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Do you think this is so far out of date that any changes to the system clock will prevent booting?

Possible, but not probable, especially since you say the hard drive doesn't spin. But you could try not changing the date and see if it behaves differently.

I'm curious about what you intend to do with this computer? Unless it has really good specs (quad-core processor, more than 4GB RAM, good graphics) it's probably not worth messing with. If you just need the data, pull the hard drive and slave it on another machine long enough to copy files.