Is it really impossible for MS Srv 2019 on a gen6?

[Roquen]

Hello,
As a student - I got myself student-licences (MS Imagine) via my University for  "MS Std Server 2019 (or 2016)" and "MS Sharepoint Server 2019".

So for me to do proper experiments and learn about SharePoint at home - I bought/invested in a used HPE ProLiant ML350 G6 - that I had to buy some used SAS-disks to as well.

However, after updating the BIOS and making sure that the disk array have configured the drives correctly - no matter how I try - I get a red-screen with "Illegal OpCode" when trying to install the OS - both 2019 and 2016 from a bootable USB. Yes, have used both MS USB bootable app as well as Rufus to create the USB-stick and yes, the sticks are high-end and are compatible and have been used for bootable OS-installation before. Several sticks of different sizes (16Gb/32Gb), standards (USB2/3) and makes (Kingston/Corsair) have been used.

I´ve seen some pages that states that HPE does not support the older HW with the newer server SW - but I am not building it with that in mind - it will just be my own test sandbox - so I just want it to run so I can learn more. It is an impossible budget for me to get a newer hardware than this (and I´ve already gone over my budget for this one).

So, am I getting the error because of some kind of "OS block" on the hw - or is it something else?

Thank you for your time reading and I hope to learn from your wisdom.

Cheers!

[KevinSpringPM]

I've seen that error before, usually something about a boot partition being messed up. But honestly it's a server from 7 years ago, so I'd probably expect you won't be able to make this work. If I were you, I'd find an old version of hyper-v or Linux that I could get to boot on the server, and then run Windows 2019 as a virtual machine on top of that if you really want to run 2019 on that server.