The Virgin Webplayer is a discontinued

Internet appliance An Internet appliance is a consumer device whose main function is easy access to Internet services such as World Wide Web, WWW or e-mail. The term was popularized in the 1990s, when it somewhat overlapped in meaning with an information appliance, ...

from

Virgin Group Virgin Group Ltd is a British multinational venture capital conglomerate founded by Richard Branson and Nik Powell in February 1970. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by Companies House, who class it as a holding compa ...

. The device was intended as a standalone Internet access device, running a specialized operating system which limited it to the Virgin Connect

ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

. It was discontinued on November 15, 2000. The remaining Webplayer hardware was liquidated and embraced by the hardware hacker community. The Virgin Connect service was innovative — for $50, a user would get the Webplayer and unlimited dial-up Internet access (provided through

Prodigy Prodigy, Prodigies or The Prodigy may refer to: * Child prodigy, a child who produces meaningful output to the level of an adult expert performer ** Chess prodigy, a child who can beat experienced adult players at chess Arts, entertainment, and m ...

) for three years. However, the Webplayer displayed advertisements while the user was online.

Hardware

The Webplayer is essentially a compact

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

PC and was manufactured by Acer under contract by Boundless Technologies and is also known as the Boundless iBrow. Input came through an

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

keyboard with an integrated

trackball A trackball is a pointing device consisting of a ball held by a socket containing sensors to detect a rotation of the ball about two axes—like an upside-down ball mouse (computing), mouse with an exposed protruding ball. Users roll the ball t ...

, and the webplayer came with a

modem The Democratic Movement (, ; MoDem ) is a centre to centre-right political party in France, whose main ideological trends are liberalism and Christian democracy, and that is characterised by a strong pro-Europeanist stance. MoDem was establis ...

for connecting to the Internet. The Webplayer is powered by a 200

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

Cyrix Cyrix Corporation was a microprocessor developer that was founded in 1988 in Richardson, Texas, as a specialist supplier of floating point units for 286 and 386 microprocessors. The company was founded by Tom Brightman and Jerry Rogers. Ter ...

MediaGX The MediaGX CPU is an x86-compatible processor that was designed by Cyrix and manufactured by National Semiconductor following the two companies' merger. It was introduced in 1997. The core is based on the integration of the Cyrix Cx5x86 CPU co ...

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

, 64 MB of

SO-DIMM A DIMM (Dual In-line Memory Module) is a popular type of memory module used in computers. It is a printed circuit board with one or both sides (front and back) holding DRAM chips and pins. The vast majority of DIMMs are manufactured in compli ...

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

, and a 48 MB M-Systems '' Disk-On-Chip 2000'' for storage. It included two

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

ports and contained a Mini PCI Type IIIB slot and 44-pin IDE header inside.

CompactFlash CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994. CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse headers are present on the motherboard, but the physical connector is not included.

Hacking

After the demise of official support, the Webplayer drew the attention of computer enthusiasts. A grassroots Co-Op effort was created to purchase a lot of Webplayers from a liquidator, with over 50 members signing up. Eventually, the units were shipped out at $100 each and the hacking began. The Virgin operating system was locked to dial into Virgin Online, but a password-protected setup screen was available. A user discovered the scheme and created a utility to guess the rotating password frequently enough to allow an owner to reprogram the device to call into any ISP. However, the experience of using the Virgin OS was not what users wanted, so more serious hacking attempts quickly began. Since the Webplayer is architecturally similar to a typical x86 PC and included an IDE header, initial attention was focused on accessing the password-protected

system BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...

. An insider leaked the password ("schwasck") and the device was quickly converted into a full-fledged PC. Users could simply purchase a 44-pin IDE cable and hard disk drive and run any PC-compatible operating system. The next efforts included creating a version of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

that would fit in the 48 MB Disk-On-Chip device. This was quickly accomplished, with a version of 98lite widely distributed. Attempts to create a specialized

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

distribution were less successful, since the Webplayer included specialized graphics hardware which was not well-supported at the time. Users eventually turned to the Mini-PCI slot, adding

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

and

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer c ...

adapters designed for notebooks. These proved far more reliable than the originally-used USB Ethernet adapters, as the Webplayer's USB hardware was not entirely stable. Other popular modifications included increasing the system RAM (it used a standard 144-pin PC100

) and

overclock In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. Commonly, operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated sp ...

ing the CPU. Some users modified the Webplayer case to accept a built-in

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

drive, Ethernet ports, and Wi-Fi antennas.

Issues

The Webplayer hardware proved to have a few stability issues: * The USB ports are somewhat unreliable with Ethernet adapters, though they seem to work well with storage and input devices * The audio system will distort unless the Line-In is muted * The display adapter is not well-supported and its

modes are incomplete * The

ACPI Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto con ...

APM APM, apm, or Apm may refer to: Technology Computer technology *Active policy management, a discipline within enterprise software *Advanced Power Management, a legacy technology in personal computers * Apple Partition Map, computer disk partiti ...

BIOS does not work well, with suspend and resume problems common

References

* *{{cite web , title=Hacking the Virgin Web player , work=larwe.com , url=http://www.larwe.com/technical/webplayer_main.html , access-date=April 20, 2006 Acer Inc. products Information appliances Web player

Hardware

Hacking

Issues

See also

References