Fine Oils: Undocumented HP Mini

Recent computer swap meet/electronics flea market at de Anza was the last for the season 2013. Lots of fun and cheap ancient hardware can be found here.

At one dealer, I did a pretty good trade in: among other stuff I got me three new, still in plastic film netbooks labeled "HP Mini". There were virtually no other manufacturer labels at the bottom or anywhere on the netbook lid or case which were identical to what comes with HP Mini 5101 (or 5102, or 5103) models. No traces of glue if these labels were peeled off. My take is there never been any labels in the first place.

The netbook is significantly lighter than any of HP Mini 510x models which hints it doesn't have HDD (handwritten cryptic sticker on one unit mentions eMMC). Usual for HP Mini 510x vent grill on the left side doesn't emit any air, hot or otherwise. There's no fan duct inside, to start with. Hence there's no chances that any of Intel Atom, AMD, or even VIA processors powers this silly machine.

However, the units were of just $30 trade-in value, which incidentally is much less than a price for its very good 10" non-touch LED backlit screen panel alone.

For whatever reason, netbooks were offered with regular Dell 65 W power adapters. It is certainly an overkill for a machine that emits less than 20 W of heat, but whatever. Dealer swore netbooks came as sets with those Dell power adapters at some liquidation sale.

Machines power up OK and boots what looks like Ubuntu thin client:

With no server around, this thingie is pretty useless. However, once I start XDMCP server on one of my Linux machines, I have a chance to make all of them work.

I couldn't find any info/specs or even mentioning on this HP Mini Ubuntu thin client either in countless HP sites, or elsewhere outside. It must be a secret HP project that somehow went wrong, and now I have an undocumented Chinese something on my hands.

Time to open this little beast and see what drives it. Unlike with HP Mini 5103 which uses Phillips bolts and screws, this one uses 4 Torx 9 screws under its rubber feet. Rubber glue to hold these feet perishes at the first taking off these shoes, which supports the idea of secrecy and security of the device. Autopsy showed that this netbook is powered by ARM Cortex A8 Samsung-Intrinsity S5PV210XH-A0 SoC which once (back in 2010-2011) was popular in Chinese craptablets of Hero and many other types running Android 2.3 at its max. Oh well. It has a 1080p HD video hardware decoder though which might be of help when using this netbook as a XBMC terminal.

Radio module is a decent combo called Ericsson F3607gw:

HSPA / WCDMA / UMTS / Edge / Voice

GPS, A-GPS

Certifications: FCC, CE, R&TTE, PTCRB, GCF, Operator and Infrastructure IOT, Microsoft certified driver

Drivers: Microsoft Windows® 7, XP and Vista. Support for Linux® and Android.

The F3607gw is capable of supporting HSPA data rates of up to 2.0 Mbps in uplink and up to 7.2 Mbps in downlink.
Technical Data HSPA / UMTS / 3G

UMTS 2100/1900/850 or 2100/1900/900 MHz

Download: 7.2Mbps

Upload: 2.0Mbps

Technical Data GSM / GPRS / EDGE

GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz

Download: 247.4Kbps

Upload: 123.7Kbps

GPS

Standalone, A-GPS (internet and operator assisted)

It looks like this:

SEC K4T16 series RAM chips are so much discontinued, I've of no idea of how much RAM is soldered there. Should be about 512 MB, but it should be fine if these 8 chips (4 on each side of mobo) add up to just 256 MB.

There's a standard SIM slot hidden under battery (there were no battery though). I put my old T-Mobile SIM card into that slot to see whether there any option to use mobile network may pop up. Nope. Then, Ethernet port, SD card slot, VGA output, 3 USB 2.0 ports are present, just like in "original" HP Mini 5103.

Login options hint it was more or less successful XDMCP Ubuntu client:

Now I'm looking for something like cheapo i3 8GB RAM Linux box with couple of gigabit Ethernet ports. A cheapo used 8-port gigabit switch (D-Link?) is also needed.

I will be building XDMCP network. Or LTSP, whatever suits XBMC best. Local DAF Custom XBMC (on the client) would be fun.

Buying a genuine HP Mini 5103 mobo for about $180, plus an SDD for $60, to replace that thin client's mobo looks very counterproductive where a thin XBMC client can do just fine.

UPDATE 1: Well, my first attack has failed miserably: XDMCP and Chrubuntu/Mate don't like each other -- XDMCP/lightdm won't even start on my makeshift "server" no matter what.

Downgrading to Ubuntu 10 or 11 is out of question, so I need a reliable Linux server (at least Core 2 Duo, 8 GB of RAM, SSD or at least SATA Raid 1). Electronics flea market season starts now only in 2014.

Meanwhile, I tried also Live Edubuntu which has XDMCP built in. It took me installing it on some spare HDD, to discover that these stubborn HP Minis still don't see it, plus won't see or connect to LTSP server.

Then, hand-written sticker on one of the machines mentions something hinting at that dreadful Samsung eMMC bug/error. An Australian (? Newzealander?) angus has built Debian for the Flexview FV-1 smart TV box powered by S5PV210 a year ago, and I would be trying it in my next attempts to unlock these stupid thin clients. Takes SD card/USB flash rendered bootable (JTAGging?) on these machines first though.

UPDATE 2: booting angus kernel for S5PV210 didn't happen, any booting from SD card/USB flash is not enabled on this locked HP mini. Last venue before JTAGging would be attempting adb access to see how hard the bootloader is locked. But I'm close to the end of a rope: one thing is breaking into Sony Xperia Z Ultra, or Zotac Tegra Note, and a completely other thing is making something useful out of this crapnetbook.

I will gladly trade two of these HP Minis for your (working) HP Mini 5103. Or your working ThinkPad T61p/T400. Take the challenge while I'm sooo tired.

On a more rosy note, I had my $3 Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W70 cleaned and also repaired its stuck Carl Zeiss lens barrels. Got me 8-year old crap shooter with wiggly AF, no matter what Carl Zeiss may say about it: