It appears to be an XP "3" system for OS, I downloaded the Agilent software .iso today, but not sure if I can just wipe the OS & re-install the .iso, or will I lose important stuff, like is the Windows tweaked for this particular hardware or is that all self contained in the .iso?
What software ISO image did you download? The "Logic and Protocol Analyzer CD ISO Image (Version 05.90.1104)" ISO image?
That is just the logic analyzer application software. There are also system recovery CD ISO images. When you boot from those it will wipe the hard drive clean and install a Windows XP system image from a Ghost image. That Windows XP system image will already be activated, and all of the necessary drivers that are specific to the motherboard and video controller will already be installed.
The logic analyzer application will not be installed by the system recovery CD, that can be installed later from the separate logic analyzer application CD. During the installation of the logic analyzer application, it will update if necessary the bitstreams of the FPGAs on the boards that interface between the motherboard and the logic analyzer module slots.
If I remember correctly, the version of the Windows XP system image restored by the recovery CD ISO images is XP SP2. After restoring the system image the XP SP3 update should be installed first before installing the logic analyzer application. I would not bother trying to install any other updates to the Windows XP system. If you are concerned about network security, only connect the system to an isolated network.
There were three motherboard versions used in the 16903A, all 1GHz PIII with 512MB. No real functional difference between them. There were different system recovery CD images for each motherboard version. The table below has the part numbers of the recovery CD images specific to each analyzer and motherboard version. For the 16903A you would want the 16903-14100, 16903-14104, or 16903-14107 recovery images.
168xA/AD Win XP MY41000801-MY41000899 Radisys SC815E 01680-14100
MY41000901-MY41001099 Motorola VP22 01680-14104
MY41001101-later ADLINK M-815G 01680-14106
168xxA MY46000101-MY46000999 Intel D915GUX 16800-14102
MY46001000-later ADLINK M-880 16800-14103
16900A, 16902A MY43000001-MY43001999 Motorola VP22 16900-14109
MY43002000-later ADLINK M-815G 16900-14121
16901A MY46000101-MY46000399 Intel D915GUX 16901-14101
MY46000400-later ADLINK M-880 16901-14102
16902B All ADLINK M-880 16902-14100
16903A MY43000001-MY43000199 Radisys SC815E 16903-14100
MY43000200-MY43001999 Motorola VP22 16903-14104
MY43002000-later ADLINK M-815G 16903-14107
If your serial number starts with SG, then the same number ranges apply.
For example, SG43000001 is the same as MY43000001
The BIOS POST screen should also have some text indicating that it is an M-815G motherboard, as highlighted in the screen photo below.
The recovery CD ISO images used to be available for download from ftp.keysight.com a few years ago, but almost everything useful there has now been purged. Fortunately the Internet Archive has a snapshot from 2015 which contains the 16903A recovery CD ISO images. For the 16903-14107 version it appears to be a single DVD image instead of multiple CD images.
Try these links. Be patient, the 16903-14107_disk_1.iso image is 1,874,266,112 bytes in size.
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F16903-14107.pdf
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F16903-14107_disk_1.iso
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F5965-3975_recovery_cd_insert.pdf
That's good stuff. Many thanks for that table, my machines sn is my43002647, so it would be the ADLINK M-815G board. Nice to know that this is a later production machine! The key & mouse connectors colors/location of the stacked io connectors also match that model in the .png image. So the big question is: how do I get the .iso recovery image that matches this? Is it downloadable?
-billThe BIOS POST screen should also have some text indicating that it is an M-815G motherboard, as highlighted in the screen photo below.
The recovery CD ISO images used to be available for download from ftp.keysight.com a few years ago, but almost everything useful there has now been purged. Fortunately the Internet Archive has a snapshot from 2015 which contains the 16903A recovery CD ISO images. For the 16903-14107 version it appears to be a single DVD image instead of multiple CD images.
Try these links. Be patient, the 16903-14107_disk_1.iso image is 1,874,266,112 bytes in size.
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F16903-14107.pdf
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F16903-14107_disk_1.iso
https://archive.org/download/ftp.keysight.com/2015.03.ftp.keysight.com.tar/ftp.keysight.com%2Fcos%2Foutbound%2F16xxx%20recovery%20images%2F16903-14107%2F5965-3975_recovery_cd_insert.pdf
Just now got past the initial password roadblock, using the tools at "https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/"
There is still some work to do to finish cleaning up the remaining corporate tangle of domains vs users, but Admin on the local machine got me running. Will definitely pick up the archived files, in case the disc goes belly up in the future! So far it 's looking good, passes all the self tests on the hardware. Hope I can convince it to not want Internet Explorer for anything! That might be having to do with the various domains it knows about...not sure. Seems to have been living at Qualcomm in the past!