Wyse Winterm running Linux?

I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's
possible to run Linux on. I know it has Intel inside and even has most
of the standard ports one would find on a regular PC -- VGA, USB,
printer, two 9-pin serial, keyboard, mouse, etc. The unit says
"Powered By WinCE". I am assuming this does a BOOTP or PXE boot/load
of some sort and is supposed to load WinCE over the network from a
central server. So it being Intel inside, I'm wondering why it
couldn't PXE load Linux and run X? Anyone have an experience with this
sort of thing? I searched Linux newsgroups for "Wyse" and "Winterm" and
came up with essentially nothing. (Most of the Wyse stuff is on
straight VT100/VT200 terminal emulation, where this Wyse WinTerm is a
different beast altogether.)

Thanks!
-ceo

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's
> possible to run Linux on. I know it has Intel inside and even has most
> of the standard ports one would find on a regular PC -- VGA, USB,
> printer, two 9-pin serial, keyboard, mouse, etc. The unit says
> "Powered By WinCE".

Intel does make some other CPUs, that aren't x86 compatible. Wince is used
in small devices, such as PDAs, which generally don't have x86 compatible
CPUs.

Why not monitor what it puts out, to see if it supports PXE or BOOTP?

James Knott wrote:
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
> > I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's
> > possible to run Linux on. I know it has Intel inside and even has most
> > of the standard ports one would find on a regular PC -- VGA, USB,
> > printer, two 9-pin serial, keyboard, mouse, etc. The unit says
> > "Powered By WinCE".
>
> Intel does make some other CPUs, that aren't x86 compatible. Wince is used
> in small devices, such as PDAs, which generally don't have x86 compatible
> CPUs.
>
> Why not monitor what it puts out, to see if it supports PXE or BOOTP?

I believe the WINCE is on the flash bios or a disk-on-chip. They have
almost no drivers. A similar NC that I saw ran DHCP, but possibly only
to a Citrix Server.

In <(E-Mail Removed) .com>, newsbot
wrote:

> I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's possible
> to run Linux on. I know it has Intel inside and even has most of the
> standard ports one would find on a regular PC -- VGA, USB, printer, two
> 9-pin serial, keyboard, mouse, etc. The unit says "Powered By WinCE". I
> am assuming this does a BOOTP or PXE boot/load of some sort and is
> supposed to load WinCE over the network from a central server. So it
> being Intel inside, I'm wondering why it couldn't PXE load Linux and run
> X? Anyone have an experience with this sort of thing? I searched Linux
> newsgroups for "Wyse" and "Winterm" and came up with essentially nothing.
> (Most of the Wyse stuff is on straight VT100/VT200 terminal emulation,
> where this Wyse WinTerm is a different beast altogether.)
>
> Thanks!
> -ceo

There are a whole bunch of different models of these things, and to know
if you can run Linux on it you need to know what kind of processor it has.
Some of the newer ones (according to a quick google search) are actually
running embedded Linux already, while others I think use MMU-less i960 or
MIPS chips that would never be able to run full Linux. If it is a regular
x86 chip you probably can just PXE boot a regular Linux distribution.

--
Not to have been a dupe, that will have been my best possesion, my best
deed, to have been a dupe, wishing I wasn't, thinking I wasn't, knowing
I was, not being a dupe of not being a dupe.
--Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's
> possible to run Linux on. I know it has Intel inside and even has most

Are you sure it's an x86 in there? As another poster mentioned, Intel
does make other processors and Wyse's website doesn't have much to say
about what they use. It could be one of Intel's XScale processors or
the like in there.

> of the standard ports one would find on a regular PC -- VGA, USB,
> printer, two 9-pin serial, keyboard, mouse, etc. The unit says
> "Powered By WinCE". I am assuming this does a BOOTP or PXE boot/load
> of some sort and is supposed to load WinCE over the network from a
> central server.

It could also be loading from ROM or Flash memory of some sort. Lots of
embedded systems take that route.

> So it being Intel inside, I'm wondering why it
> couldn't PXE load Linux and run X? Anyone have an experience with this
> sort of thing? I searched Linux newsgroups for "Wyse" and "Winterm" and
> came up with essentially nothing. (Most of the Wyse stuff is on
> straight VT100/VT200 terminal emulation, where this Wyse WinTerm is a
> different beast altogether.)

According to the Wyse site, the Winterms use ICA and RDP to connect to
Citrix and Microsoft servers. So why care about what runs on the
Winterm itself? I'd be far more concerned about what it connects to.
There is one SourceForge project for an open source RDP server at:

http://xrdp.sourceforge.net/

Running that on a Linux box should let you use the Winterm as an X
terminal more-or-less. I don't know how mature or stable the xrdp
server software is, however.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> I searched Linux newsgroups for "Wyse" and "Winterm" and
> came up with essentially nothing. (Most of the Wyse stuff is on
> straight VT100/VT200 terminal emulation, where this Wyse WinTerm is a
> different beast altogether.)

You searched newsgroups? Try searching Google: lots and lots of
information about these.




--
Tony Lawrence
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X resources: http://aplawrence.com

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]
On 2005-06-23, lobotomy <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> In <(E-Mail Removed) .com>, newsbot
> wrote:
>
>> I recently came by a Wyse Winterm box that I am wondering if it's possible
>> to run Linux on.

> There are a whole bunch of different models of these things, and to know
> if you can run Linux on it you need to know what kind of processor it has.
> Some of the newer ones (according to a quick google search) are actually
> running embedded Linux already, while others I think use MMU-less i960 or
> MIPS chips that would never be able to run full Linux.

Wyse makes a couple models that come with linux:

Winterm S50 (Linux): http://www.wyse.com/products/winterm/S50/index.htm
Winterm 5150SE (Linux): http://www.wyse.com/products/winterm/5150SE/index.htm

BTW, Debian has a MIPS port available; I ran it on an SGI Indy for a
while.

--

John ((E-Mail Removed))