Hacking the Sony WebTV Plus?

dcigary asks: "So, I'm visiting my local outlet mall, and strolling through the Sony Outlet store. At the entrance, they have a BIG stack of refurbished WebTV Plus boxes, with a price tag of $19.99 each. It also included a wireless keyboard! Being a sucker for a cheap price, I snatched up two of them, figuring I could at least set one up for my net-impared parents so they can surf the internet easily. What else can I do with one of these boxes? Are they hackable? I would really like to add an ethernet adapter to it and put it on my house LAN, and run out through the cable modem, but that would probably be asking too much. I've read through the specs and apparently they have a 1.2G drive in them as well? Any other ideas? Any sites out there dedicated to this?" $19.95 for a Web-TV box? That's not a bad price if these things can be enhanced in any way, shape or form.

Re:the innards of the webtv plus box

[ksheff]

Yes they can. It can use any dialup PPP provider, even a free one if they still exist in your area (check out http://nzlist.org/user/freeisp [nzlist.org]). Worldshare even has instructions on how to do it at http://www.worldshare.com/new/config_webtv.htm [worldshare.com]. It's probably the same routine for most ISPs. Unfortunately, most of the free ISPs require Windows.

Re:the innards of the webtv plus box

[ksheff]

I found this after my first post. Here is the page from WebTV on how to use another ISP: http://www.webtv.com/company/isps/ispsfaqs.html [webtv.com]

Re:1Gig Seagate drive ?

[unitron]

These things got a hard drive inside? Can anyone point me towards a link that verifies this?

bonus point used to gain maximum visibility

Re:the innards of the webtv plus box

[Xunker]

The Linux MIPS [sgi.com] howto says that the Cobalt Raq and Qude are based on the IDT R5230. I don't know much about the innards of the WebTV Plus, but it you could hack together some kind of alternate boot device (or just replace the ROMS), you could presumably put Linux on it -- but there is no Ether, so it's actual usefulness is questionable.

A really cool use would be...

[Rude Turnip]

<p>
A web-based remote controller for <a href="http://www.betips.net/mp3box">this</a& gt;. Instead of a Compaq WinCE handheld, you could see the display on your TV!.
</p>
<br>

Re:the innards of the webtv plus box

[azephrahel]

K, this is a dumb question here but...
at $20, with a built in modem... can they connect to any ppp provider? Sorry I never looked into webtv so I'm not sure how it worked. Anyway if it can hook up to any ppp provider, why not probe the thing till you can use the modem as a serial port and hook it up to a *nix box that has slirp. Maybe not the fastest thing in the world, but it should pop web pages decently...and as secondary terminals, that aint to shabby...even if it isn't running a *nix os :)

the innards of the webtv plus box

[XneznJuber]

Inside the WebTV box you will find a 56 Kbps v.90 capable modem, soldered in, and not very normal looking, so probably not salvagable

16MB RAM
8MB ROM
2MB Flash Memory (the useful part)
the cpu isn't to shabby, its a 167 Mhz R5230

but at 20 bucks a pop with no required service, i would have grabbed a trunkful and unloaded them on ebay!

Re:the innards of the webtv plus box

[dcigary]

Interesting idea. I just broke open one of the boxes, and it does indeed have 1Gig Seagate drive in it. How could I get the kernel to the drive?

Re:1Gig Seagate drive ?

[dcigary]

Yup.

Check out:

INT-W200 WebTV Box Review [digitaltheater.com]

I didn't realize it had an expansion port until I took it apart last night. This is getting more and more intriguing...