hardware upcycling

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: