ProLiant 3000 firmware upgrade

[greg aitkenhead]

I have two questions about upgrading my BIOS-System ROM firmware on a ProLiant 3000 600 Mhz server running SME. I'd like to upgrade from the machine's current 4.13 version to 4.15.

One--do I need to upgrade? Looking at the firmware's revision history makes me wonder since the two latest versions don't mention my machine.

Two--how do I upgrade without using a floppy diskette since I don't have access to a computer with a floppy drive.

My other machines are Macs so I'm having a hard time figuring out how to deal with the sp20622.exe firmware update file.

Any advice much appreciated.

[Matti_Kurkela]

1.) Do you need to upgrade?

That's a good question! The available information about the firmware (revision history, fixes, README) seems to indicate there are no improvements for your model. So why are you even thinking about upgrading? Do you have any problems? Or are you just vaguely anxious because you're not running the latest and greatest?

With old machines like this, you should follow the old maxim: "If it is not broken, don't fix it."

2.) By a quick inspection on Linux, the sp20622.exe is a MS-DOS self-extracting package. That matches what I remember of Compaq's practices at year 2000 or thereabouts. When you run it, it will prompt you to insert a blank disk in drive A:. After you answer to the prompt, the package will create a BIOS update disk for you, overwriting whatever was on that disk before.

Newer such disk image packages can be opened with WinZip or even with Linux's command-line "unzip" utility, and the disk image file can be easily extracted and written to a real disk using Linux's "dd" utility. The same should be possible on Mac OS X too.

Unfortunately, this particular sp20622.exe uses some older format: I tried Linux tools on it. No joy.

Unless you have a large collection of old compression and disk image utilities for the myriad of formats used on Microsoft operating systems, the easiest way will be to bring that file to some computer with a floppy drive and a Microsoft OS. Ask a friend (or a friendly computer repairman) for help.

MK

[greg aitkenhead]

Matti,

Thanks for the reply. You've nailed me to a degree--I am sort of a latest and greatest guy. I credit firmware upgrades, however, for letting me run some newer operating systems on older machines, like Crunchbang Linux (based on Ubuntu 8.10) on a Dell Latitude CPi-A with a 366 Mhz PII processor.

Intuitively, I thought old firmware might have been the reason I couldn't get Crunchbang to boot on the ProLiant. I'm sure its much more complicated than that. But a successful instal would mean that I might be able to run Ubuntu server edition, or other distros, in the future.

SME doesn't seem like a good os for a beginner--I guess I'm just searching for something that matches my abilities.

Oh, PS, I started tinkering in the first place after putting in a second processor, RAM and 4 new hard drives. Seemed like the right time to upgrade firmware.

Anyway, thanks again for the help. I'll just keep pluggin with the firmware I've got and see what I can do.