibrated it several times but it is still somewhat unresponsive and doesn’t want to recognize touch very well. it appears to be a serial interface on the board. the ribbon cable and controller cables appear to be in great condition i have checked them and made sure they were seated correctly.

Joe- If you work on the battery pack could you link me the pinnout of the battery connector or the motherboard battery connector, i would like to try making my own but don’t want to fry anything. And did xp tablet edition fix the screen responsiveness?

To everyone thanks for your time and help.

Comment from Greg
Time October 18, 2009 at 5:41 PM

If you have Windows 2000 installed can’t you install xp from usb external cd? I installed from hard drive using dos 7.1 and i386 file from install cd. I also have hard drive images you can load from hard drive enclosure.

Comment from David
Time October 19, 2009 at 11:10 PM

Greg- I could get an external cd rom working under win 2k and i happen to have one but it can’t be booted from, I have tried booting from it on other computers and it won’t even show up, it doesn’t have that capability. I have tiny xp, might could get tablet edition, I will give the install from hard drive thing another shot, have only ever gotten it to work with 98 due to the new ntldr thing and the invalid boot device and so on. I would just like to get that touch panel working properly and if win xp tablet will do it then i’ll put that on the machine. I am unfamiliar with hard drive images, can they be loaded and installed from within windows or do they have to be booted from.

Comment from Greg
Time October 22, 2009 at 10:10 AM

You should be able to update from windows 2k to XP without having to boot from cd. If you would like to load an image, you would need to load the hard drive from another computer running a program like Clone Genius using an external hard drive enclosure. I had success updating from Win 2k to xp and by loading from hard drive. If you’d like the image file, just let me know.

Comment from Greg
Time October 22, 2009 at 10:21 AM

Have a great working battery now. I opened up the pack and sent it off to one of my battery recyclers who rebuilds battery packs. They would not touch it because they are afraid to weld the lithium Ion cells. I had another laptop battery that I knew was good so I opened it up. They were the same cells. I rearranged them, removed three and soldered the charge controller using standard wire. Wrapped it with electrical tape and nearly had an explosion. I left it charging and found one of the cells was smoking hot. It was charged to 3.7 volts while the others were still at 1.5v.
I realized that I had soldered the charge controller with reverse polarity. What a jackass move. I replaced the “hot cell” and took the charge controller off of another battery, installed and charged. It took a full charge and powered the computer for over 2 hours with nothing turned off. I did some more reading and found that you should not mess with lithium ion cells, but I survived and just almost got hurt or killed. The cells used are 18650 3.7v lithium ion and can be found all over the net.

Comment from Luke
Time October 26, 2009 at 5:44 AM

We have been messing with a cousin to the GeneSys II for some time at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ramline510/. The systems are similar enough in specs that I’m not sure why Xplore was offering both models. But a lot of the same problems have already been solved for that one.

Comment from Luke
Time October 31, 2009 at 7:25 AM

I received a unit with the outdoor viewable screen. Are there any special requirements for RAM, or will any PC133 SODIM work? Is it true that they can take 512MB? I am asking because the RAMLINE has very specific requirements for the memory.

The problem I see thus far is that the unit is not very useful without the XPander dock. There is no audio out, no serial ports and I don’t see the point of putting a wifi card in when the case is metal. All you get is USB and IR. Of course the docks are selling for more than the tablets…

Comment from Luke
Time November 10, 2009 at 4:00 PM

I tried a 60GB drive and it doesn’t work, but normal laptop RAM (256) does work. I found a copy of the manual for this device and it gives the following specs:

• Intel Pentium III @ 500 MHz and 700 MHz processors
• 256 KB internal L2 pipeline burst cache
• 128 – 512 MB of DRAM, 3.3 V, self refreshing, low power DIMM
• Hard disk size 10, 20, 30 or 40G 2.5″ ultra DMA shock & vibration damped HDD

And it says wifi capable – I would like to find the card and antenna!

• 2x Type II or 2x Type III PC Card slots internal to the GeneSys II
• Performance-matched antennas and shielded cabling integrated for each
wireless technology

Comment from Luke
Time November 20, 2009 at 1:07 PM

I put in a 700Mhz PIII and it runs, but the BIOS claims 550MHz. I will have to look for jumpers.

I also have the xPander plus stainless steel dock now and will be trying that out once the OS is installed on this 30GB HDD.

I posted the owner’s manual and other documentation on the GeneSys II in the Ramline Yahoo group I mentioned above.

Comment from Bill
Time November 21, 2009 at 8:21 AM

Has anyone ever put a 512 Meg sodimm into a Genesys II. I’ve seen conflicting reports as to whether these max out at 256 or 512. It would be nice to get them up to 512.

