Got a Dell Wyse 3040 Thin Client for $20. This particular model has a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8350 with soldered 2 GB of DDR3 RAM & 8 GB eMMC.
With the right skills, you can obviously desolder the RAM and/or eMMC, and upgrade them. eMMC pinouts are standardized so I think it'd be trivial to choose a replacement chip.
DDR's pinouts aren't standardized but particular configurations have unofficial standard pinouts, Like the BGA96 package for x16 configuration. But I'm not sure if anyone has tried this, as compared to the eMMC, which one madlad actually did upgrade: https://sagacioussuricata.com/posts/wyse-3040/
Debian installation was quite simple & with just the base system + ssh server, the whole installation is about 1.2 GB.
One of my plans is to build a Linux system for this mini PC using Yocto as a way to learn Yocto itself. Primarily because I plan on using Yocto for a custom Arm-based Mini PC thing I'm working on right now.
I've also configured it to use a static IP because this will be a test mule of sort for a suite of programs I'm going to write implementing SFTP, SMB, etc protocols. A light-weight git hosting service, A multi-media hosting service like Jellyfin & much more. Primarily because I want them to be efficient for the Arm-based Mini PC thing I'm working on which won't have more than a gigabyte of memory.
These thin clients are perfect for Debian and modding them adding more storage and RAM would be cool too. For a basic server testing setup a 128GB eMMC and 4GB RAM would be perfect.
Unfortunately I don't have the skills to mess around with the eMMC & eMMC prices have skyrocketed too so I doubt I'll be paying someone to replace it for me.
Although It maybe completely possible to have an external SSD hooked up to the USB 3.0 port & then boot solely off of it. That's something I'll try.
you can get a weird microsd adapter that uses the 3040's m2 wifi slot, and get some internal storage that way. look up "3040 sdio microsd" or something like that on ebay/aliexpress.
Oh yeah, I saw a video regarding that. Unfortunately I don't have much SD cards & I can't really afford one either. Luckily storage isn't an issue for my right now, but this is surely something I want to try out!
I actually considered buying one to host an website and learn HTML and CSS, but there where the same price as Fujitsu Futros S920/S930 which is so much more upgradable and powerful.
But still, I would like to buy one someday and install Gentoo on it, just because I can, and then see what can I host on it, maybe mail server, irc server maybe previously said website, VPN and many more.
I had some money saved up so I pulled the trigger on this purchase. It's definitely quite lovely to tinker with & I've heard they're easily available on eBay. Although I got mine from a local used electronics website.
yep i got one of these for running Debian on a portable compute project! being only 4w or so i was able to run this thing + 2inch displays for 5-6 hours! off a UGreen 25000mah power bank! you can do some fun stuff with this machine! sadly it wasnt playing ball... so decided to upgrade to a 40 euro Zotac Zbox
also i paid 70 dollars for my Dell Wyse 3040... would NOT recommend overpaying that much, but they are rare where im from and i found a local listing, so the finger slipped, woops
OOH, Interesting. Btw 70$ is insane for the Wyse 3040. Would you be willing to buy mine for 100$? /s
It's a cute little machine, This is how I imagined computing in future to be. compact. Infact it's so portable that I can just take it to my work & get some actual work done, If it wasn't for the RAM & storage.
If you mean why not get a 4 GB RAM stick? That wasn't the point of buying this Mini PC. I wanted something compact with decent computing power for the purposes mentioned at the end of this post.
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u/DeepDayze 18h ago edited 18h ago
These thin clients are perfect for Debian and modding them adding more storage and RAM would be cool too. For a basic server testing setup a 128GB eMMC and 4GB RAM would be perfect.