Can I repurpose a Fujitsu Futro Z220?

I've acquired a thin client Fujitsu Futro Z220 from a corporation, and I would like to repurpose it.

The CPU is a SOAC Texas Instruments DM8148 (ARM Cortex A8), with 512 Mb RAM and a 2 Gb flash disk. It has a eLux Linux distribution (kernel 2.6.xx) that boot directly into X-Windows (gnome/ldm), to configure and/or connect to a RDP or Cytrix server.

I'd like to repurpose it (i.e.: print server, MAME machine) but:

- I haven't found any way to get to a shell once booted (or boot in text mode instad of XWin).
- SSH/Telnet seems to be disabled (connection refused).
- The only way to write to disk seems to be using a recovery USB.
- I haven't found any site that provides packages (and also any means to install those packages).

About the recovery USB: It has two partitions, a FAT one that contains some packages and a Linux one that seems to contain a skeleton linux filesystem. When booted it seems to format the internal flash and install the packages, but I don't know if the USB Linux filesystem is copied to the flash directly or if it is used to boot from USB and install the packages.

Has anyone tried to convert such a thin client to another thing? Does anyone knows how can I do it?

Thanks.

Details - http://www.infobarna.com/imatges/pro...FUTRO-Z220.pdf

Shell - http://nexterminal.dk/en/ericom-powerterm

Security - Audit proof protection - Write protection for the Flash module

Looks like it may be 'read only' - but if you can find an ARM distro for that processor, you might be able to 'flash' it to the emmc.

Personally, I'd make image copies of the pendrive, & work from there, the DOS partition 'probably' holds the neccessary files to load the O/S from the Linux partition.

See if you can get it to run from a pendrive.

Just wondering how you got on?