This would be crucial especially if the phone is hardened, not being able to reset or change settings could prevent a phone registering in a new environment or even when migrating from office to office. This applies even if you are trying to migrate the phone to another platform such as Asterisk/FreePBX etc...
This guide applies to nearly all of the Cisco IP phones that you would use in CME or CUCM from several years ago including models: 9900, 9971, 8800, 8900, 8845, 8851, 8841........
On the same OS with the same kernels basically I cannot boot FreeBSD installer, I believe the issue is the host CPU.
One host runs an Intel and works, while an Opteron 2373 does not work despite suggestions from this thread: http://149.20.54.209/showthread.php?t=36761
I've tried cpu options like "kvm64" "Opteron_G3" and none........
I've got one of these for testing projects from work at home and got more than I bargained for with the time I've spent on it due to the storage handing/Perc 6/i cards.
My particular model came with the following:
2U Rack Mount Server with Rails
2xOpteron 2373 EE (Quad Core, there is a 6-core version that can be found at times)
16GB RAM
2 x 250GB Seagate SATA
2 x Dell Perc 6/i (horrible and a nightmare to work........