In an act of desperation I pulled all of the cards and connectors out of the PC and re-seated them. No effect. (I noticed it has 64MB of RAM. Awesome).

Then I remembered I’ve had the main fan unplugged since a couple weeks ago, so plugged it in and BAM! It works. Or at least I can jog it around finally.

I was able to master it which I basically did by eye just so I could jog it around to show it off. Video here.

The fan continues to vibrate like crazy so I’ve got it bolted temporarily to a little makeshift wood frame off to the side.

Meanwhile grabbed a photo of the model, etc in case it turns out it needs to be replaced:

And it seems to be leaking oil, but I’m not sure from where:

I remember oil coming out of the filter (?) on the counter balance when they were showing them to me in Detroit. I was told that’s to be expected, especially after it’s been through a couple temperature and pressure cycles driving it from MI to CA.

So … after all that, I don’t actually know what fixed it. It’s clear that the fan needs to be plugged in, but the actual fix could have been anything that I did while it was unplugged. Oh well. At least I’m past that. On to the next milestones: mastering, dealing with the fan, and running a program …