Information on the HP C3450A?

cstaples asks: "I came into a bunch of hp C3450A's. They are basically a 486 DX 100 mini computer, built in video, Ethernet, 2 com ports and 2 ps2 ports and 1 ltp. You can also connect a HDD to this thing, it's a nice little package, 2"H X 14"W X 14" deep. I can see a couple of uses for it, Linux router(there is what appears to be an expansion slot on the motherboard for a 2nd NIC), DSS hacking box, Linux firewall, etc....great little toy to play around with, -if- I could find some info on it somewhere on the Web. Even HP seems to deny its existence: product #C3450A, model #4100DX and it was made around 1995. Any ideas?"

Did'ja search?

[Zippy the Pinhead]

First, search Dogpile [dogpile.com] for "C3450A" and for "4100DX". The first gets you almost nothing. The second mostly gets you info on the Zenith Z-Station 4100DX/2, so you try throwing an "HP" in with it.

With creative interpretation of the couple of UseNet postings in German and Dutch, I found out that:

The Ethernet controller is an AMD Lance.

It has an IPX or NetBIOS boot rom. You might want to download EtherBoot or some such and befriend someone with an EPROM burner, however...

Someone already tried that and can't get the network card to see the network.

One webpage [abgcomputers.nl] has an awesome bunch of info, though. It's called the HP Windows Client, it can take a 2.5" HDD, it can do BootP and it has a 1MB CL5430 display controller.

Happy hacking!

Search

[Anonymous Coward]

I search for 4100DX using our internal proprietary search engine. I found several interesting items, and uploaded the results to google.

Search google for 4100dx and discontinued.

Regards,

Steven Woston, Lead Programmer
http://www.jjjjulius.com/search/index.html [jjjjulius.com]

Similar Computer

[QBin]

I recently got a similar computer: a DEC Multia VX51B-F3. It's a P100 with all the usual ports, NCR 53c810 SCSI, DEC DE435 ethernet, Floppy, 1GB IDE HD. All in a 12.5"x12.5"x2.8" case. It also has dual PCMCIA slots, which are great since I use the multia as a wireless/wired router.

Finding out anything about it was very difficult, as compaq seems to have disowned all non-alpha DEC products. Eventually I found a spec document on the DEC (compaq) site with their internal search.

I get most of the information I needed to install linux by just reading model numbers off of the chips (ethernet, SCSI).

There appear to be some companies which resell old equipment from major corporate accounts (DEC, HP, etc.) Perhaps one of them could help you out. Try www.d-c-p.com.