Looks like a POS display/computer but with a transmeta efficion cpu in stead of an amd/intel/arm/...

Seems to be a POS Unit from a North Carolina company called Nexus Technologies, Inc. that may no longer be around; their domain points to a 404 WP-Engine site now and the web archive shows that the last working capture from the late 2010s showed the last copyright update was 2013.

The product in the listing is likely this (Web Archive Link): https://web.archive.org/web/20100828222215/ht … net/nxs15t.html
Unfortunately the PDF is likely lost detailing the full specs, but on the page the details are as follows:

The NXS15T is a high performance, low-power computing platform that integrates an X86 compatible processing core with a 15” XGA LCD, and fanless thermal management to form a highly reliable, quiet and modern, large intelligent display solution

• 1.2 GHz X86 Processor
  Phoenix Bios
  Integrated 18/24-bit 1600x1200 resolution 32MB video RAM
  Single Slot 184 Pin PC2700, 256 MB DDR RAM
  2.5” Hard Drive, Ultra ATA/100, 5400RPM, 100MB/Sec., 40GB (Standard)
  12.1” CCFL, SVGA TFT LCD Panel supporting up to 800x600
  Combined Keyboard/Mouse Port
  Five USB 1.1/2.0 ports
  10/100 Base T Ethernet
  Four RS-232 Serial ports; (2) with Handshaking
  PCMCIA/CardBus
  AC97 with integrated stereo 10W amplifier
  (8) General Purpose Input Pins, 0 – 3V or Contact Closure to System common
  (8) Internal General Purpose Output Pins, (6) 0 – 5V +- 20 mA, (2) open drain 150mA
  Power Button (for soft shutdown of system)
  Integrated Video
  Two IDE ports
  MS Windows / Linux compatible
  Light weight, rugged Aluminum design

Optional

• Integrated touch controller
  Single Slot 184 Pin PC2700, 512MB - 1GB MB DDR RAM

Seems like this POS has the 1.2GHz Efficeon, if the listing is honest, which would put it at early Efficeon (re: http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Transmeta/pdfs/T … ceon_Launch.pdf), and for expandability it probably doesn't have a full PCI slot hidden away like some Transmeta boards, but the PCI bus should be exposed via that Cardbus expansion option.

If you end up acquiring this or the NXS12T (I believe I saw a listing for one of those as well), do post an update about the hardware, I'd be very interested to see the actual board inside.

bk2 wrote on 2023-09-27, 20:36:

Seems to be a POS Unit from a North Carolina company called Nexus Technologies, Inc. that may no longer be around; their domain […]
Show full quote

Seems to be a POS Unit from a North Carolina company called Nexus Technologies, Inc. that may no longer be around; their domain points to a 404 WP-Engine site now and the web archive shows that the last working capture from the late 2010s showed the last copyright update was 2013.

The product in the listing is likely this (Web Archive Link): https://web.archive.org/web/20100828222215/ht … net/nxs15t.html
Unfortunately the PDF is likely lost detailing the full specs, but on the page the details are as follows:

The NXS15T is a high performance, low-power computing platform that integrates an X86 compatible processing core with a 15” XGA LCD, and fanless thermal management to form a highly reliable, quiet and modern, large intelligent display solution

• 1.2 GHz X86 Processor
  Phoenix Bios
  Integrated 18/24-bit 1600x1200 resolution 32MB video RAM
  Single Slot 184 Pin PC2700, 256 MB DDR RAM
  2.5” Hard Drive, Ultra ATA/100, 5400RPM, 100MB/Sec., 40GB (Standard)
  12.1” CCFL, SVGA TFT LCD Panel supporting up to 800x600
  Combined Keyboard/Mouse Port
  Five USB 1.1/2.0 ports
  10/100 Base T Ethernet
  Four RS-232 Serial ports; (2) with Handshaking
  PCMCIA/CardBus
  AC97 with integrated stereo 10W amplifier
  (8) General Purpose Input Pins, 0 – 3V or Contact Closure to System common
  (8) Internal General Purpose Output Pins, (6) 0 – 5V +- 20 mA, (2) open drain 150mA
  Power Button (for soft shutdown of system)
  Integrated Video
  Two IDE ports
  MS Windows / Linux compatible
  Light weight, rugged Aluminum design

Optional

• Integrated touch controller
  Single Slot 184 Pin PC2700, 512MB - 1GB MB DDR RAM

Seems like this POS has the 1.2GHz Efficeon, if the listing is honest, which would put it at early Efficeon (re: http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Transmeta/pdfs/T … ceon_Launch.pdf), and for expandability it probably doesn't have a full PCI slot hidden away like some Transmeta boards, but the PCI bus should be exposed via that Cardbus expansion option.

If you end up acquiring this or the NXS12T (I believe I saw a listing for one of those as well), do post an update about the hardware, I'd be very interested to see the actual board inside.

That is a lot of useful information. Much appreciated!

HP thin clients two models use one as well. Can be played with for vintage computing.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-09-27, 23:55:

HP thin clients two models use one as well. Can be played with for vintage computing.

Cheers,

Thanks, I just picked up a t5710, which sparked my interest to finding something with an Efficeon as well.

jasa1063 wrote on 2023-09-28, 23:51:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-09-27, 23:55:

HP thin clients two models use one as well. Can be played with for vintage computing.

Cheers,

Thanks, I just picked up a t5710, which sparked my interest to finding something with an Efficeon as well.

You are welcome, put up a review of yours once this thing comes in?

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-09-29, 22:14:

jasa1063 wrote on 2023-09-28, 23:51:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-09-27, 23:55:

HP thin clients two models use one as well. Can be played with for vintage computing.

