Me again
I've found a few other tips posted I'm going to try tomorrow as by the end of this day all I want is cold beer.
Cheers
Phil

The HP page for the DL380 G1 is at the link below, where you can look at the manuals and download drivers if necessary:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Home.jsp?&lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=254889&lang=en&cc=us

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I believe the dip switch you are looking for is #6.  Set the switch to "on", reconnect power and boot it up.  Personally, I don't like to do anything to the system board while there is still power connected, but it's up to you.

The server will go through its reset sequence (remove all media - CD/floppy/usb), and then you can try booting from the SmartStart CD.

What version of the DL380 are you working with?  Your post confused me a little.  You speak of breahing life back into the server, but also reference getting it to work straight out of the box.

Good Luck

Hi Blister
Thanks for that I'll give it a try later.
Reference "out of the box" I'm refering to MS windows SBS.
And " Breath life into", I had an evaluation version running which booting smooth as silk, but once I got the full version the setup screen told me I had to do a complete re-install, so everything erased and here I am, nothing booting.
I've just tried the "system erase utilty", now I get an error "Configuration not complete, control order not setup" Press F1 or F10.
F1 gives me the setup which windows option, sellect one, system reboots and back to non system disk error
F10 justs goes str8 to the non system disk error.
So lets try something else......

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Ok, got it, now.

Another thing you could try is to pull the drives and try to boot from the SmartStart CD.  Then try and do another system erase.  At this point you don't care about the data on the disks anyway, correct?

Thats right  Blister, nothing on these disks to worry about.
Finally the system is booting from the smartstart CD, (why wont it boot from my Windows CD, I assume this is a bootable CD?)  Or is there other settings that need to be configured for this?
In previous forams, it's been advised to select "manual Install" as win2003 isn't an option on the smartstart CD, yet I don't see this option.
Whats my next step, I don't want to lose it now I've got this far.
Cheers

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Put the drives back in and delete the array(s).  If the drives are hot plug you should have no problem with putting them back in.  If the controller doesn't see the drives, do a refresh from within the ACU on the controller.  Save the config after you remove the array.  Then recreate it, save again.

After that, go into the system config (F10 option you listed above)and make sure the array controller is selected as the first boot device.

Then boot from the Windows install CD...you may need to get the disk drivers in order for windows to see the drives.

Good Luck.

Thanks again blister, I'll try that tomorrow (Day 3 of this saga), but for now it's down tools for another cold one.
Failing that I have a long winded plan, it involves reinstalling NT4, just blow the dust off the disks, and upgrade from there.
Cheers
Phil

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

I found this on the hp website, boy it seems easy when they write this garbage

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00208463/c00208463.pdf

Well it seems to suggest that W2K3 should have no trouble booting to our servers.

We'll see

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

SmartStart - The quick and easy way to configure your server! - ha ha ha, I am sobbing with laughter right now.
Right now it's SmartStart has encountered a serious problem and must reboot your system, after its done an erase of the server.
How can this be so difficult!!!
I've downloaded all the Configuration utilities...
cant load Windows 2k3 try windows NT, wouldnt work, try linux, just froze up, try DOS not even...
This has got to be the most chaotic computer system I have ever tried to get of the ground.
I'm surrounded by floppies and cd's and not one of em can do the business.
If its all the same with everyone this ones going in the bin!!!

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Sorry for your lack of positive results.  Let us know if you truly are junking the system or your statement was just out of frustration.

It's probably frustration Blister, I've gone over and over the forums followed all the advise, downloaded over a gig of stuff from HP, and I still can't see what I'm doing wrong, SmartStart should kick this system in to gear whatever OS I use, but somethings just not falling in to place, it makes me think theres a fault somewhere but all the config and diagnostics tools say everythings fine. I think Compaq should seriously think about putting proper BIOS chips into their servers rather than putting people through all this.

