Hacker Classifieds featured find: Thin clients on the cheap

posted Nov 30th 2010 1:00pm by Caleb Kraft
filed under: HackIt

[Bissinblob] has about 70 of these WYSE 3125SE thin clients and is offering them up at $15 a piece plus shipping. That’s quite a steal!

The specs are as follows:

NS Geode GX1 core (SC2200)266Mhz
Flash 32MB
RAM 64MB
Video 1280×1024(at 8-bit color), 1024×768 (at 16-bit)
10/100 network
3x usb
1x serial
1x parallel
2x PS/2

Be sure to let us know what you’re doing with them if you happen to get one. If you have something lying around that needs to go, feel free to post it on our classifieds.

Comments [40]

tagged: classifieds, thin client

40 Responses to Hacker Classifieds featured find: Thin clients on the cheap

arfink says:

November 30, 2010 at 1:05 pm

Um, very cool I guess. But this isn’t a hack…

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Jake says:

November 30, 2010 at 1:06 pm

Most stuff posted here isn’t a “hack”…

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Bill says:

November 30, 2010 at 1:09 pm

Itself is not a hack, but is a piece of equipment used in the act of hacking.

For example, it could be the brain of a DIY home automation system.

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Elijah says:

November 30, 2010 at 1:23 pm

I have a a few older wyse 3200les and I found a few sites http://tinyurl.com/2f9yybc http://tinyurl.com/ycnc2td that helped me flash a new firmware boot loader to boot DamnSmallLinux off of a USB drive. I use one for a remote wifi webcam and a basic ftp server.

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cde says:

November 30, 2010 at 2:36 pm

Usb 1.1 or 2.0?

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bodger says:

November 30, 2010 at 2:45 pm

Worth keeping tabs on thin clients on ebay – people occasionally post SFF PCs by mistake…

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zeig says:

November 30, 2010 at 2:47 pm

Elijah! Please explain to us this hack!

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Rocks25 says:

November 30, 2010 at 3:05 pm

Oh suck it up people. Yes, this itself is not a hack, but it could very well be the start of one. Many people look to hackaday to find inspiration for their next hack and by posting this great deal they may just be inspiring someone to create something awesome. So don’t be hatin’ just because your too lazy to get your posterior off of your computer seat to make a hack of your own.

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Andrew says:

November 30, 2010 at 3:39 pm

http://www.wyse.com/products/winterm/3125se/3125.pdf

Link to the manual for the WYSE 3125se

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Nonya-Biz says:

November 30, 2010 at 4:14 pm

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH NNNNOOOOOOO those things are turds i have several i cant get rid of.

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Anonymous says:

November 30, 2010 at 5:09 pm

I look at this as less of an advertisement for the thin client, and more of an advertisement for Hackaday’s Classifieds. I haven’t seen anything new posted on there in nearly a week. But, while I’m here, I might as well say it: I think HaD would do well to implement some sort of forum; where HaD Answers and Classifieds could exist. Of course, I understand the HaD editors have their own lives, and their own list of things to do.

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Chris Muncy says:

November 30, 2010 at 5:28 pm

THe 3125′s were pretty solid. I used them at our remote concrete plants and they worked like a charm. The V30 series supports dual monitors with DVI out x2 and are great plus can be had cheap as well.

Lot’s of potential.

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strider_mt2k says:

November 30, 2010 at 5:39 pm

I picked up a Maxterm thin client a few months ago, and while thickening it was a huge fail, the fact that it runs on 12 volts means that it will be an awesome platform for robotics.
In my case perhaps my ROV.

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Mike says:

November 30, 2010 at 5:51 pm

Oooh, I like the idea of Hackaday Forums.

But would that destroy the core site?

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jeicrash says:

November 30, 2010 at 6:37 pm

I just updated my blog today on putting linux onto Athena TK3350′s. $15.00 is a little much for the specs of these but good deals are always popping up. Guess my hackaday zen was in line today.

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cmholm says:

November 30, 2010 at 6:41 pm

In addition to Elijah’s dev link, there’s more info on getting the firmware to load something other than WinCE at http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Wyse3125SE/Firmware.shtml

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robert a says:

November 30, 2010 at 6:52 pm

some specs and I think on the firmware page enough info to hack it with an alternate OS.

http://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/Wyse3125SE/index.shtml hsa

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Parker Reed says:

November 30, 2010 at 7:30 pm

I sent an email with the “Reply to this posting” link. Hope to get one soon.

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cknopp says:

November 30, 2010 at 8:08 pm

would it run Android?

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baobrien says:

November 30, 2010 at 9:47 pm

@cknopp I don’t know if it would have enough to do full blown x86 android, but that would be pretty friggen cool.

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telefisk says:

December 1, 2010 at 12:38 am

somewhat compareable states to the old openbrick classic, except for the lack of massstorage, pcmcia, and limited memory.

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fartface says:

December 1, 2010 at 7:01 am

These are worth $5.00 to $10.00 each. they are very low power and useless for anything but very basic things.

You can Get $15.00 to $25.00 get bigger ones from HP or Other brands on ebay that have 800mhz processors and decent Video cards to work as awesome thin clients that will even play flash video smoothly.

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Gordon says:

December 1, 2010 at 9:14 am

Hackaday could really use a forum. A forum would be a better way for users to communicate ideas of current and planned ‘hacks.’ Some of us could use a bit of peer review for our projects.

