This post may seem a little odd but while clearing out our storage cupboard I found a IBM Intellistation Z Pro 6866 (Thor ? ). Now although I covered this briefly on the Avid 400 I know a bit about this machine however I never operated it or saw it in working order which may seem odd as I'm not exactly straight out of school.

Anyway it has 4 x 512 Rimm (?) and appears to have the correct boards all intact . When I turned this on all I have is a blue screen. This machine is no longer under support so I was after some advice on how to go about restoring it.

Now to jog a few memories it appears to have one agp slot four 32 bit pci slots , two 64 bit slots and more dust than the desert. I'm presuming it will be ok to run Windows 2000 but I'm not sure if it should be Windows NT ??????

The last time of any recorded job on this system or dongle check was logged 5 yrs ago so I don't know what version it was running but presume it's between 10 and 12 ?????

The bob for this is Meridien III I presume ????

This is purely a pet project as I don't know enough about the earlier versions or how the earlier machines worked and this would be a fantastic oppotunity for me to gain some extra knowledge so if anybody has a pdf or anything like that with a list of installers and dos and don'ts I'd be very grateful.

Many thanks in advance for any help.

A Meridien BOB is not all you need, you also need the boardset. If you don't have that, this machine is not easily turned into a running Avid. Dongle issues aside.

That computer was supported Windows NT and Windows 2K for Media Composer 10 and up with Meridien III and III U hardware.  If it's blue screening the first thing I would do is to pull all the Avid boards out, get some compressed air and get all the dust out and then try booting it.  Blue screen could be bad hardware or from the dust.  Do you know if this was working before or maybe it was stuck in storage because it was no good and they were just saving it for spare parts

Having done a bit of research with older members of staff I found out the hard drive failed. All the boards are in and working along with the dongle. I ant to install win2k then take it from there with a new hard drive.

Hopefully you have an Avid recovery disk for the system.  That will install the OS and all the correct drivers.  If you have to install Win2K from a regular windows disk there will be a bunch of drivers you need to install for the Avid boards and SCSI to get it working

 Can anyone remember exactly which os disc I need ?

Job ter Burg:

A Meridien BOB is not all you need, you also need the boardset. If you don't have that, this machine is not easily turned into a running Avid. Dongle issues aside.

I remember when we were on MAC G4s running OS 9 and MC version 11.x there was a PCI Extender chassis that contained additional boards. This became a necessary additional piece of hardware when Apple refused Avid's request at the time to change it's hardware architecture to allow for product expansion - the GREAT RIFT between Avid and Apple started here.

Ideally, the Avid recovery CD.  It's been a long time since I've dealt with that computer but the disk should have a Avid label on it and I think it says IBM Intellistation Z Pro recovery disk Windows 2000

Short of having that you can use any standard Windows 2000 installer and then you will just have to manually install a bunch of drivers

I've made ghost images of all my Symphony's and Adrenalines but sadly my predecessor didn't leave anything like that behind. Like I said it's a pet project so if it takes more than a few days to do I'm not worried. It's quite quiet here at the moment.

In general are you guys busy in the US ?

 Meridien III was the very last one !

I fear you'll need a Win2k installation CD, the Avid app CD, and do an installation from the scratch.on a new HDD. Internal HDD on Z Pro wera SCSI disks. Installation prcedure was a bit more complicated in the Meridien days compared to current Avid applications.

I've phoned a friend who has some discs but he also can't remember how the installion process goes with regards to drivers.

Sep a couple of times with SCSI drives out of warranty I've transplanted a good drive with bad connectors in to the chassis of a SCSI with good connectors but a broken HD is there a chance I could use a HD from an older SCSI ? I'm speculating as I don't have a clue.

 What do you call older connectors, 50 pins Centronics ?

Yes , you can still buy the cables for other things. I think our Pogle uses one but I'm not a 100%  sure.

Sep can you remember what features the MC 10 to 12 has ? I suppose compared to Adrenaline ? 

V10

V11.5

V11.8