HP T5520 client

[Barry Cisna]

Hello All,


LTSP 5.x

Just bought an HP T5520 to use as an thin client. On most any flash
heavy site the TC really hangs and lags and fairly commonly will end up
locking up. As long as it doesn't hit a flash site the performance is
decent.
Sometimes if it doesn't hard lock the Xserver restarts and the TC ends
up back at the login screen were you are unable to use the
keyboard/mouse. The TC has to be rebooted.
I can not see any failures in the X logs or system logs.

I have tried adding XSERVER= vesa # didn't make any difference.
Tried XSERVER= via and the TC hangs at about before the login screen and
stalls indefinitly.

I did read a fairly old post were this TC would hang at boot due to the
VIA Rhine integrated nic using ltsp 4.x ( I think?).
Maybe this is a partial problem also?

Anyone found a tweak for this unit?
It is of course the VIA , C7? mobo?

Thank You,
Barry

[Johan Vermeulen]

hello Barry,

I found this specs for the HP T5520:

• Memory: 64 MB Flash with 128 MB DDR SDRAM

I have other types of TC who still have 128 MB, they too have trouble
with some sites. I switch them for more powerfull TC or add ram.

So could it be 128 MB is just too little for some sites these days?

greetings, James

Post by Barry Cisna
HP T5520

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

Flash, eh? I imagine this is in Firefox. As I recall, later versions
of Firefox, from 3.0 on, talked to the X server such that they caused
the X server to hold onto DRAM. In some cases, even 256MB wasn't quite
enough. This is going back a few years, in the LTSP 4.2 days.
Konqueror didn't seem to have that memory-hogging effect in X, but
Firefox does.

Any chance of giving this a shot in, say, Konqueror and seeing if it
still happens?

--TP

Post by Barry Cisna
Hello All,
LTSP 5.x
Just bought an HP T5520 to use as an thin client. On most any flash
heavy site the TC really hangs and lags and fairly commonly will end up
locking up. As long as it doesn't hit a flash site the performance is
decent.
Sometimes if it doesn't hard lock the Xserver restarts and the TC ends
up back at the login screen were you are unable to use the
keyboard/mouse. The TC has to be rebooted.
I can not see any failures in the X logs or system logs.
I have tried adding XSERVER= vesa # didn't make any difference.
Tried XSERVER= via and the TC hangs at about before the login screen and
stalls indefinitly.
I did read a fairly old post were this TC would hang at boot due to the
VIA Rhine integrated nic using ltsp 4.x ( I think?).
Maybe this is a partial problem also?
Anyone found a tweak for this unit?
It is of course the VIA , C7? mobo?
Thank You,
Barry
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[Barry R Cisna]

Hello All,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I did try using Konqueror as the web browser.This did make web browser
much faster when looking at flash heavy sites. My main objective was to
test on RED5 sites which seems to really tank thin client performance.
the prerformance was very nice using Konqueror,but strangely enough the
HP T5530(I had reported this TC as being a T5520 by mistake, for
completeness.) would still lock up when displaying the favorites within
Konqueor for some reason.
So I am not sure there may actually be more of an nic problem? I can not
see any obvious errors within X.org or system logs. The TC will
eventually hard lock or more often the XSERVER restarts and the TC winds
up at the login screen but mouse and keyboard does not respond so the TC
has to be rebooted.

Thoughts:

1. This TC does take quite a while to bootup into the login screen from
being powered off. Around 80-90 seconds. About twice the amount of time
that other test TC's are taking.
2. I can see in the bootup sequence that this being a VIA Eden MOBO the
VIA Padlock is being recognized and activeated/used. I am wondering if
this add to overhead on the TC processing?
3. I do not have an second T5530 to test with and am wondering if their
may be 'physical' problems with this particular TC.
4. I am going to try and update the bios on this TC to see if this may
be a possible resolve. Slim chance I am guessing.