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

OK i'm licked.
DOS loaded and configured the scsi drivers, found the drives and 56 gigs, not enough hard drive space, how queer.
NT4 loaded the 4 disks and 4 Compaq support disks,
"Insert CD in CD/rom Drive"
"Insert CD in CD/rom Drive"
"Insert CD in CD/rom Drive"
"Insert CD in CD/rom Drive"
"Insert CD in CD/rom Drive"
Tried loading Windows 2K - some bullshit Parity memory error.
And every time I tried to load "Other" you can't do it unless you have a floppy disk, well W2K3 doesn't have floppy disks.
Sorry to be a downer but this has been a week of hell with this thing, to come so close to getting it going and then being kicked in the balls just because it won't load any cd other than it's own.
I'm of to Ebay to look for another server, and this time it wont be a compaq!!!

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Hi huhejars,

What is your SmartArray controller? Is it an Integrated SmartArray controller (on a small SODIMM-like slot)?
Or are you using a PCI controller (like SA5300, SA3200...)?

I had exactly the same problem with an ProLiant ML370 G1 server some time ago (same M/B as DL380 and CL380), but luck I got it working. The only way to fire it up was to use a SmartArray 5300 controller for the drives, and put CD-ROM drive and DLT on the first embedded SCSI conn on motherboard.

You are having same problems as I had, probabely som shit conflicts between SCSI controllers.

I found a month ago a DL380 G1... worked fine with an integrated SmartArray controller with drive cage on SCSI-1, and IDE CD-ROm drive.

Whatever, try reseating all your DIMMs, procs, controllers...hope it may help.

Today I am running on a Compaq ProLiant ML530 server, I think it is really one of the best servers Compaq ever produced. It is dam heavy (62kg) in a 7U rackmount, but a bulletproof server.

The system uses a Integrated Smart SCSI Controller as you say.  The CD rom is the ide slimline.
Next thing to try is stripping the system back to its bare essentials, it's obviously had memory and drive upgrades over the years, failing that I have a plan to put a EIDE hard drive in and see if I can fire up from that instead.
7U!! that's a bit big for me, these DL380's are big enough.
I was looking at a DL320 1U, nice and slimline but just uses 1 IDE drive, when I want RAID5, so if I could find something like that which could run an external raid array, that may work.
Well I'm taking a few days away from it to gather my thoughts.
Cheers
Phil

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

You can't go wrong with an ML530 - whatever generation.  The server fits a maximum of 12 disks (providing you get a server with the 2nd drive cage fitted and a SCSI card that has two internal ports), dual power supplies, and IMO is the mother of all high-end servers.

If you need something much smaller, the DL360's and DL380's are the way to go, especially the DL380 as it allows future expansion should the need arise.

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TheLad,
what to you mean by IMO ?

IMO = in my opinion :)

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Hi TheLad, I hope your not referring to the DL380 as "the way to go" in this forum! I'm still no closer, I even found the <CTRL>+<A> after the F10 prompt to enter the "Advanced features", fat lot a good that did me.  I've got my beady eye on a DL320 at the moment and for now I've just had to load my W2K to a self built PC.
Roll on chapter 37 in this saga

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

To be honest, I have used quite a few different Compaq/HP brands of Proliant server and I have not experienced the sorts of problems you appear to be having - I have had a few keyboard/seat moments but nothing I couldn't resolve.  I have used the later generations of DL380 (not G1) and they work fine, but I guess that doesn't help you much.

The DL320/DL360 as a small server works well as it allows you a perfectly acceptable way of hosting an application for a small cost.  The DL380 as a mid-range server works well from a cost and maintenance point of view and also allows for future expansion.  The DL530 works well as a high-end server.  What server you pick is dependant on the resources you need it for.

In my opinion, you would be better going for the DL360 rather than the DL320 as it offers two SCSI disks which can be hardware mirrored.

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If you go with a SAS model of a DL360 you can put 4 drives in it.

Sounds better Blister, I would still rather use RAID5 across the disks.

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

.....unless the DL320 can run an external array?

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

You can fit 6 SAS drives into the newer DL360 servers if you have the right cage fitted.

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"Insert funny comment in here!"
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If you really want loads of storage in a single rack mount server solution, go for the new ML370G5RM and add the second drive cage. It will take 16 drives and two array controllers.