Cheers,

Thanks, I just picked up a t5710, which sparked my interest to finding something with an Efficeon as well.

You are welcome, put up a review of yours once this thing comes in?

Cheers,

I just finished it this week. I will post soon.

Well, I wasn't aware of the thread (and until now haven't registered on the webiste), but apparently I actually bought that lot 😀

However I haven't tried to boot it up yet, as I'm not sure if the PSU can actually support 220V (I live in Europe) or if I need a converter for it. It is a bulk unmarked device with an industrial-style connector, and the pinout on the NXT is also missing...

I probably will try to unscrew the lid on PSU first in the hope it has any sort of markings.

UPD: Yes, it is 110V only, there is a marking on a PCB of PSU.

Upd2: I've removed covers on upgrade bay and here how it looks inside (see attachments), however I haven't properly disassembled it yet as that is probably better to do not when I'm tired and probably after I verify it turns on (so after I'll find transformer)

Found a 220 -> 110V transformer and I can confirm that it have TM8000 Efficeon (1.5 GHz).

I have no experience with Efficeon so I don't know what exactly is revision 2.1 or how fresh CMS 6.1.1-1 is. As BIOS is from 2006, probably it is somewhat fresh (and anyway I probably won't touch it)

I had small problems with its disk, but actually unscrewing it made it work.

One interesting thing - during boot only PS/2 works, so I wasn't able to use keyboard until OS booted which is annoying as I don't have spare PS/2 keyboard around.

It seems that it has XGI Volari XP5 as a built-in graphics card and I would appreciate if some one can point me to working drivers for it (currently it have none installed)

So far my experience with that is not so good.

Before OS boots, only PS/2 keyboard is working, and no matter what you set in BIOS.

Windows 98SE hangs during hardware detection.

Windows ME boots and even mouse works out of box, but attempts to install chipset drivers causes bluescreen (though I could've managed to manually install them afterwards). However graphics card doesn't seems to work - I'm getting black screen after installing drivers.

Windows XP Pro SP3 - you need to disable Integrated NIC first, otherwise setup will BSOD with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in ndis.sys (probably unplugging cable is enough, but I haven't tried that during install). However system hanged later, during final boot preparation (when it should show desktop). After rebooting XP boots, but USB doesn't work at all (in contrary to Win ME), attmept of installing chipset drivers caused BSOD in ndis again and that keeps happening until I disable NIC in BIOS. And after installing drivers PS/2 keyboard stopped working in OS. I'll probably continue experiments with Win XP after a reinstall. Though graphics drivers (from vogons) seems to be at least not causing black or blue screen straight away. EDIT: actually after another reboot it had same symptoms: black screen.

Windows Vista (one that was preinstalled) - no graphics drivers, installing Vogons drivers made 2D to work well at full 1024x768 resolution, but any attempt to start 3D accelerated application caused BSOD in Xgiv3.dll. Also overall Vista experience is not that great, system is extremely sluggish. But USB and network works out of the box.

Linux - I've tried to boot Ubuntu 16.04, and with compiz disabled it works ok-ish from USB stick.

Cool that you ended up acquiring the hardware, and I for one super appreciate you providing the photos and such detail on your experience with it. For anyone down the line who runs across one of these units, (as uncommon as that may be), this will be incredibly useful.

The board looks very similar to the reference board I've seen before; I think I may have a PDF of it saved somewhere that I'll try to upload. Sad to see the PCI slot is missing on the board, but at least the pads are still there for it; does the BIOS make any mention of the PCI slot or some of the other unpopulated areas on the board like the SD card header I saw in one of the photos? Would you be able to take some pictures of the BIOS screens or even dump the BIOS for perusal? I wonder if the PCI slot could be restored so you could at least get working 3D Graphics with another card.

Interesting that it uses an XGI video solution, although it's unfortunate that you've experienced so many issues with the board in just about every OS. I hope you manage to track down some working drivers, although it seems you've been fairly thorough in your search thus far given your other thread.

I haven't seen any mentions of PCI slot or SD card in a bios (if you don't count some mysterious "Removable devices" in the boot order, which is not a USB flash drive as they appear under Hard Drive category).

If you'll be able to find that PDF - I would really appreciate that, maybe it will have some information about it.

I'll later on upload photos of the bios and better quality photos of the board.

Dumping a BIOS - might be tricky, I need to research how to do that and I'd prefer not to revert to using a programmer as it is soldered. If you have any ida on what software can do that - I'll be open to try it.

For the graphics driver - I have a theory. In BIOS it mentions multiple possible display outputs (LCD and CRT actually), and XGI Volari V3 I think had two outputs. I wonder if it is possible that it tried to use other one which is unpopulated and that maybe with some registry keys I would be able to make it work on those drivers that shows black screen. Though I never owned Volari graphics card (not to say that it is surprising though), so I might be wrong.

I also want to try to populate back SD Card Reader and PCI, just to see if they would work, but that is a project for later (my soldering skills are not that great, so I don't have confidence at this moment, but after I pick them up - probably I can try). With PCI one of the problems - it is missing some of the passive components (otherwise, populating the slot would be something I'm comfortable with).

Board also have few jumpers and one DIP switch block that I have troubles understanding. And also I think 3 connectors that I don't know what they are for. When I'll re-take the photos I'll mark them.

So, I've used uniflash to dump BIOS. Based on quick inspection with just `strings` - seems to be valid, at least serial number of my device is readable as well as BIOS version.

And I'm attaching photos of the BIOS.

And more photos (unfortunately it is only 5 per post and I have about 30 pictures of all different options)

And more

And more

And even more

And last batch.

That should be all menus and available options.