Can you believe someone threw this out? Well yeah, I can. It is over 20 years old and it weighs the same as a small car. But, it is interesting and so I thought, it would be good to see if it had survived the elements after being outside for at least 2 weeks.
Stripped bare
This isn’t something I wouldn’t normally do first, but I wanted to check for any obvious signs of corrosion, especially inside the power supply. So the first job was to remove all the parts and blow out the dust with a computer blower.
The motherboard is an 0161E and this one can ideed survive being left outside.
The OS is on a 9GB SCSI HDD which makes a hell of a racket. It boots up to Windows NT Server 4.0 which is password protected.
Also included was a tape drive for back ups, with an 8GB tape still in the drive.
The customary floppy drive and cd rom were also present.
Additional cards were a PCI SCSI adapter (Adaptec AVA-2904) and a PCI network card.
Putting the beast back together was a challenge, finding which tab or lever you had to push or pull wasn’t easy. Bloody Dell.
It went back together eventually and booted to BIOS and WindowsNT Server just fine.
A morning of fun, learning and some mild frustration
All in all, I’m glad I picked it up. Although I don’t have a use for it, it did provide and mornings worth of entertainment, learning and some idle curiosity.