OpenBSD on HP Stream 14 cb112wm

[shep]

I have a refurbished HP Stream 14 cb112wm en-route that I intend to upgrade the ram memory to 8GB and install OpenBSD.


An observation, the HP Stream 14 an0xx and cbxxxwm spec pages say the ram is 4GB period. I did find youtube videos that show these models to have a single, replaceable slot (DDR3L1600/DDR42400) and a Tomshardware post that the an0xx series will recognize 8GB. I'm gambling that the cbxxxwm will too.

Opening these up entails prying the plastic housing and, if necessary, I would like to replace the wifi at the same sitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BlwLUYg3Tg

The manual indicates that it comes with 2 possibilities for wireless:

Description
Spare part number
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7265 802.11 AC 2x2 WiFi + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo Adapter (non-vPro) D1
901229-855
Realtek RTL8822BE 802.11 ac 2x2 WiFi + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo Adapter (MU-MIMO supported)
924813-855

iwn(4) indicates support for the Intel chip and the Realtek RTL8822BE is missing from rtwn(4). I have had a good OpenBSD experience with RTL8188CE.

I do not have a problem running Current.

With that background:

1) Does HP tend to put hardware restrictions in the BIOS? If so do I need to purchase an HP Intel card or will any Intel 7265 card work?

2) I don't care about Bluetooth and would not have an issue buying an Atheros or other non-bluetooth chip. Reports of positive or negative experiences appreciated.

I will report the results in the forum OpenBSD laptop hardware section and nycbug dmesg.

[ibara]

1. Yes. The last HP machine I owned has a BIOS that only supported a single WiFi card and if it found a different WiFi card, the machine wouldn't boot. But that was a 2010 machine. I don't know if things have changed since then. I doubt it.

2. If you can spring it, and your machine doesn't already have one, get the iwm(4) card. It's much nicer than rtwn(4).

[bsd-keith]

Same for me, my HP-G62 wouldn't let me use a different wifi card either.

[shep]

It looks like HP's Intel card is actually manufactured by Intel. I also found that HP limits hardware with the rationalization of FCC compliance as far a signal strength/channels. Ebay seems to have have HP cards as "pulls" at reasonable prices so I'll go HP/Intel if I end up with a Realtek.

I do have an old Ralink 2500 USB dongle (no firmware needed) that I should be able to do the initial install and download the Intel firmware.

[ibara]

Originally Posted by shep

I do have an old Ralink 2500 USB dongle (no firmware needed) that I should be able to do the initial install and download the Intel firmware.

Yup. I hang on to all my athn(4) PCIe cards for this same reason. And urtw(4) USB adapters also don't need firmware (note that urtwn(4) does!).

[shep]

Follow up. The HP Stream boots an OpenBSD current usb installer, but the install kernel does not recognize the eMMC drive.
This issue raised it's head about a year ago.
s://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comment...cant_see_emmc/

FreeBSD 12 should:
https://forum.up-community.org/discu...detecting-emmc

http://linux-unix-open-source.105381...td5953356.html

These Chromebooks/eMMC are flooding the market so I expect, by sheer mass, we will eventually see OpenBSD support.

I was able to install Arch Linux.

My Stream came with the Realtek 8823BE card. RTL8723AE support was recently added to OpenBSD and, per Kevin Lo, 8823BE support is in the works.

Quick Addendum: Following some YouTube videos, I was able to pry the tight case apart and upgrade the single memory slot to DDR4-2400 8GB. It is recognized

top - 15:12:06 up 8 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.15, 0.25, 0.14
Tasks: 110 total,   1 running, 109 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3.1 us,  1.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 92.7 id,  1.0 wa,  1.2 hi,  0.2 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   7556.2 total,   6784.4 free,    301.8 used,    470.0 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   8192.0 total,   8192.0 free,      0.0 used.   6948.7 avail Mem

Chromebooks/MS Cloud Books with eMMC storage are flooding the market. By report, FreeBSD 12 will work.
I'm optimistic that OpenBSD will support this in the future.