Cisco Wave 274 - Back to Home

Back in early March, I ordered this Cisco Wave 274 "Wide Area Virtualization Engine" computer off the internet. I had been interested in it for a while, since a Cisco branded computer isn't something you see everyday. My curiosity eventually got the best of me, and I bought it.

This machine isn't truly made by Cisco; it's a rebadged HP model RP5700, but it's still a quite interesting computer. I'm still not sure what the intended purpose of it was.

The Cisco Wave computer, with the top panel removed.

For the most part, the specs are what you'd expect from a regular late 2000s PC. One notable thing is the unusual 1GB+512MB+1GB+512MB RAM configuration.

Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13GHz
3GB DDR2 RAM
Intel Q963 Express Chipset
No HDD (probably had a 250GB one before the seller of this PC removed it)

There's also some sort of very beefy network card installed, but I don't know the make or model of it.

The computer sitting out in the brutually cold weather.

Blowing all the dust out of this computer was very painful. It was a cold & windy day with snow on the ground, and I was freezing the entire time. I eventually gave up because snow started blowing around, and I didn't want snow to blow in to the computer.

And yes, I'm aware those little canned keyboard duster things are terrible, but I already owned it, so I might as well use it instead of dragging out the air compressor.

Here's the computer powered up on the workbench. The Cisco splash screen seems to be the only thing besides the case that makes it not an HP. One thing I found out when I first booted this machine is that the internal speaker is extremely loud.

I threw in a 40GB 2.5" HDD, just because it was the only drive left in my collection that was still untested, so I wanted to see if it even worked. It does work, but I'll still be swapping it out for a better drive later.

Another image of the internals of the Cisco, but this time with the drive bays folded out of the way.

The design is rather unusual, with both the PSU and front drive bays folding over at 90 degree angles. It's a pretty clever idea that makes this machine pretty easy to work on.

I'll be installing a different HDD and probably Windows 2000 on this machine at some point, but other than that, I don't have many plans for it.