Print Server Appliance 4200

I recently purchased a second-hand HP Print Server Appliance 4200 (PSA) with the intention of seeing if I could re-purpose it to do anything interesting.

Hardware

The Socket 7 motherboard has a Geode processor and 128MB of PC100 SDRAM. It also has an IDE hard drive controller, a serial port, and a 10/100 LAN port. The LEDs, LCD and buttons on the front are connected directly to the motherboard. The HDD is a 20GB Maxtor IDE drive.

Software

The PSA runs Linux kernel 2.4, SAMBA and Apache.

Output from mount

/dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw,noauto,noatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /var type ext3 (rw,sync,noatime,data=ordered)
/dev/hda7 on /var/spool type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=writeback)
/dev/hda8 on /persistent type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=writeback)
/dev/hda2 on /dist type ext3 (ro,noatime,data=writeback)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (ro,noatime,data=writeback)

Serial port

The serial port is configured to monitor a UPS. It is possible to get a console on the serial port by attaching a dongle from HP prior to booting the device. Unfortunately the dongle was only available to HP engineers. You can work around this by modifying the file (placeholder) to boot the device as if the dongle were attached even when it is not.

-- JasonHill - 06 Mar 2010