I recently had two HP T5565z smart clients to play around with. I successfully upgraded them with 4GB DDR3L (low voltage RAM), so the limit for these clients is not 2GB, but really 4GB. The low voltage compatibility is also noteworthy.
I also tried upgrading it with a mini-pcie network card but had a major problem without the right tiny screws to hold it in place. Also in this case the network card turned out to be bad and strangely it fried the whole thin client and I was unable to revive it.
Windows 8.1 installs and runs quite well with no need for extra drivers, but the system tasks in Windows 8 max out the CPU too much for it to be usable. A Windows 7 Home Edition or Embedded Edition would be best. I think the later dual core models from the HP t510 and up would run fine and would be ideal. The clients I had did come with a Windows Embedded 2009 license (booklet), which i did not know how to install properly, presumably some sort of key needs to be installed, there are no instructions on how to do this.
I also successfully installed a 320GB 2.5" SATA2 laptop drive with a SATA+Power extension cable. (While checking things out you can plug a laptop drive straight in when the client is on it's side). You can only use laptop drives with it as normal HDDs use too much power. Also the flash card is always the first bootable device. This means it has to be removed if you want to boot from a SATA drive. There is just enough room to fit the laptop drive in between the heatsink and the parallel port. To install a drive you need drill a few holes into the top plate. You can use long screws or small tie wraps and some bit of plastic in between the plate and HDD to keep the HDD above the VESA attachment screws which are attached to the plate. There is very little room to play with, so it was a bit of hassle to get right. However once done, you really have a fully functional ultra low power desktop system.
One important thing to note is that the sound output quality (despite the HD quality) is extremely weak (regardless of drivers and or settings used) and only suitable basic communication. I presume this is because it is adapted for the internal speakers or headphones only, or perhaps it is a bug with this specific model. I didn't try headphones on them directly. So as is, the device is not suitable for movie or music playback and a USB sound card or DAC should be used.
I also spent a lot of time trying to get the video acceleration to work on various Linux distros without success. Debian probably works best on it, but it which would probably require some programming to get the drivers working properly. Another interesting thing to do would be to 'hack' the HP linux image to fully working linux desktop system using the HP proprietary drivers that are already installed. I found some outdated info on that approach here. Unfortunately it is not compatible with these newer thin clients. Another thing to try would be to find out how to transfer the graphics drivers to another linux installation.
Fevenhuis.
[Back]