Accessing/Upgrading the OS

[Ayman Altounji]

Before anyone starts bleating about "appliances", let me say that this unit is not under warranty, and I intend to accept responsibility for any damage done by accessing the OS or upgrading it.

I can see the Unix OS on the machine, and want to get the login information so I can administer the server, and possibly upgrade it to SCO Openserver 5.0.5

But before I can, the previous owner attempted to upgrade this thing from Version 1.2 to 1.9, and it stopped responding. He left it for over three hours, and a power outage caused a reboot. On boot-up, the OS has this error message: PANIC: srmountfun - Error 5 mounting rootdev hd (1/40). Dump not completed. Safe to Power Off, or Press Any Key to Reboot.
Of course, rebooting simply brings up this screen again.

Any help will be very much appreciated.

[Ayman Altounji]

The NeoServer OS upgrade has failed. The system no longer has a working OS. Since the system is out of warranty, you may want to install your own copy of an OS and no longer have the system be a Compaq NeoServer. You do this by connecting a floppy drive and an IDE CD-ROM drive to the system and install the OS. Since there are no drive bays for the floppy drive or CD-ROM drive, you have to let the devices hang outside the system while you install an OS. Since the system will no longer be configured as a Compaq NeoServer, OS support from Compaq is no longer available.

[Ayman Altounji]

Actually, part of the problem has been that from day one, there wasn't been any support for the SO. I got tired of Compaq and its "support" team at first pretending that there wasn't an SO on the machine, and that this thing wasn't even a computer. When I let it slip to a "support" re once that I knew it was a version of CO Open server, he angrily demanded to know how I found out "that kind of proprietary information." I honestly told him that I had plugged a monitor into the thing, and watched it boot. He told me then that I had voided the warranty simply by plugging in a monitor! (This, of course, was two months after one re told me that the machine didn't have video, keyboard, or mouse capabilities) My own Neoserver sits here without a modem because when the replacement(I) were cross-shipped to me, all I got was used units with my serial number pasted over the old one. Mine was less than three months old. This one takes a lot more time to process data, which a Unix man told me is an indication that the one you sent me has less memory, and a slower processor. But I had an Internet Plus model. The specs I found indicated that mine WAS a Celeron366 with 64MB RAM. I don't know what this one is, but it certainly doesn't have the same processor or memory, and doesn't have a modem or the Internet Access software. I left FOUR messages at the tech support phone lines that the model you sent me wasn't what I had, but no one ever called me back. No big surprise anyway, because the first one you cross-shipped didn't even boot, and ALSO wasn't an Internet Plus model. Of course, the fact that you either have a GTE account or you don't have Internet Access anyway doesn't seem to be a problem for Compaq. Two phone calls to the "support technicians" told me that: 1.) Compaq is unaware of this, and 2.) Your "technicians" will tell the caller that ANY ISP will work, and if it doesn't, it is an ISP problem. Naturally, the ISP's say that it is a Compaq problem. Which means that the consumers are out of luck.

Lastly, on the "support" for the OS, I have a question that has YET to be answered: How do I get Internet Connection Sharing to work between my Deskpro(Win2K) and my Presario1200xl111(Win98SE)? Since they are both connected to the Neoserver, ICS generates errors because the Neoserver has control of the DHCP services, and the IP address of the Neoserver conflicts with the IP address that ICS tries to assign to the Deskpro. No, I will not manually assign the Neoserver an IP address, because your "support" people told me to do that once before, and then the subsequently-inaccessible Neoserver is what led to the swap-outs that left me with less than I purchased.

[Ayman Altounji]

I'd take Robert G's advice. Install a different operating system on the thing. I know it works...I've installed RedHat 7.1 on mine. Based on the support I'm seeing from the Compaq guys here on this forum, I'd say its well worth it to void the warranty and blow away the pre-installed OS in favor of something a bit more mainstream.

I'm happy to answer any questions I can.

[Ayman Altounji]

Support?
There hasn't been any support from Compaq, and now that it is discontinued I doubt that any Compaq "tech support engineer" (read: idiot paid by Compaq to distract users) will even read the forum.

I'm seriously considering Windows 2000 as an OS, what makes me keep the original OS is that I paid good money for the damn thing!

I've discovered that it's modem doesn't even support software compression, how do they think that someone is going to share an internet connection without software compression?

Damn! I'm going for Win2K, I just need a new hard drive, 256mb of ram and... ok, thats all.

[Ayman Altounji]

For any one who want to upgrade the OS to other system, I have tested the Red Hat 7.1, windows 98 and windows 2000 server, all of them can be installed on my Celeron 366MHz machine. To install the system, you need to hook up a floppy drive and a ad drive, make sure to connect the DC ROM to the secondary IDE cable, Red Hat can directly boot from DC, for window 2000 you have to use boot diskette After that you can remove the floopy driver, remove one of the mobile rack and put the CD ROM in, another thing, the max RAM can only be 256MB SDRAM, which are two 128MB chips max. Only one thing I still can not figure it out. How can I get into the Bios, I tried several key combinations whill booting, none of them work. Anyone know how to do it. And have anyone updated the Bios?

[Ayman Altounji]

Unfortunately that only works for the oiriginal Neoserver. I've already tried to do so with my Neoserver 150, but it doesn't recognize the memory, I've tried with single sided and double sided 128mb DIMMs. It came with PC100 10ns memory and I used PC133 CAS 3 memory from Shikatronics and Kingston without any luck.
It will accept any hard drive, I've tested Seagate and Samsung HDs and it accepts them without any trouble, but with only 64mb of RAM I can't install any decent server OS.

On the good side the Neoserver 150 is a standard micro ATX case so you can get any MicroATX motherboard and an IO Shield and re-use the NICs and modem to set it up as a more reliable computer.