Adding a Video Card to a Proliant 1600

[Andrew Bauer]

I just recently acquired a Proliant 1600R real cheap and have begun the process to learn as much as I can about the hardware. I'm looking forward to installing Fedora Core on it.

The problem I am currently trying to solve is getting another video card to work. I'm trying to get a PCI bus Voodoo3 card to work, but the Proliant seems to not detect it.

Disabling onboard video via dip switch simply leaves me w/o any means of video. I tried a couple different slots both on the primary and secondary PCI bus to no avail.

Does the video card need to go into a particular PCI slot?
Is this card too new?

I've got an older S3 Vrige card I'll try next.

2nd Quick question: What does the Rack Mount dip switch actually do? My flavor of Proliant is indeed rack mount, but the Rack Mount switch is currently off. Should I change it?

[amhakassa]

Hi Andrew,

It could be a compatability issue as you mentioned the Video Card you have might be very new and the current BIOS might not support it.

However, I would still try to update the system BIOS to the latest and see if it supports it. BIOS Download can be found from this link
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/locate/20_1126.html#4
The latest for this server is Jan 2002. (Note that the latest BIOS is the online ROM flash --the offline or diskette ver seems a bit older so I recommend to use the online one)

Regards
Amha Kassa

[Andrew Bauer]

Thanks for the advice. I confirmed that my BIOS was indeed the latest.

Turns out it was the Voodoo3 card.
After swapiing the Voodoo3 for an S3 Virge video card, the BIOS autodetected the precense of the card and enabled video through it instead of the onbaord video.

Thanks,
Andy