The WYSE S30 is a thin client. It’s CPU is an AMD Geode GX500. (It identifies itself as National Semiconductor). It’s based on an CPU design by Cyrix. Anyhow, the default kernel doesn’t boot on this CPU. I’ve tried to run the installation image on this machine. In this situation, the kernel gives a message about an unknown CPU manufacturer and says the system might be unstable. After this, the system hangs. The bootable ArchLinux installation I’ve just created, it gets stuck in a reboot loop.

I have tried to compile a kernel optimised for this specific CPU, but I still get inside this reboot loop. I am wondering if the problem is caused by the bootloader. As said, I’ve been using SYSLINUX. In stead I’ve tried GRUB2, but that doesn’t even display the menu. Seeing these symptoms, it appears there are some more incompatibilities about this particular device.

Looking at the CPU, from what I’ve read, it’s basically an 686-class CPU with some AMD extentions such as 3dnow! However, it is lacking one i686 instruction. However, as I’ve created a custom kernel, that should not be the problem. Therefore I am blaming the bootloader now. So… I might have to look at some alternative boot loaders. But…. not today…. been working at this for hours. It’s enough for today.

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