Barry

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

As I was reading this, I was thinking the same thing, maybe a BIOS
update. That solved a problem I was happening a while back with Dell
OptiPlex GX1's (wouldn't PXE-boot, but would EtherBoot).

Personally, I doubt that the VIA Padlock is the issue. It's possible,
but that sounds like it'd be a horrible design flaw in the chip, and
it's only used if there's software that tells the CPU to use the Padlock
for the crypto stuff.

--TP

Post by Barry Cisna
Hello All,
Thanks for the suggestions.
I did try using Konqueror as the web browser.This did make web browser
much faster when looking at flash heavy sites. My main objective was to
test on RED5 sites which seems to really tank thin client performance.
the prerformance was very nice using Konqueror,but strangely enough the
HP T5530(I had reported this TC as being a T5520 by mistake, for
completeness.) would still lock up when displaying the favorites within
Konqueor for some reason.
So I am not sure there may actually be more of an nic problem? I can not
see any obvious errors within X.org or system logs. The TC will
eventually hard lock or more often the XSERVER restarts and the TC winds
up at the login screen but mouse and keyboard does not respond so the TC
has to be rebooted.
1. This TC does take quite a while to bootup into the login screen from
being powered off. Around 80-90 seconds. About twice the amount of time
that other test TC's are taking.
2. I can see in the bootup sequence that this being a VIA Eden MOBO the
VIA Padlock is being recognized and activeated/used. I am wondering if
this add to overhead on the TC processing?
3. I do not have an second T5530 to test with and am wondering if their
may be 'physical' problems with this particular TC.
4. I am going to try and update the bios on this TC to see if this may
be a possible resolve. Slim chance I am guessing.
Barry
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[Barry R Cisna]

Terrell,

thanks for the info. Tomorrow I am going to try and do an bios update to
this hummer. It looks like it has the original bios v1.00 , there is an
v1.03.

Digging a little deeper, looking in the bios it looks odd in that
Flash memory = 64 MB,,,which looks kosher,,,but when looking at
System memory = 112MB which doesn't look kosher!
Seeing this either the memory seems wonky or the bios doesn't read the
right memory.

If I get psyhced up enough tomorrow to flash the bios I'll see what
these readings are after the bios update.

Take care,
Barry

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

Sounds like maybe 16MB of the RAM is being used as "shared memory" for
the video chip.

--TP

Post by Barry R Cisna
Terrell,
thanks for the info. Tomorrow I am going to try and do an bios update to
this hummer. It looks like it has the original bios v1.00 , there is an
v1.03.
Digging a little deeper, looking in the bios it looks odd in that
Flash memory = 64 MB,,,which looks kosher,,,but when looking at
System memory = 112MB which doesn't look kosher!
Seeing this either the memory seems wonky or the bios doesn't read the
right memory.
If I get psyhced up enough tomorrow to flash the bios I'll see what
these readings are after the bios update.
Take care,
Barry
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For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

[Burke Almquist]

One thing worth trying to keep these usable is to block flash and require users to click to make the flash load.
This eliminates the annoying and bloated flash adds, while still allowing users to play flash content.

Sounds like maybe 16MB of the RAM is being used as "shared memory" for the video chip.
--TP

Post by Barry R Cisna
Terrell,
thanks for the info. Tomorrow I am going to try and do an bios update to
this hummer. It looks like it has the original bios v1.00 , there is an
v1.03.
Digging a little deeper, looking in the bios it looks odd in that
Flash memory = 64 MB,,,which looks kosher,,,but when looking at
System memory = 112MB which doesn't look kosher!
Seeing this either the memory seems wonky or the bios doesn't read the
right memory.
If I get psyhced up enough tomorrow to flash the bios I'll see what
these readings are after the bios update.
Take care,
Barry
_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
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For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>

[Barry R Cisna]

Hello All,

Just for completeness I wanted to post a final report on the HP T5530
TC.
I did get the bios flashed to version 1.03.
This did not help the situation of the TC ineveatably locking up or more
commonly the xserver restating and sending the TC back to the login
screen.

