Some time ago I had the opportunity to buy an old IGEL M310C thin client for about 16 EUR. This was a thin client based on the VIA Nano U3400 CPU, clocked at 800 MHz, once sold by the German company IGEL Technology GmbH. Since 2022 that company no longer sells hardware, concentrating on its IGEL OS, which is a Linux-based operating system that allows access to virtual desktops.
IGEL M310C without the CompactFlash card
Some time ago I decided to build myself a new PC for retrocomputing and programming. For one part I wanted to be able to install the latest version of FreeDOS on modern hardware, on the other side I was very eager to install, at last, Arch Linux on a dedicated PC. As I expect this project to become a sort of exploration journey in an unknown territory, I decided to name this new PC atlantis.
After I succeeded in installing NetBSD on the HP thin client t5710, I wanted to see how well it would work under Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE).
Thin Client HP t5710 - Front view
The biggest problem you run into when trying such an installation is that, in general, you need a floppy disk to boot the Windows 98 SE setup. To perform the installation from a USB stick I followed the steps described in detail in an excellent online article by James MacKenzie.
I recently bought several old HP thin clients t5710 on Ebay, mostly because I wanted to install FreeDOS and other DOSes on bare metal. And since each box did cost only about 17 EUR, I thought it might be a good idea to give them a try.
Thin Client HP t5710 - Front view
Thin Client HP t5710 - Rear view with the ports
The t5710 thin client features some interesting hardware components:
