Well of course there are now internet capable TVs, but this one is a little older. Them actually, I have two. Barco IQ Pro G 350 is the model. It is identical to the 500 except that the 500 burns the lamps hotter to get 5,000 lumens output rather than the 350's 3,500. The 500 also cuts the lamp life in half to do it. They actually have two lamps each, other than buring the lamps hottet the only real diffwerence is a possible eco mode in the menu to turn the lamps down to 200 watt instead of 250 or somethng like that. Both models have the eco option of only running one lamp, which I think is pretty snazzy since it is going in the basement. I think 1,750 lumes will do at the screen size I want.
They are not the greatest thing since the 6GH8 but they'll do. The question is about the onboard computer. These things are over six years old and the onboard PC is not all that hot by today's standards. They run a 1.2 Ghz P3, 256 MB RAM and a 40 GB harddruve. They have XP Pro installed and each has a COA on the bottom.
Now this PC, though not the greatest, is capable of running at least
1024 X 768 X 60 X 24 bit color if not tasked with a bunch of other things. I got some RAM that'll probably help. So that is kinda the plan, use it's audio output to feed sound and be able to watch things off the net, or even the home server, without tying up another PC to feed it. I might have to use the basement PC to feed it but I would rather not, I have alot of downloaded stuff. It should connect to the house network via a regular RJ 45, but that will be through the basement PC. I can also send it VGA but that would require a long VGA cable, maybe Svid would be alright for some material, but all tha ties up the other PC. (hmm wonder if the old NIC in it has autocrossover, if not I'm sure the basement PC does)So here we have the options. I can break into the OS MAYBE, and set myself up as a user/administrator and access everything that was on it. I don't know if I can because these OSes were maybe loaded by IT pros for a major university. They may have been preloaded at the factory, and that's what bothers me. The manual mentions a certain type of video interface that I've never heard of, and in fact on the models WITHOUT the onboard PC there is another input called SDI. These are the non-Pro units so I assume that the onboard PC uses the SDI format for the PC video.
So, we are at this point. When I hook this up, if I can't get into the OS I am not going to just throw them out. I do have an XP Pro disk but it is corporate version and I don't know if the versions of the COAs are the same. If I go to reinstall Windows, which I would like to avoid like the plague, I might not have video drivers. I figure getting those will be like a snowball in hell trying to sell air conditioners. Or am I wrong ? I doubt it, the disk I have is original, no service packs or anything which means it came out in like 2001.
Then there is something else I found on the internet. Using a Windows
2000 install disk you can use it's recovery console and break into everything. I wouldn't mind losing their files, but if I can get the OS to run at all, I should be able to copy all the driver files, and with some minor registry hacks, get the thing set up with a brand new OS.Or no ?
And here's the fun part, I would have to use a USB CDROM or whatever to do the install and I don't know if I cna make it boot from CD. I can't seem to find much info about the build of this thing. I don't know who's BIOS it uses, though I have seen the screen.
Just getting into all this would be a big pain so I am hoping that tickling F5 will get me in and they didn't put a super admin password on it. I traded one 500 for two lenses, the guy had them for sale on eBay and since I'm a member I got ahold of him, seeing my good feedback he sent me the two lenses and trusted me to send him the one projector, which I did. But in correspondence he told me that he used to work for Barco and recommended that I try the password "barco". We are talking a university, the instructors use these things and maybe they aren't always in the same room. At $13,000 apiece I doubt even they bought one for each classroom. Therefore, is it reasonable to assume that they might all have a default password ?
One more question about XP Pro, I assume the HDs are IDE, what would happen if I deleted all the users in documents and settings using another PC ? Would that take the OS back to the "Welcome, let's setup bla bla bla.... " ?
Either something like that or picking out the video driver files would be fine. I don't need those teachers' private emails or anything about their affairs with the handsome young Men on campus or anything of the sort. Just a fully functioning OS with all the software drivers would be fine. On a regular PC I would not ask, but this just might be a bit different scenario.
Thanks in advance.
J