Fiery to PC Conversion

[unisys12]

So, a few weeks ago my manager comes walking through the back shop with a Fiery Server. I saw him making his way to our "junk room", so I asked, "What ya got there boss?". He told me what it was and simply said that it didn't work. So I asked if I could have it. He said I could if I could fix it.

Well, a few days ago I had a chance to run back there and take a quick look at it. It's a Fiery E-810 that's been upgraded to a E-820. I got these specs off the EFI site...

Fiery(TM) E-810 Color Controller
Product Specifications E-810 Color Controller
Memory 512 MB standard
Direct Access Storage Device
Internal HDD 40GB EIDE drive
ZIP drive 250 MB ZIP Drive
CD-ROM drive 40X CD-Rom Drive
Motherboard Pentium III CPU @ 866 MHz
CPU Intel
Interface RS232C (DB9) Serial Port x 2
R145 for Ethernet
10/100 base T USB x
2 (Host USB port)
PCI for Token Ring
Slots 32 bit PCI for Copier 1/T
64 bit PCI Video Card Connection
Operating System Windows NT v4.0
Compression ECT Compression Technology (Always ON)
Page Description Language PostScript 3
Fonts Expanded 136 Adobe Type 1
Power Supply 110 / 220V
Network Protocol Apple Talk, TCP/IP, Novell IPX
(Auto Switching)
Utility Fiery Scan, Fiery Downloader(TM),
Fiery WebTools(TM), ColorWise Pro
Tools, Fiery Unidriver, Fiery Link(TM),
Fiery Spooler(TM)Command
WorkStation(TM)software
Color Management Tools ICC Profile, PANTONE Certification,
Color Chart, CMYK Color
Reference Pages, RGB Color Tests,
Trapping and Overprinting
Support, ColorWise Pro Tools
(Calibrator, Color Editor, Profile
Manager, Color Setup)
Calibration Auto CAL2, Client-base Calibration,
Local Calibration
Print Resolution 600 X 600 for all paper size
Scan Resolution Max 600 dpi

SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICE
RICOH Aficio 6513 $22,995
E-810 Controller $17,500
Optional Features:
Interface Type J $600
Doc Builder Pro $2,599
FACI Unit $3,499
Token Ring Kit $599
Dual CPU Kit $2,999

It only has one of the PIII 866 processors in it, but what I will be converting this for it should be fine. I can add another later if I want. It has an open AGP port, so one of the techs at our office gave me an old ATI Rage Pro video card. It still has the standard HD in it, so when I bring it home this weekend, I am probably going to format it and reload NT4 on it. I will of course install all service packs and upgrade the BIOS, after I find out what manufacture the mother board is.

We don't have alot of the EFI servers, such as this, in the field so it blew me away when I found out that this dang thing cost just over 17 grand!! I am going to give it to my parents for a late Christmas present. My dads is currently using an old azz PI system and the video card went out on it a few weeks ago. I was going to buy him a refurb system from Tiger Direct, but when I mentioned it to them, they got a little upset. Didn't want to see me spend a bunch of money on them a PC. Well, this way, I don't have to spend a lot of money and they can have a half way decent system. Well, for what they will use it for anyway. I thought maybe it would be a lost cause, but I found this thread after a few Google searches... fiery xp12 [Archive] - HFT Online Forums so it's game on!!

Any other suggestions anyone may have, if anyone here has ever done this before with one of these, would be great.

[unisys12]

Well, just a little update....

I got the hard drive reformatted and Win2000 Pro installed with no problems. The Video card that my fellow tech gave me was a ATI Rage Pro and seems to working nicely. All I have to do now is clear the CMOS, this will take care of the pesky "Press F1 or F11 for Windows" message at boot. If you don't press one of these options, it will continue to boot, but experience a stop error. This is caused by the CMOS looking for instructions on the hard drive (I am guessing here, so...)