The TC does work fine and is very snappy on all websites and does in
fact run Youtubes fine.Once you hit an flash site or such as Facebook
the mouse gets very 'springy' and short hangs then recovers usually, and
will eventually xserver restart.

Long story short,,I had seen mixed specs and thought this TC did have
laptop ram slot in it,It does have soldered on ram.
128 MB simply isn't enough for the running kernels these days in my
opinion.

Hope this may help someone in a decision of trying to use the HP T5530
as an TC for ltsp 5.x.

Barry

[Staci Page]

Hello, didn't mean to make you wait. I had a couple tasks to do in the house before I came back to the computer. So what's up? I am awfully horny as well that's why I am doing this rofl!


If you are up for fun I can meet you shortly as soon as I get a shower or perhaps some other day? I am on my profile to screen out the creepers. If I misjudged you and you're a creeper you can delete this :) Hopefully not though.


It is only a fast free age verifier thing after that it shows my profile all the way. Call me if you wanna get together, I am attempting to keep my text's low because I am running low for the month.

[William Fragakis]

Barry,
Did you try enabling nbd swap to see if that helped? I agree that 128 is
pretty slim especially as cheap as ram has become in the last few
years . It was pretty slim even back with ltsp 4.

Writing that made me think, too, if anyone has tried putting the swap on
a ram disk or sees any effect after switching to ssd from hard drive?

thanks,
William

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:31:51 -0500
Subject: Re: [K12OSN] HP T5520 client
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Hello All,
Just for completeness I wanted to post a final report on the HP T5530
TC.
I did get the bios flashed to version 1.03.
This did not help the situation of the TC ineveatably locking up or more
commonly the xserver restating and sending the TC back to the login
screen.
The TC does work fine and is very snappy on all websites and does in
fact run Youtubes fine.Once you hit an flash site or such as Facebook
the mouse gets very 'springy' and short hangs then recovers usually, and
will eventually xserver restart.
Long story short,,I had seen mixed specs and thought this TC did have
laptop ram slot in it,It does have soldered on ram.
128 MB simply isn't enough for the running kernels these days in my
opinion.
Hope this may help someone in a decision of trying to use the HP T5530
as an TC for ltsp 5.x.
Barry

[Staci Page]

Well hello again, I'm very interested in getting together


How about give me a call and we will setup a meet.


Im sorry but I can't really just put my phone number in e-mail, I dont really feel safe doing that.

Can u please just verify here on this website and you will have my number and text or call me


I have a couple cute photos of me on there for you. Just want to be safe about meeting you.

[Barry Cisna]

William,

Thank You for the input. Unfortunately this TC has soldered on memory.No
open slots for adding memory. When I looked up before buying this off of
Ebay of course at least memory vendor showed that this TC had 200 pin
laptop memory.that was my intention to put at least 512 MB ram into.
I am guessing if this had 512 MB ram it would a very nice TC to use with
ltsp 5.x.

The mouse simply gets "springy" at times,,then catches up,,,,but,it also
on RED5 enabled sites especially will end up with x crashing/restarting
and ends up back at a login screen were you have to reboot the TC to get
the mouse/ keyboard functional again.
I have found it is best to test a potential TC on RED5 hosted sites as
it seems these sites really tank a TC due to the inherent flash stuff
that RED5 is hanged off of.

For example just trying to torture the TC it appears most of the time
even Facebook is fine,,and then the TC runs out of memory from flash,and
pictures and hangs then catches up.
Again Youtube(s) videos run fine,,and without buffer on this TC 100 % of
the time.


In regards to the nbd swap block,from what I can tell the ltsp 5.x
(default) automagically is setting up each TC with this feature. Can
someone else on the list here confirm this? I may be seeing something
wrong on this? I do see like 65000 enabling ndb swap during bootup.If I
am wrong this would be a good deal to try 'Im sure....


Take Care,
Barry