With the absorption of Wyse into Dell we lost the support files for the really old products but they are there for the not-so-old ones. In general, for repurposed hardware, we are interested in updating the BIOS to the latest version and have no interest in the original operating system. This is not as straight forward as it might be as the BIOS files needed to do this are packaged along with OS updates. In order to find the right file(s) we need to know how the thin client was configured when it left the factory.
For example, if the thin client had been shipped running ThinOS the Wyse support tools will NOT let you use installation/update files associated with a WES7 image. (I believe the OS information is held in the EEPROM associated with the ethernet chip and, as you would expect, is not easy to access and change).
By the time a particular Dell Wyse thin client reaches your hands it may well have had it's original OS scrubbed from the flash drive or replaced by an alternative OS, or maybe the flash module itself has been removed for resale on its own. What ever the case, if you intend to use the Dell Wyse support services, you need to know what it was running when it was shipped from the factory.
In the example that follows I've used a Wyse 5060 that I recently bought from eBay. My particular example came with a faulty SATA DOM so I had no idea what it had been running. You can of course use trial-and-error, but there is an easy way to get the required information.
The first step is to go to the Wyse support site and type in the Service Tag or serial number of your thin client. This should bring up a screen similar to the one below:
The exact screen layout will depend on the width of your window. Ignore the 'view details' link as that is about the type/status of support. Search either down or to the right for a list of 'Quick links' and click on 'View product specs'.
This brings up a screen giving the components that made up the product that was shipped from the factory. In this example we can see that it came with the ThinOS operating system.
Equipped with this information you can move on to the update stage.