topic Re: ML370 in ProLiant Servers (ML,DL,SL)

ML370

P.Elzinga — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 03:33:09 GMT

We've spent hours and hours of configuring ml370's and other Compaq/HP equipment in our network, so we were pretty formiliar with them.

one thing puzzles me;

Even the cheapest of the cheap in computer systems display a decent error message whenever a cdrom player or some other piece of hardware on an IDE port appears to be defective, and in contrast, an expensive piece of machinery like a Proliant ML370 does not?! Like not even a simple error message!

That is very sad... we have been working on this problem on 1 particular ml370 for 2 days and finally found, with the diagnostics floppy, just a cdrom drive ($ 15.00) appears to be defective.. Just imagine what we could have done in those 2 days..

A simple error message, is that so much trouble?? Thank you Compaq for letting people swim! lucky for you I have my swimming-certificate!

please, if you like to spend time in wrapping yourself up in difficult hardware and setups, don't forget a decent BIOS and BASIC error messages!! thank you!

I needed to get this off my back.

Re: ML370

HGN — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:00:11 GMT

Hi

Thanks for the info this would be useful if we run into a problem like this.

Rgds

Gopi

Re: ML370

P.Elzinga — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:23:29 GMT

I certainly do hope it was useful,

admitting my description above was a little unorthodox because of frustration.

But, after all, what would you do after 2 days of trying everything possible in common sense to get the darn thing to work, and, finally discovering the drive is defective.

All it did was display the
-no system disk or disk error-
error message.

cheap pc's let you know when a drive is infected, they do! it's a sad contrast.

so if anyone has a similar cd-booting problem with the older ML370 (up to 1000mhz), they can either refer to the dagnostics utility or (as we discovered finally) exchange the cdrom drive unit.

don't wait for the error message, there is none, even after installing the latest ML370 Bios.

(it's an 800mhz by the way, with smart array 221)

good luck.

Re: ML370

P.Elzinga — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:31:59 GMT

By the way,

the machine is running fine now as an application test server

Re: ML370

JohnWRuffo — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 09:34:44 GMT

Sir:

This is kind of a "known issue" in a way... the IDE controller for almost all ProLiant Servers is a stripped down version. They do not support hard disks or "init booting devices". They stripped down the bios for the controller and I am not surprised that there are no POST error messages or responses from the controller when an error pops up.
A common issue is that you can read from CD's all day long, but when you try to boot from one (i.e., a Windows 2000 CD) it wont. Time to replace the drive. And any cheap CD drive will work (with a black or tan face so it looks nice)

Re: ML370

P.Elzinga — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 09:36:29 GMT

We figured that out too.. it's a nice dusty ol'grey one now:-)