First steps with a reclaimed CF 633 serial

Jimthree

New member
Hi folks.

A friend of mine who works in our companies IT department knows only too well that I like messing about with OS hardware and arduinos etc. IT were doing a clear out of some of their old stuff and he brought me some items of interest. Among them, was what I have recently discovered to be a CF-633 Serial, revision 1.5a. It has been sat on my desk for about a month before I got curious to see what it was!

Reading up on the specs, this little board sounds perfect for a job at home (in my shed). I have a bunch of old laptops (Pentium 4 era) onto which I have installed Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, in order to learn a bit about cloud based infrastructure (will soon be part of my work). The laptops piled on top of each other run quite hot, so I'm keen to run some fans to create a bit of airflow around them and cool them down. Step forward the 633!

I powered up the 633 last night by using the 3.5" floopy power cable on an old ATX power supply. It spins up fans straight away (I have three attached) at a fairly modest RPM, and displays "Wanjet 5 - Starting". (a "Wanjet" seems to be an internet accelerator device used in data centers - obviously where the must have 633 came from). I am presuming that this is a custom firmware uploaded to the 633, and it's probably waiting for some instructions/data over the serial port from the wanjet.

Simple question is, how do I restore this 633 to some sort of CF factory default, so that I can start learning about the device as if it was bought from the CF store?

cheers, thanks for your help
Jim
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CF Tech

Administrator
The 633 must be returned to Crystalfontz to upgrade the firmware.

The policy is:

1) you ship it here, at your expense (call to get an RMA first)

2) we upgrade it at no charge

3) we will ship it back by ground at our expense (if you want premium shipping, you can pay to upgrade the return shipping)
 

Jimthree

New member
Ouch!.. that's non-trivial considering I'm in the UK. It could be 6-8 weeks in shipping, unless I pay for fast shipping there and back which would be more than the value of the item. I can see the programming interface on the board, and I'm no stranger to flashing firmware onto uCs, is there no way you can let me do this myself?

thanks
Jim
 
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