[Mick] has been playing around with the VTech Innotab – a $70 tablet computer aimed at kids – for a while now. He’s successfully turned this tablet soon to be found at yard sales the world over into a Linux tablet and can play everything from those magical LucasArts SCUMM adventure games to angry Birds. What his tablet is missing, though, is any sort of Internet connection. He recently fixed this by soldering a USB WiFi adapter directly to the CPU of his InnoTab.
In all fairness, there’s not a horrible amount of software hackery going on here. VTech’s InnoTab 2s uses the same chipset as the more affordable InnoTab 2 but has an additional board soldered directly to the mainboard. This additional board supplies a WiFi connection with an RT5370 chipset; soldering a WiFi dongle onto the InnoTab 2’s CPU D+ and D- USB lines successfully turns it into the WiFi enabled InnoTab 2s.
It’s an excellent piece of work for a low-power tablet that one can safely assume is both bullet and childproof. [Mick] was also able to mount a USB thumb drive on his upgraded kid’s tablet, so if you’re trying to find a low-cost tablet that doesn’t need much horsepower, you might want to check out your local toys ‘R我們。