This vendor is fantastic – I needed some surface-mount rework equipment in a hurry, and I found these guys via a web search. I placed an order via their web site after 10 PM and inquired if they carried an item I couldn’t find on their web site. Within minutes, I had an emailed reply saying they’d pull the item out of another kit and include it in my shipment. They shipped the next morning and I received it the next day.

If you need any tools or supplies related to soldering or brazing, these are the folks you should talk to.

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 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.

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.

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:

ASSET — Version 2.09 (C) Copyright 1993-2004 Dell Inc.
Usage:
  ASSET new_asset_tag        Specify new asset tag
  ASSET /d                   Delete asset tag
  ASSET /o new_owner_tag     Specify new owner tag (if applicable)
  ASSET /o /d                Delete owner tag (if applicable)
  ASSET /?                   This help screen
  ASSET /s new_service_tag   Specify new service tag
  ASSET /s /d                Delete service tag
  ASSET /b                   Specify new system board tag
      system board tag must be “ssssssssssssssssssss-vvv-“, where
      s..s is the 20 digit system board Part number string,
      vvv is the 3 digit system board rev,
      – is a don’t care character, but must be present
  ASSET /b /d                Delete system board tag
  ASSET /k                   Fix 2000:0000 memory issue
  ASSET /f [other_options]   Force Affirmative response
  ASSET /x [other options]   eXtended display – displays all tags

Everything past the “This help screen” is undocumented.