Pegatron Cape 7

Pegatron Cape 7 net top PC

Bought without an operating system which made it very cheap.

It is a tiny device that can either sit on its own stand, or be clamped to the back of a monitor to leave the desktop free.

It has a bright blue power LED bright enough to illuminate a large room at night.

Specifications

Manufacturer : Pegatron
Model  . . . : Cape 7
Graphics . . : nVidia
Processor  . : Intel Atom 230 @ 1.6 GHz (one core or two?)
RAM  . . . . : 2 Gb (That's 1 Gb on the motherboard and 1 Gb SODIMM.)
Hard drive . : 160 Gb
FSB  . . . . : 533 MHz
L1 cache . . : 24 Kb
L2 cache . . : 512 Kb

What I have learned

Maximum memory: The 1GB SODIMM can only be replaced with a 2GB SODIMM. With the 1Gb on the motherboard that makes a total of 3Gb.

Linux Mint was installed and runs very well, unless the RAM is exceeded when it runs like a dog.

The original Hitachi 5K320-160 hard drive, model HTS543216L9A300, died after less than two years.

It has an interesting feature in that it will not shut down. When told to do so, it reboots.

It came with an incredibly tiny WiFi USB dongle. It is labelled as a "PEGATRON WL-166N11". I got it working on Windows XP using Mediatek Wireless Utility and an RT2870 driver but Windows says it is a "Ralink RT3070 802.11b/g/n Wireless Lan USB Device" made by Pegatron.

Reviews

Consumer review: PC Advisor 10th June 2010
Technical spec: Eclipse Computers evaluation
Technical spec: Mesh Technology evaluation
Technical review: Hardware Heaven review
Someone else's site with photos of it in use: link

Taking it apart

My apologies for the out-of-focus photos.

• 

  When dismantling the Pegatron Cape 7, you will need to undo the two screws under the flap on the 'front'. They are not easy to get at.

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  The ports on the 'back' of a Pegatron Cape 7. Monitor, 4 x USB, network, power, speakers. I have removed two of the six screws and the two thumb screw sockets for the monitor lead. You can see how much smaller it is than a keyboard.

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  The top has been released from the Pegatron Cape 7. This is the 'front'. That flap next to the power switch obscures two of the six screws that need to be undone to remove the case.

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  This is a Pegatron Cape 7 with the lid removed. On the left is the video socket; it is necessary to remove the two monitor lead thumbscrew sockets to get the lid off.

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  To remove the lid of the Pegatron Cape 7, you have to remove 6 screws and the two monitor thumbscrew sockets. Here they are arranged in the base.

• 

  The top has been removed from this Pegatron Cape 7. The hard drive is on the left and the RAM strip bottom right.

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  The top has been removed from this Pegatron Cape 7. The hard drive is on the right. The RAM strip has been removed and is to the top left.

No picture for Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon or MATE

To get the boot CD installer to work required the nomodeset trick. It is necessary to follow the instructions for:

• How to enable kernel options on the livecd (before install)

by editing the boot option to change quiet splash to nomodeset.

• How to temporarily set kernel boot options on an installed OS (not wubi)

by holding down the Shift key (it is not enough to press it) until the boot menu appears. Then edit the line starting linux /boot by adding nomodeset.

• How to permanently set kernel boot options on an installed OS (not wubi)

by editing /etc/default/grub and changing "quiet splash" to "quiet splash nomodeset", then running sudo update-grub.

I also went into the Driver Manager and enabled the nVidia driver, rebooted, removed the nomodeset from /etc/default/grub and re-ran sudo update-grub.

I then enabled intel-microcode in the Driver Manager since it was offered.