That's roughly 12-16 hours work assuming 5-10 minutes per machine. Worst case, first pass. And you can improve on it pretty easy. If it were me, I would do a first pass check: "who has a heart beat?" Just blast through them and eliminate the obvious duds.<p>Round up a couple, maybe few light, cheap monitors, some longer cables, and lug the whole mess into a room with some floor space.<p>Get a friend or two, setup some power strips, line 'em up, and plug them in. Do batches. Maybe 5 to 10 a pop.<p>Will they do anything useful on power up, even if that's to display some kind of status screen?<p>Best case is you plug monitor in and see that. Worst case, is you plug monitor and keyboard in and have to smack a key or something to see if they've got a heart beat.<p>This kind of first pass sort can potentially save you a lot of time. Put your focus into the functional ones and a better setup.<p>You can get this done in a day. Even if it's just you, maybe they only need a few minutes each, and you can overlap some of that by working in groups of several machines.<p>Get pizza, coffee, whatever and just bust it out. That isn't the whole task, but will give you the lay of the land.<p>While doing that work, formulate how to setup a more functional test bed. Offload that onto someone, or chip away at it for a couple hours each day. Or, bust that out too.<p>Have you got a deadline, or is this just a PITA?<p>If deadline, do the math and get help from somewhere, maybe from whoever stuck you with a pile of thin clients! And if it's you, well?<p>Just do it. Quick, dirty. Get it over with.