Proliant 1600 Rack

[Mike Percival_1]

1. Will this run XP professional?

2. Can I get one to boot from a regular IDE hard disk?

3. Can you still get spare parts?

4. Is £10 (US£18) a good price to pay for one of these with 2x9.1Gb Hdd and 4x 4.3Gb HDD?

4. How big a disk will these take? I've seen 200Gb SCSI disks and I think 6 of these would make a half reasonable store for all my MP3's.

5. Do I HAVE to use RAID? I'd rather just have each drive as a completely separate volume...this ISN'T going to be a mission critical application or web server....just a store for audio and video files.

Any information would be greatly appr

[Mike Percival_1]

the last line should finish with 'ted'.

Why does this site not display dollar or pound signs correctly?!!

$ Â

[Mike Percival_1]

OK....so I've been offered a dozen (12) of these. Refurbished, one year guarantee...TEN UK Pounds (each) or 18 US dollars.

I won't bother if they won't run Windows 98 or XP!!

[Sigurbjartur Helgason]

Hi,

1. It should run both Windows 98 and Windows XP. Mostly dependent on the CPU/Memory combination.

2. No.

3. I suppose, although I really have no idea.

4. I'd buy one for $18.
Don't know how big drives it takes. Might depends on whether it's a PII or PIII.

5. You do not need RAID, it has a dual-channel on-board SCSI controller.

Regards,
Sigurbjartur

[Antonio Luiz de Oliveir]

It will not run XP or 98 because they don´t support the memory used with this serve

[Mike Percival]

Antonio...I'm sorry but I've NEVER heard of any computer that won't run an operating system because the memory is NOT supported!!!

RAM support is a function of the hardware chipset, and as long as the BIOS can identify and count the number of Mb of RAM and the RAM is of the correct type for the board then the OS should not matter.

The server is currently fitted with 256Mb of EDO 72 bit ECC registered memory, of the correct type, and according to the person who is giving me this unit, all Compaq Diagnostics report that the memory is ok.

Unless you know something about OS dependence of a particular memory type that I am unaware of, the memory should make no difference whether DOS, Win9x, XP or Linux is installed on any system!

[Mike Percival]

Sigurbjartur...you tell me it will not boot from an IDE HDD. Will this boot from the IDE CD ROM, like other computers can from a 'Startup' or 'recovery' CD??

[Mike Percival]

The system has a single PII-400 cpu fitted and 256Mb of RAM. 9x only runs on single-processor systems. XP-Pro has support for multi-processor systems....well, two processors anyway. I don't really need SMP or high speed processing as all it will do is serve media files up to three network clients. I just need the storage and networking capabilities.

[Hugo Teerds]

Hi Mike.

The 1600's will not boot from IDE HDD's, because the IDE bus on Proliant servers is designed one way only: they only do reads from devices as such CD-ROM's. Writing goes only through the SCSI bus.
But I have seen messages here of these machines running ME and XP. They fetch prices at teh moment on eBay and sites like that of about 50 to 150 euro's, depending on RAID-cards, memory and disks. So your offfer is at the moment a fairly good deal. Parts are abundant on the internet (cheap) and available from HP-Compaq (expensive).
As I understand there are no limits to the size of the disks. Compaq SCSI disks are fairly expensive as compared to IDE ones of general suppliers, even at 18 and 36 Gb, so thinking of 200 Gb's in 10 pound computers would certainly be a very special experience.

But there are some other conciderations to servers as opposed to desktops. They draw a lot more power, generate a good deal more heath (they are quite capable of heating a normal room, so most serverrooms are airconditioned just to get rid of it!) and especially the Proliants make very much noise with powerful fans to get all that energy out of the cabin. So you would think twice before placing one in your house, even in another room, let alone several of them.

With kind regards,
Hugo Teerds.

[Mike Percival_1]

Hugo...thanks for the very helpful advice. Power isn't an issue! The input rating of this device is 500watts, with 350 watts of DC power available. The three ITX computers that this will be 'serving' have each replaced Athlon XP systems which used to draw 200-300 watts each. The ITX systems draw 23! My total energy consumption will in all likelihood go down slightly!

If it won't boot from IDE then no worries! I'll just have to make a set of floppies for all the utilities, diagnostics and setup.

Yes, parts from Compaq (now HP) are very expensive, but I'd use Maxtor, Seagate or Western Digital drives from a cheaper source. SCSI is SCSI....is SCSI...brand isn't important! A 100Gb SCSI disk isn't THAT much more expensive than a 200GB IDE if you shop around.

Heat isn't an issue. Like I said, this will be in my garage, which is well ventilated and extremely cold in winter. As I live in England, the summers don't get too hot either! As the garage is made of brick, sound isn't an issue either. If my experience of Compaq Deskpros is anything to go by, Compaq always used extremely quiet fans. I have a rack of 12 DeskPro EN's in a small cupboard with no ventilation to speak of and you can't hear them with the door shut!