Compaq Evo T30

The Compaq Evo T30 is a thin client. One day, while shopping at Weird Stuff, I happened to pick up several of these for a great price. About half didn't boot, but I think this is because they don't have a plugin memory card. My goal is to install Linux on them.

The ones I have don't appear to be a standard version:

• Model No.: T30
• Part No.: 238622-001
• Spare No.: 292238-001
• Date Manufactured: November 2002
• Licenced for Windows CE.NET v4.0

From powering up into the OS:

• RAM: 64MB
• Flash Memory, Device 1: 32MB

From cracking the case:

• National Geode CS5530A-UCE (this is the southbridge, now made by AMD)
• Geode processor under heat sink on bottom of board

This suggests the model I have is similar to the 238617-xxx (DK408A)

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Using a 12V power supply, 500mA is drawn after applying power. The LED is orange and will flash once before turning off. After a short period, the LED turns off and current draw drops to 300mA. Pressing the button for about 3 seconds will make the LED green and will return the current draw to 500mA.

• Booting Linux from the 44-pin IDE connector on versions with 4MBit of flash (not the kind I have): http://www.bastianello.it/en_evo_t30.php
• Booting DSL on WinNT-based T20s (not the kind I have): http://mowson.org/karl/evo_t20/
• Booting Linux on WinCE.NET-based T20s (close to what I have): http://thunderlord.net.pl/evo/
• SourceForge T20 Resources
• Evo T30 with WinCE.NET support site

Using the WinCE.NET T20 instructions I prepared as follows:

• Got the Evo T20 and T30 Netxfer Tool for Loading Firmware 2.18 A 9 Oct 2002 from HP – this isn't needed.
• Got evo/netxfer.sh from http://thunderlord.net.pl/evo/files/netxfer.sh
• Got the Evo T30 32/64 Rapport Package to Add CE.NET Firmware 4.0 B472.6 29 Apr 2004 from HP

Set up for initial transfer of standard firmware:

• Make /tmp/evo and chmod 777.
• Execute sp27933.exe (under vmware) and copy Rapport_4.X/Push_472-6-14-6Cme7D_T30_CEN/P472_6_14_6_Cme7D.bin to /tmp/evo/bootp.bin
• /etc/init.d/tftpd stop
• apt-get install dhcp3-server
• Edit netxfer.sh to change all /home/blah to /tmp/evo.
• Power up the Evo T30 while pressing the 'p' key (while the LED is orange), getting to the screen shown above.
• sh netxfer.sh (I tried with my normal dhcpd and tftp setup, but that's not good enough. We need to be running on special ports for the Evo to communicate – these ports are set up by this script. I did not have to configure any special IP addresses.)
• After the servers started and a few seconds passed, the T30 started printing stuff.
  • If you get the “error: not a tagged image” error, you might have used sp27933.exe directly instead of extracting its contents.
  • If you get errors about how the file cannot be read, perhaps you didn't chmod the file.
• The T30 printed a lot of stuff and rebooted itself. It ended up in a configuration utility, and I played around and set up a 1024×768 mode. It then rebooted itself again.

This section follows the preparing new firmware instructions noted above:

• Get evo/fw_builder.tar.gz from http://thunderlord.net.pl/evo/files/fw_builder.tar.gz
• Untar and put the original firmware from the last step into the fw_builder. Name it orig.bin
• apt-get install bin86
• ./createfw
• Note the new file ../bootp.bin
• Then power up while pressing 'p', as above. This time, the process has different messages and goes faster, almost immediately rebooting into Linux.