To answer your points, I only got it because it was cheap on ebay, I don't really want to spend anything on them and by cheap I mean £5 ($8).
I have removed the hard drive to test and see if I can narrow down the fault, puttin board back in the machine I only get an EIO Not Functioning, but will have to wait until Tuesday to see if it is the HD.
With regards to the firmware of the machine I am not sure about that if it is the issue (have printed the configuation page and don't seem to have the firmware listed)
The other reason was an idea to be able to store some fonts that we use for letters on the HD this would mean that if the doccument was printed it would allow the fonts to print correctly rather than substitutions or having to have each of the fonts required on each of the computers.
