Debian on HP Thin Clients

Introduction

It is a pity that this device is marching into oblivion as Transmeta is about to stop making CPUs. It is possibly the best X terminal known to man. Blazing fast, excellent local processing power, excellent video with proper hardware acceleration and capable to run Linux out of the box. And it even looks cute (for a given set of values of cute).

There are some newer models that are based on Via Centaur and AMD Geode CPUs. I have not tried the Via ones. All AMD can run stock Debian without any problems as well as use the diskless procedure as described here.

Hardware

Transmeta based 5515

Hardware on these is Transmeta based standard PC. I have not measured the motherboard in it, but it looks like standard mini-ITX. The only external connectors present are SO-DIMM RAM, USB ports, Keyboard, Mouse, VGA and Sound. There is a PCI slot on the motherboard, but there is no way to use it within the HP supplied case. It uses a 12V external power supply similar to the via EPIA and other mini-ITX systems.

The flash is a standard 44 pin laptop IDE connector. Connecting a standard IDE drive to it results in the drive being recognised, but unusable. Geometry, and model are recognised correctly. However, even at that stage, there are problems reading data off it. Instead of a serial number the BIOS shows garbage. Once the system boots, the drive cannot be read.

. 
Here are the contents of cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0 
vendor_id       : GenuineTMx86 
cpu family      : 6 
model           : 4 
model name      : Transmeta(tm) Crusoe(tm) Processor TM5700 
stepping        : 3 
cpu MHz         : 798.588 
cache size      : 256 KB 
fdiv_bug        : no 
hlt_bug         : no 
f00f_bug        : no 
coma_bug        : no 
fpu             : yes 
fpu_exception   : yes 
cpuid level     : 1 
wp              : yes 
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr cx8 sep cmov mmx longrun lrti 
bogomips        : 1597.73 

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Transmeta Corporation LongRun Northbridge (rev 04) 
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation SDRAM controller 
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation BIOS scratchpad 
0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation: Unknown device 0399 
0000:00:09.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) 
0000:00:09.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) 
0000:00:09.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63) 
0000:00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE] 
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8231 [PCI-to-ISA Bridge] (rev 10) 
0000:00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) 
0000:00:11.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ACPI (rev 10) 
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 40) 
0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 51) 

The CPU has only one longrun cpufreq entry so it will run at whatever frequency it is preset in the factory. There is no way to improve even further on the already excellent thermals and power consumption (sub-7W idle).

The SODIMM slot is using standard DDR 2700 so if you intend to use yours as a workstation, not an X-term you might as well up the memory to a the maximum supported 512M. However, one thing needs to be said - it is extremely slow. Using it for anything else but an Xterm is least likely to be worth it. It is too slow for that.

Recovery from dot.bomb or dot.bank hangover

If you have got your hands on one it may be from a dot.bomb (or dot.bank) crater. It most likely has a BIOS password set and you will need to zap it to get anywhere. This is possible and HP provides you with utilities for this (need to finish writing this - A).

Installing Debian (nope)

Nope. While I am a great fan of the concept that you can run Debian on anything, even a Dead Badger there is no point in trying to install it on the device "as is". Debian may fits on the larger flash versions (and HP even ships it with Debian), but it will be cut down to the point where it is virtually useless.

It is much easier to run it with Diskless Debian instead. In that case the only limitation is the memory.

Running Diskless

Optimize for low memory:

• Remove all find, man-db and other similar jobs in cron.daily. They will drive the box O(ut)O(f)M(emory) if you leave them.
• Remove everything not needed in normal operation. If you intend to run it as an xterm any extra consoles, lpd, inetd, etc are surplus to requirements. Once you are happy with it kill sshd as well. This should give you 70M+ free for X which are usually enough nowadays.

For more details see the DebianDiskless section