I was able to find that the motherboard is a thunderHE Pretty cool board for it's time. Even now actually. I mean, my parents are not going to be playing Oblivion or anything. Right now, the box has 512MB of memory, but I will try to find some different modules so I can bump that up to a least a GB.

So, it's so far so good for now.

[Tonerbomb]

Hmmm I've dealt with this animal as a fiery but never converted 1. I know EFI did some propriatary things to them to. I'll see if I still have the SM for it.

[Ctl-Alt-Del]

I have seen people try it but never successfully, Good luck.

Keep us posted

[Mr Spock]

I took an older sc2 (toshiba fiery controller) and converted it to win2000 but there was two drivers that I had a hard time finding. I installed a generic chipset driver and it work just not all the options available.

[Cipher]

Any clues revived from the BSOD stop error?

If it uses a generic motherboard/chipset that you can get drivers for you should be able to do it.
(Unless EFI have screwed with the BIOS of coarse).

[unisys12]

Hey guys... yeah, it's been a fun one. Win 2000 found all the hardware and installed all the needed drivers during install. When checking the Device Manager, there was nothing missing and no problems indicated.

The "stop error" has not come back after... Oh I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 reboots now.

I don't know why I haven't done it yet, but I haven't cleared the CMOS just yet. I found that Fiery has a proprietary BIOS installed and since I don't have a floppy on the unit (only a ZIP drive and CD-ROM), I will have to find some ZIP disks. Another tech at our shop said that he might have a few laying around from when he was in college. I cannot get into the BIOS, none of the keystrokes or combinations I have tried haven't worked. So I am hoping this will allow me to boot the machine (using a ZIP disk) with a WIN2000 start up disk with the AMI Flash utility loaded on it. This will allow me to update the BIOS of the motherboard.

Honestly, I really don't even think I have to do all that if I didn't want to. Yeah, I want to get the EFI BIOS out of there, so I am. I really want to get the "Press F1 or F11 for Windows 2000" to go away. For my parents, that would be a pain and for me as well and there might be some issues down the road. But the unit is running quite well. I installed SP 4 today and downloaded WIN Installer 3.1. Of course, IE is running at version 5.5, and when going to the IE download site the page will not display properly and it was just a mess. I was going to install IE6 for'um, but I figured... "What the hell?" So I downloaded Firefox and it works great. At that point I just started adding plug ins and extensions. Everything was still fine. I am going to install Office xp on it tomorrow.

Oh one little tid bit of info on a little trouble I did have!! I booted to a command prompt and was going to run Fdisk to wipe the drive. Well, this is were I learned that this not your typical hard drive set-up. I could not get any of the typical DOS programs to work... at all! It would simply come back as "Bad command, file name". I could't even search any directories. It has been a long time since I have "had" to use more than a few simple DOS commands, so I just installed the Win2000 CD and booted from it. This allowed me to wipe all the partitions and reformat it as one NTFS partition. After that, minus the stop error after the first reboot, it has been pretty smooth sailing. I am leaving it on all night tonight, just to see if there are any heating issues and what not.

[unisys12]

Yeah, I know this is a old thread, but I thought that since it was my own "old thread", no one would mind!

Well, I have had the unit up and running for some time now and it has worked great! I've been using it as a file server at home, using it to study for the Net+ exam and playing around with EpiWare. That is until I decided to take it apart and clean it! Go figure! Anyway, the single PIII 866 processor decided to burn out (I would guess because I removed the heat sink and cleaned it. I am betting this left a hole in the thermal grease under the heatsink and this cause the PCU to overheat.)

So tonight I ordered two new ones. This should take the performance a step up and I am planning on giving it to my Dad. His PC just went out a few months ago, so... I bought my Mom a PC for Christmas through Tigerdirect, so I figured that this would be perfect for him.

After the processors come in and I get everything back up and running, I will let everyone know. And I want to throw out a big thank you to everyone that helped me on this project!

[Tonerbomb]

perseverance and persistance... aka more time than money... Nice job though!!!

[10871087]

Say what you want about the new stuff but Win2k kicks ass all day, every day!!!