I picked up a board labeled “PowerEdge 750” for 99 cents because the seller “couldn’t get it to recognize any peripherals”. It turns out that it was the motherboard from a PowerVault 745N, which uses the same hardware, but a different BIOS that disables the floppy, CD-ROM, and onboard SATA ports.<\/p>\n
I poked around in the BIOS flash utility and discovered it has a large number of undocumented command-line switches, one of which is \/BRANDNAME, which brings up a menu where you can select whether the motherboard is for a PE750 or a PV745N.<\/p>\n
After that, it was just a matter of finding a way to get the flash utility to run on that motherboard, which is difficult when none of the peripherals are enabled. I wound up installing an Adaptec 39160 SCSI card with an old 2GB drive on it, and copying the flash utility to that drive. The board is happy in its new life as a PE750.<\/p>\n
Also, Dell’s “asset.com” utility has a number of additional functions which are not described in the online help. Here’s the complete list of what’s available:<\/p>\n
ASSET — Version 2.09 (C) Copyright 1993-2004 Dell Inc.
\nUsage:
\n\u00a0 ASSET new_asset_tag\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Specify new asset tag
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Delete asset tag
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/o new_owner_tag\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Specify new owner tag (if applicable)
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/o \/d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Delete owner tag (if applicable)
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This help screen
\n\u00a0\u00a0ASSET \/s new_service_tag\u00a0\u00a0 Specify new service tag
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/s \/d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Delete service tag
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/b\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Specify new system board tag
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 system board tag must be “ssssssssssssssssssss-vvv-“, where
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 s..s is the 20 digit system board Part number string,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 vvv is the 3 digit system board rev,
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – is a don’t care character, but must be present
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/b \/d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Delete system board tag
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/k\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fix 2000:0000 memory issue
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/f [other_options]\u00a0\u00a0 Force Affirmative response
\n\u00a0 ASSET \/x [other options]\u00a0\u00a0 eXtended display – displays all tags<\/p>\n
Everything past the “This help screen” is undocumented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I picked up a board labeled “PowerEdge 750” for 99 cents because the seller “couldn’t get it to recognize any peripherals”. It turns out that it was the motherboard from a PowerVault 745N, which uses the same hardware, but a different BIOS that disables the floppy, CD-ROM, and onboard SATA ports. I poked around in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glaver.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}