I have 2 of them and have got a stripped down version of Windows XP on one of them and Linux with LXDE window manager on the other one. The linux one has only 128 meg but runs fine. I put an open source program called Garmon on it, which is an OBD II program (on board diagnostics for reading fault codes on cars). I have an adapter that plugs into the USB port and hooks to the OBD connector on the car. Wireless works on the linux box with an antique Microsoft usb WIFI adapter for downloading updates and such.

Touch screen works on both, but I find that you really need to write your own custom programs with big buttons to make it usable. It’s hard to hit just the right menu selections on most programs with such a small screen.

Christopher Henneck left a message on this blog a while back advertising a bunch of parts for sale, but did not reply to request for more info. Chris, you still around? I would like to get a battery or two if the price is right.

Bill

Comment from Luke
Time November 21, 2009 at 2:54 PM

In searching the wayback machine, I got the impression that the earlier versions only took 256MB and that later ones accepted both 512MB and 700MHz. If somebody gets results either way, they should list the mobo version and maybe BIOS version

I can’t find any jumpers or BIOS settings to change the clock speed. 550MHz must be 100MHz FSB x 5.5?

Comment from Luke
Time November 21, 2009 at 2:57 PM

Can somebody with a working touchscreen post their COM port settings?

I have 3 COM ports in the device manager, but I can’t get the touchscreen utility to read anything on any of them. I can’t find any IRQ conflicts. Touchscreen is COM 3?

Comment from Luke
Time November 21, 2009 at 11:05 PM

I can’t get the MT 7.16 driver to work, or the 3M SC3 driver to work. I’m worried because the MT 7.16 appears to detect the screen fine (shows COM 3 and a firware version). It might be reading the 3M daughter board, yet there is a problem with the cables or the touchscreen itself.

On the bright side, the dock works, the tablet gets power through it, the USB ports work and the PCMCIA network card is recognized.

Comment from Luke
Time November 22, 2009 at 6:07 AM

Regarding the thermal grease…
I didn’t like how hot the CPU heat spreader was getting. It seems like they were using 1/16″ or so of thermal paste to get the heat to the case. I made a copper shim to go between the aluminum spreader and the magnesium case and coated both sides with artic silver. Now the case gets hot much faster and the heat spreader is not as hot. Should be more stable.

Comment from Greg
Time November 23, 2009 at 12:42 PM

Just finished installing usb 2.0 pcmcia card. Wired directly to a mini 4 port usb hub, installed internally. Added bluetooth for connecting my bluetooth gps receiver, mouse and keyboard. Added wireless usb with external antenna. Reception is unbelievable. Running xp with BMW, VW, Mercedes diagnostic software. This machine is awesome for this use. Also have DeLorme Street Atlas, and Centrafuse installed.

Comment from Greg
Time November 23, 2009 at 12:44 PM

Forgot to add that I installed a usb sound card with two 3.5 audio jacks for speaker and mic.

Comment from Luke
Time November 25, 2009 at 3:05 PM

I suppose getting 550MHz out of P3 700 is inevitable since the mobo doesn’t support speedstep. I guess to get 700 would require an 850MHz processor, but I don’t know if the voltage (or thermals) is compatible. I haven’t found any info on modding to switch to the higher speed.

I think my touchscreen is dead because the system can talk to the microtouch controller board. I think the key to the 5-wire touch sensor is wire #3, which should show some resistive connection to each of the other 4 when the screen is touched. Mine shows open circuit on this wire all the time.

So now I have the HDD, CPU and RAM upgraded with the dock, all for a worthless tablet.

Also, a word of warning when handling the LCD. There is a very delicate coating on the top of the LCD that can not be touched or it is ruined.

Comment from Luke
Time February 1, 2010 at 9:56 PM

I got the tablet to run at 700MHz by putting in an 850MHz processor.

I tried another motherboard, another microtouch board and another screen, but I still can’t get the touch screen to work. The system does talk to the microtouch board (com goes down when it is removed).

Comment from Luke
Time February 9, 2010 at 6:03 AM

I put 512MB in and the BIOS detects it as 256MB. I’m not aware of any BIOS updates available anywhere. If GII tablets ever came with 512, it’s also possible that there was a motherboard revision. Both motherboards I have say GII Tablet version: 011

Comment from Greg
Time February 9, 2010 at 10:28 AM

Just bought an IX104RD from Xplore. It blows away my Gen 2. Has audio out, speakers,lighter,digitizer and touch,monitor out,internal mini pci, and was able to use a 250gb hdd. Best part is batteries are available.

Comment from Luke
Time February 11, 2010 at 12:34 PM

If anybody has a working touchscreen they can part out please let me know.

