Compaq Evo T30, as many other similar terminals, is designed to work without any mechanical moving part, like hard disks or fans, so it is suitable to be online 24/24 also for places like your bedroom, where you don't want any noise. Our goal is to use this terminal as a linux system serving a small home LAN.

Compaq Evo T30 has a 333MHz National Geode CPU, an onboard VGA, 4 USB ports, serial and parallel port, PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, a 10/100 NIC and a cardbus slot. You can upgarde RAM using SODIMM slot. There are two hardware versions: one with a NAND flash onboard and a 2Mbit BIOS, the other without onboard flash but with a 4Mbit BIOS. Both versions have a 44pin IDE connector, but only 4Mbit version is capable of booting from IDE. Anyway 2Mbit version can be easily upgraded to 4Mbit by simply replacing flash with a 4Mbit one.

When booting, BIOS will search for the first partition on IDE disk, with id 0x52. Here's you can find also VGA BIOS and a BootROM for netbooting. If T30 can't netboot then it will search for a bootable partition on the IDE disk and will load OS if present. To run linux you must keep the first partition from the flash disk, then create a new bootable partition where you can install the distro you like.