no video on x5-z8350 cherry trail

1st Official Post

    This is a weird problem: i have this Dell Wyse 3040 thin client, a great little device with dual displayport output. It runs stock linux, which can easily be replaced with another os. This is a cherry trail box, is has an atom x5-z8350 with native 64bit uefi firmware (yes, finally!).

    LE installs and runs great in 64bit uefi mode, no problem there. Now the only problem is: when playing back video, video runs for about 3 seconds and then freezes. I can revert back to menu (the frozen video reverts to background), and then i have to stop the stalled video manually. Combined with a flirc usb receiver this tiny box makes a really great LE device, so i'm hoping the video playback issue can be resolved.

    Quote from Da Flex

    Set your energy preference back to "performance" at UEFI settings.

    This is a problem, i've searched the dell firmware back and over twice, there are no energy preference settings. I can set c-states, turbo b**st, and something else c-states (cant remember), but no performance settings.

    Quote from Da Flex

    Ask Dell, they should know what they write on boot. I'm very sure the video stop comes from UEFI, not LE.

    I believe you! Problem is that these dell wyse 3040 boxes are being sold primarely as thinclients. Seems no one at dell is waiting for a guy asking about uefi settings. Even reimaging these devices is a pain in the ***, since they use some kind of deployment tool, with uefi pxe booting.

    That leaves me with almost no options; i was hoping i could get the box booting in csm legacy mode and run LE like that, but that also seems to easy to be true. CSM booting disappeared as soon as i enabled uefi booting and i'm searching for a way to get csm module enabled again.

    These cherry trail boxes, even a fancy dell wyse, keep giving me a headache!

    Quote from Da Flex

    Looks like Dell is blocking max. performance at firmware level. Maybe max. performance leads to heat problems, or whatever issues.

    The only "solution" I see is a firmware hack.

    That would make sense, because these 3040 boxes are really tiny. They fit in the palm of your hand. I already was wondering about the incredible small footprint these cherry trail units have. This was what attracted me to them in the first place. I can imagine that the current "normal" power setting is good enough for them to just do thin client tasks on a simple linux os. Nothing fancy there. Doing h264 30mbit 1080p decode is a whole other story. Could well be they burn on "perfomance" power mode, looking at how tiny they are.