Comment from Luke
Time February 11, 2010 at 12:40 PM

I just realized that the GII and Genesys maximus are the same size. It looks like they share the same rubber bumpers, back case half and possibly the same motherboard. I’m guessing that the fronts (case + touchscreen + LCD) could be swapped between the two models.

Comment from Luke
Time February 11, 2010 at 1:05 PM

So does Chuck have an email address (from when he posted) for Mr. christopher henneck and his supposed pile of parts?

Comment from chuck
Time February 22, 2010 at 5:47 PM

Sure do, send an email to chuck AT xtarutaru.com and I’ll give you the email Christopher contacted me from. I never got a response from him though.

Comment from hunternet93
Time February 25, 2010 at 3:45 PM

I have had a couple of these for a couple months, and have thought they were dead. Being bored one day, I pulled one of them out of storage, and plugged it in to a universal adapter. I saw the green light come on! I installed Debian Linux from another computer onto a IDE hard drive using QEMU, stuffed it in the tablet, and got it to boot to BIOS. It now says something about the boot sector being corrupted. Could anyone tell me what I should do to fix this? I’m using grub as the bootloader, and it works from within QEMU. I can boot to BIOS and mess with settings. I don’t have a dock, so to CD or floppy . I’ll try ReactOS on it and see if that works or not.

Comment from hunternet93
Time February 25, 2010 at 4:09 PM

I installed ReactOS to the first partition of my HD, put the HD back in the Xplore, booted, and was greeted by the friendly interface of GRUB. I have no idea why it now works, I’m guessing the bootloader ReactOS uses made the tablet’s BIOS find GRUB or something… Now I have another problem. The power supply I’m using can only supply 12V, 1300 mA. Now at a random time during boot it dies. Time to buy a better power adapter I guess.

Comment from hunternet93
Time February 25, 2010 at 4:28 PM

Oh yeah, does anyone know if batteries for these can be found anywhere, or could be DIYed? I don’t have batteries unfortunately.

Comment from chuck
Time February 25, 2010 at 7:25 PM

From the sounds of it Greg DIYed one. I still haven’t found a reliable source for the batteries either, so the search continues. I really have to sum up the info in these comments in another post soon…

Anyway, by the sounds of it you need to do a complete reinstall on that hard drive in order to boot the tablet from it. Usually plugging it into a desktop with just a CD-ROM attached and installing the operating system from the ground up works.

Comment from hunternet93
Time February 25, 2010 at 10:13 PM

It now boots, but the universal power adapter evidently can’t supply enough power to it. If I turn the backlight to about 20% brightness it will usually allow me to login and mess with stuff, but it will shut down eventually. There is the possibility of a short or something inside the tablet, but I doubt it.

Comment from chuck
Time February 25, 2010 at 10:52 PM

I believe I used a 2amp adapter in order to get the tablet to boot and work properly. It may even have been a 2.5amp. I know 1amp failed rather quickly when I used it, so I believe your running into the same problem.

Comment from Bill
Time February 26, 2010 at 9:27 AM

I believe that originally they were designed to run on 17V or so but would run on 12V, although they would not charge the batteries at that voltage. I use an old 18V laptop charger 3.3A and it works fine, so anything between those voltages will work, provided it puts out enough current. Power = Voltage X Current so 1300 mA MAY be enough at 18V. I also made up a cigarette lighter plug to run it in my car.

Comment from Luke
Time March 1, 2010 at 8:53 AM

I think I found the batteries somewhere, but they are expensive. You can repair it yourself, just buy 9 18650 LI-IOn cells with tabs (you’ll pay $5-$10/each). 3 cells in series is like 11.1 or 11.2V, so it should be possible to charge on the 13.5V or so available in the police cars these were intended for. But yeah, 12V is probably not going to give you a charge.

Comment from hunternet93
Time March 1, 2010 at 11:42 AM

The problem is I don’t have batteries at all, dead or otherwise. Could I make my own battery pack easily, maybe by ripping the control board out of an old cheap battery?

Comment from Luke
Time March 2, 2010 at 6:43 AM

The battery you need is NI2040. You can get one from Battery Universe, but they want $135. I remember there being another equivalent part number, but I can’t find anything now. The pinout should be available on the Inspired Energy website, but I don’t know if the controller from some other battery pack would work. If so, I guess you could just build the battery pack right into the tablet. Non-removable wouldn’t be that bad. Maybe somebody here has a totally dead one they could part with so that you could re-cell it. Maybe the 2040 will come up on eBay from time to time?

Comment from Luke
Time March 6, 2010 at 7:18 AM

The other compatible battery is MPE201 or MPE201 plus.