If it has to be powerful, then use dual Quad-core Xeons and the second memory bank option to give you quad-interleaved memory. I promise you it is fast.

It may use 5u rack space, but with that power and capacity, it is still good.

Regards: tf1

Well I finally got MS-DOS at least to load to this system.  Next stage is trying to load the cd-rom drivers.  I've been trying to use the MSCDEX.EXE file but without success, can anyone remember or know what you type on the command line? and if I need a certain .sys file?
MSCDEX [/E/K/S/V] [/D:<driver> .... blah blah blah
i've got the oakcdrom.sys, the cdrom.sys & atapi.sys files but i keep getting "no valid device drivers selected"
Come on guys I'm within a gnats breath....
Cheers
Phil

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Ok fella's don't worry I got it, Now I gotta remember how to use FDISK again!!!

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

F I N A L L Y !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Got the system back to Windows 2000

Now to try and upgrade 20 W2K3

Fingers x'd

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

S U C C E S S ! ! ! ! !

OK, heres what I've gone through.
 - Download SmartStart 5.5 (I'm still laughing)
 - Prepare a System Erase Floppy
 - Boot the system with the floppy in.
 - remove the floppy and restart with SMartStart in the CD-rom
 - Let SmartStart take you through the ACU (Assisted Configuration Utility) and set up your hard drives.
 - Boot MS-DOS (because I couldnt get any other OS CD to boot from the CD-ROM)
 - Find a spare CD-ROM and install it(I had a HP CD-rewriter lying around) and download and install HP's CD-ROM support pack SP2948, copy it to the DOS partition and run it with a floppy in drive A, it does the rest.
 - Run FDISK and create an extended partition to load you OS to, otherwise W2K tells you theres not enough space.
 - Now I can boot to DOS at least and load up my operating system.
 - Because W2K3 dosen't boot from DOS, I loaded W2K 1st
 - .....and because W2K3 dosen't boot from W2K, you have to reboot your machine to W2K and press F8 at the start, enter SAFEMODE with COMMAND PROMPT
 - cd\i386
 - winnt32.exe
 - A message will appear that you can't upgrade, but don't worry just keep going and it will start the install process.

I know this is long winded and my hard drives are a mess of DOS and NTFS partitions, but for me it was the only way.

Thanks for all the help guys.

Phil

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

Phil,
Glad to hear you got it running.

Oh before you load MS-Dos load the system configuration tools.

www.furnessonline.com - nothing there yet so give me a few weeks to get something together. This ASP.NET looks like fun.

hughejars,

It looks like I'm going to have to buy a floppy drive to get Server 2003 installed on my dl380 G1?
You say "Prepare a System Erase Floppy, Boot the system with the floppy in".  I bought this thing used on Craig's list for $60 and now I feel I have overpaid.  It did already have Windows Server 2003 on it but with an unknown login.  I don't know the history of this box but it looks like it might be more trouble than it's worth.  Funny that it will try to boot from a VMware ESX install disk (which eventually fails) but doesn't recognize a Windows CD. Also won't recognize SmartStart 5.5 CD.

I have a few utilities that can crack the username/passwords, if you want. Let me know. Does the server have a floppy drive? If not, I have a cd that will do the trick (usually better, too), and it is bootable. They are on my FTP server, and I can email you the address if you want. Like I say, let me know.

Burt

Hi Burt -- unfortunatly I messed with and reset the disk partitions which wiped clean the W2003 that was already there.  I was confident I would be able install a fresh OS (before I read this thread and got an idea of what a challenge I faced!)  Wish I would have known about the PW crack before that, oh well.

It turns out the brand of blank CD I used to create SmartStart was faulty.  By suggestion on another thread here I used ImagBurn to verify the CD I created against the original SmartStart.ISO and there were errors.  Funny becuase my home PC would try to boot from the SS CD, but my DL380 is to fussy and requires a perfect copy, which it should I suppose.  So I bought some Memorex brand blank CD's and my dl380 is now booting with SmartStart 5.5.  Thanks to all who have replied here, I did learn alot even though the problem was a bad CD copy.