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walt says:

December 1, 2010 at 9:23 am

hey all. i have a broken down lawnmower in my shed that i’ll sell to one of you for 6 bucks or a pack of smokes. your choice! reply here if interested. i figure one of you could make it into a robot or something which makes this comment hack related. i’ll be clearing out my attic in about a month. if i find anything worth selling, i’ll submit it to hackaday.

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asheets says:

December 1, 2010 at 9:54 am

Still waiting for a “services” portion in HaD Classifieds…

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walt says:

December 1, 2010 at 12:20 pm

you censored my comment?! oh come now. it was playfully funny.

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Caleb Kraft says:

December 1, 2010 at 12:47 pm

@walt,
I was typing up a response but you posted first… That’s what the classifieds are for! post it there please, even if you’re trading for beers & cigarettes, someone might take you up on it.

edit- restored, its pretty harmless.

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leadacid says:

December 1, 2010 at 12:51 pm

@strider_mt2k
Those MaxTerm units wouldn’t happen to be WinXP embedded, VIA processor, CF based would they? If so I picked up a few of the same. Did you ever happen to figure out passwords for the XP embedded?

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Bill says:

December 1, 2010 at 8:23 pm

The classifieds page can’t find that item, so I assume that they’re now gone (as opposed to my browser settings being hosed or something.) If nothing else, a box with serial and parallel ports on it for that price could be adapted to do lots of different things that modern legacy-free laptops don’t bother with any more.

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Amos says:

December 1, 2010 at 9:25 pm

Hopefully he’s going to re-list them for a more reasonable asking price. I was going to get one or two until I looked them up on the ‘bay… I’d be willing to pay ~US$6 each + (combined) shipping.

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Amos says:

December 1, 2010 at 9:30 pm

To go along with [asheets] request for a “Services” section, where’s the “Wanted” section?

Also, I posted a link about someone trying to run Android on one of these, and it’s still not up. Is there a problem with the link?

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kaidenshi says:

December 2, 2010 at 4:56 am

Neat. I picked up two of the 3150SE models plus an older Praim thin client at work for $30 last week. I think the only difference is mine have 128MB of RAM, everything else seems the same.

FYI the factory default BIOS password on both of mine is Fireport (case sensitive). Once in the BIOS you can reallocate some of the main memory to video memory if necessary, and change the boot order. I’ve managed to get Tiny Core Linux to install to the 32MB Flash chip, but there’s not a lot of room left afterward. Just enough to maybe put a small MP3 server on, however the onboard sound chip is problematic in most distros I’ve tried. I’ve also found that most any regular 2.4 or 2.6 kernel distro will boot and run from USB without issues (again other than audio support – the driver is there but ALSA won’t see the device).

As I have two of them, I plan to put one in my car, booted off USB and patched through my CD changer port to use as an MP3 player. Note that they require a 12 volt power supply so no conversion is necessary. I’m very interested in going mostly headless, perhaps with a small LCD controller mounted to the dash. I doubt the machine is powerful enough for GPS though engine management is a possibility. There are four USB ports after all. The other unit will stay in the house as a spare and for prototyping. I have no idea what to do with the Praim unit; it’s much less powerful but does have a 44-pin PATA header…

Anyone wanting more info can email me at my username at gmail and I’ll go as in-depth as I can.

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Adam says:

December 2, 2010 at 10:51 am

I emailed as it suggested to make an offer to purchase… no reply. Seemed a waste of time.

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chickenpluck says:

December 2, 2010 at 11:15 am

@cknopp
I don’t think these little guys could run Andriod, you would have to recompile it in a version that doesnt need one of the SSE’s CPU support. I have a similer WYSE that I tried to shoehorn Android into and ran into the same issue. Also on a side note, there may be enough room in there to fit and run a 2.5″ IDE laptop drive, at least there was on my WT9450XE. Fun little machines.

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kaidenshi says:

December 2, 2010 at 10:45 pm

@chickenpluck: No, stock x86 Android dies with a kernel panic. on the 3150SE.

I did recall that my model differs also in processor speed, at 400MHz. I’d love to find info on the custom IDE connector to see if it’s possible to connect a larger drive. This would allow dual or triple booting from internal storage among other benefits.

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D says:

December 3, 2010 at 3:51 pm

This page informed me of the existence of thin clients.

What I want to do is set up a machine that would act as a file server and let me stream mp3s using it over the network so my laptop could access it anywhere in the house.

Is that possible with thinclients?

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kaidenshi says:

December 3, 2010 at 5:16 pm

@D: It should be possible; see my first post above for my ideas on an in-car music server. If you have one of the Wyse clients with USB, you can install a minimal file server using Tiny Core Linux or another ultra-low-resource build, attach and mount a USB storage drive filled with whatever files you wish to serve, tell the file server daemon to serve those files and hook it up to your network. That’s a bit oversimplified of an explanation but it’s the basic idea.

Another approach (the one I’m going to take) is to ignore the minuscule onboard storage altogether and both boot and serve files from a USB device. This gives you nearly unlimited choice regarding distro and file serving method.

You can also use a thin client as a print server at the same time (parallel and USB on so equipped models), as long as your distro of choice contains the correct drivers to share the printer over the network.

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D says:

December 5, 2010 at 3:12 pm

thank you kaidenshi for your help

I ordered one and i’ll try to get it working when I have time later.

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SpiffWilkie says:

December 18, 2010 at 10:41 am

Got one in the mail today. Looking forward to some playing around with this thing.