LH3 netserver upgrade

[William Harrington_1]

I've posted these questions in the general section, but no responses.
We want to upgrade our LH3 with a PII 400mhz processor. We are considering two PIII 550Mhz which are now priced very reasonably.
The LH3 mother board does support both PII and PIII, right?
I notice some machines call for a change in a voltage regulator when changing processors. Is this required on the LH3?
Can a single 400 PII be replaced with a single PIII 550 without reinstalling the OS and do the BIOS need to be changed?
If two P111 550Mhz processors are installed will the OS need to be installed?

Thanks for any help

Bill

[amhakassa · Accepted solution]

Hi William,

1. It is always advisable to change the VRM when you upgrade the processor (and it is not that expensive to get one either).

IT IS ALSO VERY IMPORTANT TO UPDATE THE SYSTEM BIOS TO THE LATEST AS
WELL.LATEST BIOS FOR LH 3 CAN BE DOWNLOADED FROM THIS LINK

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?pnameOID=15389&locale=en_US&taskId=135&submit.y=8〈=en&cc=au&y=6&submit.x=8&x=10&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=50440&swEnvOID=54
2. Yes you can replace the PII 400 with a PIII 550 with out
reinstalling the OS. However, make sure you change the switch settings on the systemboard so that the systemboard will see the PIII 550 processor. The switch is located close to the CMOS Battery on the systemboard, it is a switch with 8 dip switchs numbered from 1-8. The setting for a PIII 550 will be as follows
> Switch# 1 OFF
> Switch# 2 ON
> Switch# 3 ON
> Switch# 4 ON
You can also refer to documentation on this link
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=tis04860
This last answer assumes that your operating system is microsoft windows

3. If you are planning to add a second PIII 550 processor, you have two choices
> Choice 1 -- to reinstall the OS
> Choice 2 -- to upgrade the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to a multi processor HAL(The reason why is, when you install the microsoft Operating system with a single processor a single processor HAL will be installed, therefore, when you add the second processor the HAL must be updated to multi processor HAL)

For Choice 2 refer this links For windows 2000
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=tis05893

For windows NT 4.0
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=tis08922

Regards
Amha Kassa

[William Harrington_1]

Thanks for the responses.

Where can I find the proper part number for a PIII 550mhz VRM?

When upgrading to the dual 550Mhz processor and updating the HAL as defined by the link given for "changing HAL dual Support" would I update the driver, shut down and add the additional processor to the board with the new VRM, reset the DIP switches and then start up again?

[amhakassa]

Hi William,

The part# for the vrm is

0950-2848 ---Voltage regulator module (VRM, VXI/Celestica 073-20740-30) - 5VDC input, 2VDC output, 19A - For Pentium II/III processor - Plugs into socket on the processor board (one used for each processor module)

Regarding updating the HAL
1. Update the OS to the latest Service pack level and necessary components and drivers as well
2. Update the system BIOS to the latest (which is 4.06.43PL). Yopu can download the latest BIOS from this link
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?locale=en_US&pnameOID=15389&taskId=135&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=50440&submit.y=9&submit.x=8〈=en&cc=us&swEnvOID=54#326
3. Next reboot after BIOS flash press F2 to get in to the BIOS setup
4. If you have drives in both the drive cages make sure the secondary drive cage is enabled under User Preference
Integrated HP Netraid
Included SCSI_A Channel YES
Included SCSI_B Channel YES
But if you are only using one of the drive cages there is no need to change SCSI_B to YES (not a problem if you change it to YES and still not using it either)
5. Press F10 to save and exit
6. Follow the rest of the processes in the HAL upgrade documentation I sent you earlier


Regards
Amha Kassa

Regards
Amha Kassa

[William Harrington_1]

Thanks