Installing NetBSD 10.1 On The IGEL M310C Thin Client

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

My M310C unit came with 1 GB RAM and I installed a new 32 GB CompactFlash card, in order to have enough storage space for NetBSD 10.1/i386.

The installation from an USB stick went smoothly. At the end the OS took about 1.5 GB of space, with several useful packages, among them sudo, screen, rsync and the micro text editor.

The M310C is very silent, as it does not need any cooling fan to function. In the near future I will test several usage scenarios. I will also use it for programming. All in all, another good example of hardware upcycling!