Running Linux on a WYSE Winterm 3200LE
I recently acquired a free WYSE Winterm 3200LE. This neat little device is designed as a dedicated client for Windows Terminal Services (RDP) and Citrix ICA. The concept behind them is for businesses to run all of their applications on a central group of servers and have users log remotely onto a desktop session on these servers to access their applications and data.
The advantages with this type of set-up are centralised management and reduced hardware cost as users only need a small, inexpensive client device called a thin terminal instead of a fully functional desktop computer. There are also some drawbacks to such a set-up but we are starting to head outside the scope of this article.
WYSE are a major manufacturer of such thin terminals and have been for some time. The Winterm 3200LE is somewhat old now, sporting a the following hardware:
- National Semiconductor Geode GX1 233MHz CPU
- 16MB SDRAM (upgradable to 64MB by replacing the SODIMM)
- National DP83815 ‘MacPHYTER’ 10/100Mbps NIC
- 8MB onboard NAND flash
- Cyrix 5530 ‘Kahlua’ AC’97 audio
- 2 USB ports
The GX1 CPU is considered a low power equivalent to a Pentium MMX.
If you are lucky you should be able to pick a surplus Winterm up virtually free from IT vendors or big companies upgrading their equipment. They also often appear cheap on Trade Me and eBay. Even better are the HP/Compaq t5000-series terminals as they are an entirely standard x86 platform (not just based on one therefore no hacking required; just load up your favourite distro) and much faster than their Winterm counterparts.
Although slow by modern standards the 3200LE is very small, based on the standard x86 architecture and draws less than 15W of power making it ideal as an experimental embedded platform. The device comes preloaded with Windows CE 2.1 which is very limited in functionality if you intend to do anything other than run Windows remote desktop sessions in 256 colours. Getting Linux running on this device will render it much more useful and is quite easy to perform with a little hacking, so read on…
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