ML370 and third party Video Cards

[Raul Ocampo]

Does the ML370 support third party
PCI Video Adapters ?

[Terry Hutchings]

It depends on what you mean by the ML370 supporting third party video adapters. HP doesn't support them in any of their PL servers, but in most cases a third party card will work. I would normally recommend any third party adapter is put into the first pci bus (slots 1 & 2 in the original ML370).

[Raul Ocampo]

Its a Proliant ML370 G2.

[Mike Stevens_1]

Look on the main system board and you will find 2 banks of switches. One will be marked SW1 and the other will be marked SW2. You want to concentrate on SW2. Set switch 1 in this bank of switches to the "ON" position. This will disable the embedded video on the board and you can use any PCI video card in this machine instead of the onboard video. You can find this information in the maintenance and service guide here: http://h71025.www7.hp.com/support/reference_library/viewdocument.asp?countrycode=1000&prodid=2012&source=143091-004.xml&dt=13&docid=4985 Download the PDF document and look at chapter 4 - Connectors, Switches and LED indicators. Scroll down through this section to page 4-5 and it will tell you exactly what I have just described.

Good luck,

Mike Stevens

[Raul Ocampo]

The board on the documentation does not match my board. Although the web site says it for Proliant ML370 G2, the PDF file does not say its for G2 just ML370.

[Mike Stevens_1]

Sorry about that. I grabbed the wrong Maintenance and service guide. This one is for the G2 series of servers. http://h71025.www7.hp.com/support/reference_library/viewdocument.asp?countrycode=1000&prodid=2012&source=203511.xml&dt=13&docid=12404 As far as I can find, it seems that compaq has not implemented the use of disabling the onboard video on this machine. You should still be able to do this with this machine if you are using windows 2000. The only time that you will not see anything on the screen will be during bootup. You can put another video card in a slot and wait till windows 2000 comes up and then go into the device manager and disable the onboard video card through there. This should push your video to the second video card and allow you to use another video card. Although I may be wrong with this ( I've never worked on a G2 server ), I would give it a try as you shouldn't hurt anything by doing so. I wish I had a more solid answer for you but as you can read from the documentation it looks like they removed this feature.

Good Luck,

Mike Stevens

[Terry Hutchings]

In this machine I would recommend the video adapter be put into slot 6. Switch 1 in the maintainance switch bank shows as reserved for this machine, but I believe this serves the same function.

[Raul Ocampo]

Tried the video card in slot 6 and placed number 1 switch in Switch 1 to the on position but cant get it to work.

When the video card is installed I just get a single beep and the server refuses to bootup.