Coming soon, a brand new-to-me (Sun?) Cobalt raq3 with k6-3d 300mhz processor, WOW!! Lets see if I can setup it up as a fileserver, maybe with ftp? How about as a free hosting server? Will this thing run Linux?
Lets see...

Okay, the server is here! yeah!!! Now, what to do with it... Well, I plug it in (power and ethernet) and see what happens of course!
System powers up, gives me a message (on the little LCD screen) "Loading Kernel..". Upon further investigating, it is not such a great idea to simple plug one of these things in and boot up (who knows what may be installed on there???). So, you say, let's do a clean OS install. Well, that's where it gets a bit tricky. To do a fresh OS install (get the OS restore ISO here http://www.cobaltfaqs.com/index.php/Where_to_Download_OS_Restore_CDs and of course I had to download and install the Japanese language ISO first, doh!) follow the instructions here http://www.cobaltfaqs.com/index.php/How_to_perform_an_OS_Restore but before you dig in too far know this, you will need a hub/switch or crossover cable (not connected to the net) and a COMPATIBLE NIC. This was a bit tricky for me since I have a laptop, and none of the compatible PCMCIA cards... I do have an old PC with the Lynksys card in it, so we'll go from there.

I'm getting ahead of myself, when I power on the server, the hard drive "checks" or "clicks" nine times in a not so comforting way, may need to swap out the HD.

In any case, I'm stuck with a loud (compared to any desktop I have around) server device that only gives me a "Loading Kernel.." message. (is it already working? do I need this compatable NIC just to connect and confgure the web interface???

I'm such a newb sometimes...

Okay, the old PC (more importantly, the compatible NIC) is only necesary to perform an OS restore, whew! You just boot that old PC with the os restore cd you get from the link above, make sure the old PC is connect to the Raq (I connected them with a switch/hub).
As mentioned above, I initially installed the japanese version. Even then I was able to see on the LCD screen that I was supposed to input the IP address I wanted for the Cobalt.
Okay, now that I've gone through that again, now in english I am able to log into the Cobalt over my LAN (after the clean OS install, I plugged the cobalt into my LAN/router).
After some messing around I was able to figure out how to setup a site, and connect via ftp, sweet!
Only problem, no PHP...

So, time to upgrade the OS!
Apparantly this near ancient box will take the last Cobalt OS update, 550, all I need to do is flash the rom, hahahah... here we go...