Well there's the firmware.  Should I install it?
 

 apt-cache search realtek
nictools-pci - Diagnostic tools for many PCI ethernet cards
flashrom - Identify, read, write, erase, and verify BIOS/ROM/flash chips
firmware-realtek - Binary firmware for Realtek wired and wireless network adapters

Give it a go

OK what do I do after that?

I got this and answered yes.
 

 apt-get install firmware-realtek
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  firmware-realtek
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 615 not upgraded.
Need to get 215 kB of archives.
After this operation, 493 kB of additional disk space will be used.
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
  firmware-realtek
Install these packages without verification [y/N]?

That's fine. Do changes stick after reboot?

I imagine there's something relating to the WiFi under dmesg

Yeah they do if I enable the write filter before I reboot.

You'd think there would be something in dmesg about it, but you'd be wrong!

Did you get it working?

Nope, I stopped trying.  I'm now trying to figure out how to install a driver onto WinCE

Hmph. I wonder if you would have been better off with a bog-standard lubuntu or xubuntu install than that thinpro horseshit.

I've tried about 15 tiny distros.  I was only able to get the wifi working with 1 of them.  And that distro was too big to fit on the flash media in the TC.

What is it, a gig?

Yeah.  The amount of money you spend for these things and what you actually get for that money is insane.

I hope your boss didn't pay north of 100 bucks per. What's the upside to this deal?

Did you try this?

http://www.slitaz.org/en/about/

Ha, these costs ~$350 I could have done this and more with a Raspberry Pi

This is a rollout of new equipment for our new inventory system.  All these things need to do is launch a Citirix Receiver.  They can do it with a wire, but I'm not running wire to 50 machines spread over God's creation!

I did indeed.

I ran it for a while on an old K6-II pc. It's an interesting little distro that (if nothing else) shows how bloated things have become.

Here's what someone had to do to get it running on a tc with only 512MB flash (I dunno about wifi though):
http://forum.slitaz.org/topic/installing-slitaz-on-thin-client-t5545

Probably would have run those cables by now!

 :-((

True though!

Ken: will wifi be reliable on 50 units? With cheap small adapters?