HP t5325: Hardware 

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The HP t5325 is a very compact thin client. For comparison purposes the picture on the right shows it next to a t5720. My t5325 carries no manufacturing date but, once booted, under "System Information" it reports a BIOS release date of 01082010. HP being a US company I guess this is 8th January 2010 rather than 1st August 2010. HP announced the product in November 2009.

Specifications

Processor
Type    Speed	Marvell Kirkwood (ARM) 1.2 GHz
Memory
Flash    RAM	512MB 512MB
Video
Chip    Max resolution	ATI Rage XL 1600 x 1200 24-bit colour
Ports
Network    USB    Serial    Parallel    PS/2	10/100 4 x USB2.0 None None None
Power
Plug    Supply    Off    Running	coax 5.5mm/2.5mm 12V 2A 0 W ~9W
Dimensions
H x W x D (mm)	160 x 31.5 x 120
Security
	Kensington Lock Slot Mounting Bracket

The embedded operating system is HP ThinPro... "The t5325 thin client offers an extensible Linux image built upon Debian."

CPU et al

This particular Thin Client uses the Marvell Kirkwood SOC (System On a Chip) 88F6281 which is based on an ARM CPU. Linux identifies the CPU as: ARM926EJ-S [56251311] revision 1 (ARMv5TE).

The graphics is an XGI Volari Z11 GPU.

Power Supply

The unit requires a 12V supply. Whilst the data sheet says "36 W Power Supply" my measurements show ~11W with an odd peak to 19W. I would guess anything that supplies more than 2A would be adequate.

I found that things were touch-and-go using various of the PSUs that I have lying around as I couldn't push the power connector fully home as the external shroud on the plugs were a fraction bigger than the hole in the back panel. It was the work of moments to fix this - I removed the back panel and used a round file to make the hole fractionally larger.

The power connector is a coax plug - 5.5mm outside diameter, 2.5mm internal diameter.

Disassembly

This is simple. Looking at the rear there is a small screw adjacent to the kensington slot. Remove this screw. The rear panel then slides to the left and can be removed. Finally the top cover slides rearwards and can be removed.

Expansion

Flash: The 512MB flash memory is soldered to the board and connected via the SATA interface.

RAM: The 512MB DDR2 RAM is soldered to the board.

Other than the memory there are two things on the board of interest.

COMA: Close to the corner of the board near the speaker and backup battery is a micro JST connector labelled COMA. You'll need to connect to this should you wish to play with uBoot.

SATA: In another corner the board is tracked for a SATA interface. However at the time of writing I have not seen any reports of this being successfully pressed into service. Anyway there is limited internal space to squeeze anything extra inside the box.

Any comments? email me. Last update July 2011